Readings

The Year in Dog

Days have become generally unmanageable, and for some people it helps a bit to have a dog around, which I encourage. 

The Year in Rebuilding

That’s the thing with emotional abuse. You stop trusting yourself, which makes it hard to be alone, so you stay and you listen to someone else's version of your shared story.

The Year in How Things Seem

I thought giving generously would mean, when I needed it, I'd receive help without asking. I am learning that life is not a mind reader. 

The Year in Broth

My memories of these meals carried me, unwaveringly, from month to wretched month—attempting to re-conjure them gave me something to do at my most desperate.

The Year in the Meat Crime

Terrace House makes reality TV engrossing, ensuring a long-maligned medium and its most maligned genre are streaming their way into hearts around the world.

The Year in White Motherhood

Should we not be talking more openly about the desperate need for black and brown mothers to be included in the conversation about what motherhood looks like in 2018?

The Year in Taxidermy

I’ve been trying to scrape something free and nothing’s budged. It’s possible I’ve scraped out all there is to give. What is the thing I was looking to salvage?

Skin Worn Thin

Every time someone sees me as either white or black, I wonder, is passing an act of capitulation, or resistance? A rejection of identity, or of identification?

Death in the Delta

When the Gaias were murdered, Mississippi lost one of the finest guitarists in a generation and a well-loved daughter, sister and friend. Decades later, the slayings still haunt the Delta.

Making Peace with New Age

After years of being one of those people who used the term as a derogatory catch-all, I realized that music that falls under the label can, and often does, help me in unexpected ways.