Jul 23, 2019
We Lined Up for Bread and He Massacred Us
Here in Idlib, Syria, we have gone back to the most primitive ways of living: We cook on coal. We wash our clothes by hand. But we are surviving. Some days it feels like a miracle.
Here in Idlib, Syria, we have gone back to the most primitive ways of living: We cook on coal. We wash our clothes by hand. But we are surviving. Some days it feels like a miracle.
It is not so much that these things are invisible as it is that people are trained to hide them, and society is conditioned to look away from them.
What I can do for now is to give back in ways that may seem extraneous, but bring delight to the recipient. So, I make frozen desserts.
There is a part of me, even after so many iterations of faith and years of living in an adult body, that is waiting for punishment, waiting to be banished from the Garden.
I am not the first viewer of this movie to see it as essentially apocalyptic.
This creature is a survivor. As long as it survives, our notion of the wild, of conditions indifferent to humanity in which other species thrive, survives too.
Lilly Dancyger on casting spells and re-watching The Craft during an election season.
One reason I fell in love with Japan is the way each season is embraced and celebrated. Living here has changed my view of them—and of myself.
From the Congo to a refugee camp in Kenya to resettlement in Austin, TX—this is the story of a doctor who is starting over.
Adele and Frank prepare for an empty nest.
I was single for the first time in eighteen years. I felt unmoored. For the first time in eighteen years, everything was new, including me.
The world of this movie is a world in which transness is not the exception but the rule.
I need something that is going to tingle, tell me the food is alive. Because I want to be alive, too.
I think about the many invisible struggles, the empty places I have had to fill for my kids. The bridges I’ve had to build.
I take off the effects of the day, the echoes of wind, sleet, and snow. I pamper my skin, urge it to replenish and heal. I am asking myself to brave another day.
When I search for my father, I feel his numbers. Here’s a house number on my friend’s street that mimics the first few digits of my father’s phone. Here, at the 7/11, my receipt totals the amount of the last four digits of his SSN.
I flew to Taiwan the year I turned thirty-six, a trip I’d booked solely for the purpose of freezing my eggs.
By farming, I connect back to my own culture. To, pun intended, my roots. To what it means to be a child of immigrants and help things grow.
Do other people ascribe “luck” to objects? I wondered. Wouldn’t it be far better to finally use this kitchen appliance and truly love it?
I blamed my mother for so many things, but I blamed her especially for being a mere mortal when what I really needed was a supreme, supernaturally benevolent being.
