Finding My Sister in Young Adult Novels
Lately all I want to read are young adult novels about sisters. Young adult (YA) lit has a simplicity that creeps up on you. It’s about falling in love and obligations to the world outside of our daily...
View ArticleEndurance Test
My father held the wall to work his way from the bed to the couch, avoiding the ship’s bell protruding from the wall. He was sick—the kind of sick that meant out of work too. It was his adrenal system,...
View ArticleDisturbing the Silence: Part 2
Flocking to rural life and simple living can be just as much an attempt to avoid the darkness as binge-watching a TV show.
View ArticlePoetry Friday: “The Fawn”
Narrative poetry has its special challenge: how does it differentiate itself from prose? David Mason’s story of his family’s relation to a dying fawn does this in several ways. First there’s the iambic...
View ArticleRules for the Male Gaze
Once, in high school, a guy in the trombone section brought a Playboy to band practice and passed it around the horns section. I was on tympani and could see over their shoulders the airbrushed bodies,...
View ArticleGlobal Neighbors
This post originally appeared in Good Letters on October 20, 2011 In the last few years, my school has made a huge push towards what our Global Studies’ Director refers to as “glocalism.” In essence,...
View ArticleThe Spirit’s Indwelling
Beside me this morning is a child at the breakfast table vigorously chewing a Fuji apple and explaining to me the mutative abilities of a small vehicle based on the particular placement of a certain...
View ArticlePainting Brings the Ancestors Around
On a November evening last year, I walked to my rosemaling class and sat around a table of women. We represented a wide range of ages and backgrounds, but we were all raised with rosemaling—breadboards...
View ArticlePoetry Friday: “Sometimes I Am Permitted”
On my first reading of this poem, I felt disoriented by all the non sequiturs, all the disconnected images leaping here and there. But then I thought: isn’t this how my own attention works (or doesn’t...
View ArticleAt the Table
1. The temptation is there. Every time my daughter rubs her elbow against it, the sliver opens underneath like a tomb. I did that. I cut the plastic that covers our table, and through the tablecloth...
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