More than anything, Glenn Ligon’s UC installation embodies Whitman’s ideas of solitude as time spent alone that inversely enables someone to come closer to the city around them.
Tag: 12th Street Journal
Camp (It’s a Mitzvah!)
It is 1982. I just turned 14 last month. It is the summer before 10th grade. I am at a sleepaway camp in the Catskills. I am staying in what used to be a hotel that the camp randomly assigns to campers. It’s not fancy, but it’s better than the cabins. It’s really cool because I am with a group of girls from Long Island. It’s like they are a gang of Rizzos from Grease.
A Conversation with Ted Kerr
Through his life’s work as a social justice organizer and archivist, New School professor and alum Ted Kerr encourages us to think in multiple timelines and ever-expansive networks of memory, particularly as it relates to the world of HIV/AIDS.
I Bought a Rug
Recently, I looked around my room and thought, if I were to die inexplicably in my sleep, I would be surrounded by nothing.
Letter from the Editor, 2023-24
The phrase “particularly in these times” stands out to me.
Unbecoming Homeless
Who cares about which direction the stocks are headed when you don’t know where you and your family will be sleeping tonight?
Cecilia Gentili’s Legacy, Southern Transness, and the Reclamation of Sainthood
Above all, Cecilia embodied the spirit of a saint, transcending the boundaries of convention and challenging sanctimony as a trans sex worker of color.
I HATED THE MOVIE, BARBIE.
Yes, the production design and costume design (which, if you’re counting, were BOTH nominated) are meticulous and delicious. The mostly pink pastel color palette is like visual cotton candy. But, much like real cotton candy, it is just a dessert; scrumdiddlyumptious, but not a meal.
In Color
Boxes in the trunk of the Toyota Corolla Azure her mother sold when they got to the city. Their neighbor played “Purple Rain” every morning. Blue stripes on the city bus. Blue Man Group in Union Square. Public school, plastic chairs. First test. “Sorry kid,” when Natasha’s teacher handed her a blue pen.
NYC Babies & Dogs Just Don’t Give a F*ck
The vibrant tapestry of city life leaves these pint-sized locals unfazed, a stark contrast to their counterparts living elsewhere who find wonder in the smallest of things.
My Little Titties Saved My Life
I love referring to my surgery as a boob job because it makes people do a double-take. I see them recalibrate, “What kind of gay are you? Where are you coming from and where are you going?”
20 Seasons of American Dad
American Dad! has maintained significant popularity and raised the bar for syndicated adult animation by having the greatest thing a sitcom can have: an impeccable cast of characters.
Down South
Driving gingerly driving motherly.
Hope for Rain
It is summer and all my friends are dying.
Family Reunion: NYCB’S 75th Anniversary
It was the youngest looking crowd of all ages ever; Ballet has a way of preserving the body in time. While wrinkles and sallow skin are an inevitability, their bodies remain strong and erect, belying their age.
Pixelated
I was 15 in North Myrtle Beach,
skateboarding towards 420 World
under the stale haze of old billboards and tattered confederate flags. Big Mike worked there,
and it’s where the porn was.
Figures
When a people are made into numbers, by nature, they become divisible. By design, subtractable.
Palestinian Liberation is Jewish Liberation
Is Los Angeles not already the Holy Land? And what about New York? We were never a country. The diaspora goes too deep. Let us free back into the diaspora again.
Third-Person Autobiography: Not Just for Therapy Anymore
…Sindy continues to write about herself in third person. It may not seem much of a disclosure, but to her it is bare and breathing. She has concerns that she’ll come across as presumptuous, or as Elmo.
Pumpkin, Spice, Naughty, and Nice
If Christian girlies who love the fall season truly knew and embraced that their bescarved, twinkly-eyed glee comes at the behest of many who suffered brutal deaths, or that their Target scarves were forcibly made by Indonesian children for less than a dollar a day, would they smile so big when sipping those tasty PSLs?