On Manson bloggers, murder fandom and being a sad, dark teen.

An essay on audiobooks.

American history begs the question: Can immigrants possibly inherit the mythology of the U.S.?

The constant discomfort of a genital injury creates a covenant of pain. It is impossible to think about anything else.

We don’t often talk about how a paper’s collapse makes people feel: less connected, more alone.

Notes on humiliation.

On the veracity of documentary filmmaking.

Fighting the romanticism of owning a home in one of the nation’s most competitive housing markets.

During the brief moment when the pandemic was receding and we could be together again, all we wanted to do was move our bodies.

But the more that I tried to remind myself of the various ways in which I did, in fact, seem to have a body that was moving, with a heart that pumped blood, the more agitated I became. Being dead butted up against the so-called evidence of being alive, and so I grew to avoid that evidence because proof was not a comfort; instead, it pointed to my insanity.

An essay on understanding our character, worth, and limits.

“A quarantine facial-hair experiment led me to a deep consideration of my Blackness.”

On the Camino de Santiago, a female pilgrim walks in solitude—utterly vulnerable, utterly free.

He helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?

My dad was a riddle to me, even more so after he disappeared. For a long time, who he was—and by extension who I was—seemed to be a puzzle I would never solve.

In 1970 South Central, pigeon fancying was serious business. But there’s a deeper story behind why these Black Angelenos are entering their fifth and sixth decade raising Birmingham Roller pigeons.

Searching for home at a cowboy poetry convention in Elko, Nevada.

The clock is a useful social tool, but it is also deeply political: It benefits some, marginalizes others and blinds us from a true understanding of our own bodies and the world around us.

Finding meaning in the climate fight.

“I know I learned to use my intelligence as a weapon to keep myself safe from racists, starting as a child, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like enough. The violence is like a puzzle with many moving parts, but the stakes are life and death.”

On the tragic flood of elder death in the wake of COVID-19.

And as time arcs and stops and speeds and slows now, I watch myself ride the agony of the death. It’s not out of resistance, exactly, but a need to inquire into both time’s speed and the callous logic, basically eugenicist, that on bad days, the rest of the world seems to hold: that she was old enough to die this way.

Blake Bailey was my favorite teacher. Years later, he forced himself on me. Why did I seek his approval for so long?

On vandwelling in the wake of the Great Recession.

In 2019, I made a painful decision. But to the algorithms that drive Facebook, Pinterest, and a million other apps, I’m forever getting married.

A year of isolation made me consider all the casual, unwanted touch women endure — and why it’s so hard to refuse it.