When Quitting Is the Harder, Better Choice
On learning to let “grit” go.
Angela Chen is a science journalist and the author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, which was named one of the best books of 2020 by NPR, Electric Literature, and Them. Her reporting and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, MIT Technology Review, The Guardian, National Geographic, Paris Review, Lapham's Quarterly, and more.
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Writing a Book About Asexuality Taught Me to Look for a Fate Beyond Numbers
I learned to reevaluate the meaning of ‘normal’ in relationships, and also my habit of reflexively turning to data.
How I Learned to Tell Signal from Noise and Appreciate Calm
It can be easy to confuse real emotion with the shiny drama enfolding it. Sometimes grand gestures are signs of grand feeling—sometimes they’re not.
On Being Young, Scrappy, and (Sometimes) Satisfied
Remain forever hungry, or enjoy the tried-and-true? Sometimes, I learned, it’s okay to double down on the life you have.
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Stay or Go? or, The Case Against Playing it Safe
My lesson should have been “choose risk”—change didn’t always mean closing a door.
Is It Possible to Truly Know Yourself? (Probably Not—and That’s Okay.)
There is opportunity in forcibly rewriting a story, in trying out identities that might not feel true at first.
How I Learned to Reconcile the Distance Between Experience and Memory
As my mother loses the ability to remember, I find myself playing with my own memory.