Memoir

My Father, the Cyborg

The seductions of medical surveillance.

Father of War

My son’s violent illness humbled my sense of control and transformed my understanding of what it means to parent.

Flowers for Farah

In her scholarship, mentoring, and activism, Farah Jasmine Griffin brings a praxis of radical love to an unequal academy.

The Protagonist in Someone Else’s Memoir

Every city I’ve lived in has been filled with racism, whether out in the open or hidden in an invisible dialogue of economics and housing. Birmingham taught me to never question what it meant to be a Black American.

Selling Hope

A cancer diagnosis reveals how pervasive consumerism has become, infecting even the stuff meant to heal us.

Neither Chaos Nor Quest: Toward a Nonnarrative Medicine

Narrative medicine claims to champion the experience of patients—but it does so by requiring that the sick “earn” their care by telling a redemptive tale about what is wrong with them.

Unlearning Our Settler Colonial Tongues

On language and belonging.

The Wisdom of Black Life and Literature

A recording of our virtual literary event with three generations of Black women writers.

To Say Goodbye

A veteran AIDS activist looks back on the 1990s.

Autofiction’s First Boom Was in Turn-of-the-Century Japan

Newly translated into English, Minae Mizumura’s An I-Novel is a vivid portrait of immigrant displacement and the ironies of our global cultural ecosystem.

Straight Down to the Bones

Black Arts poet Sonia Sanchez discusses the ancestral influences on her work and how art can give us strength.

The Millions

A trip to Machu Picchu ends up offering surprising insights into what it means to be a survivor of the genocide of Native Americans.

Caring in Viral Times

Amid widespread indifference toward the most vulnerable, even small acts of kindness can make a difference.

Mourning in Tehran

On Ashura, Shi’a Muslims grieve the Prophet’s grandson. But with Iran crippled by COVID-19 and U.S. sanctions, it was also an occasion this year to mourn the country’s deaths from disease and despair.

Translation

A personal meditation on trauma, loneliness, and the paradox that gay community is often both life-giving and terribly disappointing.

Black Bereavement, White Condolences

“This sudden attention to the ongoing grief of black life can also feel like a slap in the face. Didn’t you notice we were dying?”

A Politics of the Future

Mourning the elderly lost to COVID-19.

The Privilege of the Ally

Allies can be powerful aides to social justice movements—but it is their responsibility to make sure they don’t become a distraction from the cause.

Mercy Hours

On being awestruck by literature, and the necessary pleasures of intimacy—near and remote—during quarantine.

Love One Another or Die

During the AIDS crisis, different contingents of the LGBTQ movement set aside their differences to prioritize mutual care.

Walks in the Park: On the Foreignness of the Socialist Past

December 22 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Romanian socialist state of Nicolae Ceaușescu. In a work of memoir, Nachescu recalls growing up under communism and wonders about the world Romanians hoped would follow its fall.

The Origins of Sexual Healing

How the song emerged from Gaye’s struggles with faith, drug addiction, and childhood abuse.

Lenny Boy

A personal essay on family, death, and the healing power of music.

The Education of an Ambivalent Feminist

Tara Westover’s best-selling memoir may reveal more about the place of feminism in contemporary U.S. life than any book in recent memory.

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