For Ned and all the books that helped me. Seriously because. . . “I’m smart but not enough—just smart enough to have problems.”-Ned Vizzini TW: depression, grief, suicide, mania, mental illness, drugs, alcohol, mentions of […]
Blog
Love Of A Sniper
I’m convinced. Relationships just aren’t for me. Every time I try to cultivate a relationship with someone, it always ends in a gut-wrenching, mind-boggling, what-the-fuck happened, and what was it all for kind of […]
Dead Name
It was one of those first days of fall, where the light suddenly feels more distant. Golden hour and Greenwood Cemetery had an ephemeral glow, a stark contrast to the detritus of our lives collecting […]
Obituary of an Ice Cream Sandwich, or “The Monks and the Trees”
Tuesday, September 21 2021 The grain of the wood floor pulls me deeper as my feet find theirgrounding and my head extends toward the ceiling. I stretch myarms wide, halting the rotation of my right […]
With the Success of “Shang-Chi” and “Squid Game,” AAPI Creatives are Hopeful
The representation that recent films like Shang-Chi and shows like Squid Game allowed the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community to experience—especially after a year of increased anti-Asian violence due to the COVID-19 pandemic—feels necessary, now more so than ever.
The Home Within my Hips and Head
In time, I learned how to cheat my body’s system, depriving it of food and exhausting it with exercise. I started to walk with my thighs spread apart from each other, keeping my hips locked and my gait wide. My hips tried to relax, begging me to stop putting them in the middle of my mind’s complex-driven conquest. But I was too terrified to hear them plead, terrified of being hated by the cruel boys in my class who wanted someone emptier than I was.
Thursday Night in Pasadena: The Story of a New York Exile and a Realization of Self Love’s Necessity
In New York City, a person knows where they stand. You know before you hop on the subway if a person is going to show up to a date. Then if they’re not showing, and […]
The Sopranos “Woke up This Morning” and Chose Violence
In a post #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter world, The Many Saints of Newark feels intentionally prescient, but ultimately fails to deliver a story that challenges the racist and sexist tropes that pervade American gangster cinema.
Common Sense
On January 8th, 2021, a new Netflix original series appeared called Pretend it’s a City. It stars a seductive, if not minimal cast: Martin Scorsese in the company of the infamous Fran Leibowitz. Their show […]
Black or Blue: White Protestors, Black Cops, and Race Shaming
Something feels off about watching white people berate, accost, and hurl insults at black police officers during protests against systemic racism.
On the Maturer Sex
Through the myth that women have the upper-hand when it comes to expressing emotions, a burden is placed on women to coddle, take care of, and excuse men’s inappropriate actions.
On Becoming a God in Clifton Park
Vicente was, in many ways, NXIVM’s chief propagandist. I shouldn’t be surprised by this exaggerated performance of victimhood. I’d feel guilty for making my wife sleep next me on the floor, too. But he lets her forgive him a few too many times.
MIXED™
Do you find yourself too “white-nized” to be fully non-white, but too non-white to be white?
Who needs Representation when you have Suggestion?
These shows have built into them opportunities to show sides of the sixties that have seldom been seen before in mainstream media, and yet they don’t take them.
What does this election mean to you?
I sat in the park for two hours with my crooked teal-lettered sign talking to New Yorkers.
Henry Drobbin Talks Unions, Layoffs, and Restructuring
“It’s union busting. To have clear and direct language in a collective bargaining agreement, a precedent that has been followed for ten years, and then to cast it aside and say, ‘We don’t follow that. We don’t need to have this conversation with the union.”
Restructuring the Conversation: Richard Bernstein on The New School Layoffs
“For six months now, they’ve been talking to us about restructuring. There’s now a task force about this, but no one has a concrete idea of what that restructuring means. All you have to work on is rumors, and that’s terrible […] No faculty member has a clue about what this concretely means and when it’s going to happen. And that, I know, has caused enormous anger and frustration.”
Born Sinner
On one of the first days of Morality, my teacher passed each student an index card and asked us to write whether we were pro-life or pro-choice.
Coming So Far to Fall
DIY touring requires a lot more than musical skill to make it work. You have to be comfortable with a not insignificant level of humiliation.
Ambiguous Asian Blend
“So, what kind of South Asian are you?” the bartender asks coolly.
Me & Mary Frances
“Mary Frances” is my own invention. That was how her friends and family referred to her, but she’s better known as MFK Fisher, the matriarch of food writing.