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Gender
Beat The Old Lady Out
I couldn’t see the loaves in her oven, but I could smell them. They smelled like the perfect weight of blankets on a winter night; like the loving and attentive parents I thought I deserved; like the solution to every natty problem that might crop up in life.
March 2021The Children Are Fragile
It was after this, in the three or four weeks before she stopped coming to class entirely, that Sheila started bringing in the Murder Plays.
March 2021The Union Waltz
After work we would be headed to Smitty’s Bar, where the twangy music would kick up, and I’d try to find the courage to dance in public.
February 2021Fighting Back
When I was nine, / my father began / telling me how to hurt / other boys. He said to / squeeze their upper lips / until their eyes watered / or twist their ears and / hold them low so you can / walk them like a dog.
February 2021Braiding His Hair
Here we are each morning: / my husband on our old kitchen chair, its upholstery / while I comb out his long / wheat-colored hair.
September 2020The Most Dangerous Place
Rachel Louise Snyder On The Persistent Problem Of Domestic Violence
Another woman’s husband got a rattlesnake and kept it in a cage at home. He would threaten to put it in the bed or the shower with her. That kind of emotional torture needs no physical violence.
September 2020September 2020
Featuring George Gerbner, Stephanie Coontz, Ani DiFranco, and more.
September 2020Sunbeams
September 2020There had been an outbreak of assaults on women at night. One [cabinet] minister suggested a curfew: women should stay home after dark. I said, “But it’s the men who are attacking the women. If there’s to be a curfew, let the men stay home, not the women.”
The Ramshackle Garden Of Affection
Dear Ross: How can you miss on purpose? If I’m late getting back on defense, you’ll bounce the ball off the bottom of the rim and catch the “rebound” for a point. Alone under the basket. Missing.
Dear Noah: Bouncing the ball off the bottom of the rim is, as you say, a poorly missed shot, but also a perfectly missed one, because it results in a point in our game, which means it’s a way for me to stay on the court. If there were a way I could stay on the court without cheating — without those perfectly, beautifully missed shots — believe me, I would do it.
June 2020