Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or...
Sometimes, people who, I think, mean well like to tell me I am not fat. They will say things like, Don’t say that about yourself, because they understand fat as something shameful, something insulting...
Sometimes, I hope that by telling these stories again and again, I will have a better understanding of how the world works.
Some serious Scrabble players are poor losers. I am a good loser. I love Scrabble so much I don’t care if I lose. I also have to be a good loser because I lose a lot, so practicality plays a role.
Shame is a difficult thing. People certainly try to shame me for being fat. When I am walking down the street, men lean out of their car windows and shout vulgar things at me about my body, how they s...
Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have a...
Rosin suggests that feminists are holding on to a grudge, that feminists are willfully holding on to this notion of patriarchal dominance as if we would be unable to function if we weren’t suffering....
Respectability politics suggest that there's a way for us to all be model (read: like white) citizens. We can always be better, but will we ever be ideal? Do we even want to be ideal, or is there a wa...
Racial profiling is nothing more than a delusion born of our belief that we can profile danger. We want to believe we can predict who will do the next terrible thing. We want to believe we can keep ou...
Privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor. There is racial privilege, gender (and identity) privilege, heterosexual privilege, economic privilege, ablebodied...
Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don’t dare be so alive.
Part of the reason relationships and friendships can be so difficult for me is because there is a part of me that thinks I have to get things just right. I have to say the right things and do the righ...
Oprah goes on to talk about how weight problems are never just weight problems, that there is often more to the story. This is often indeed true, but self-actualization, the catharsis of confronting d...
One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do is accept and acknowledge my privilege. It’s an ongoing project.
On my more difficult days, I’m not sure what’s more of a pain in my ass—being black or being a woman. I’m happy to be both of these things, but the world keeps intervening. There are all kinds of infu...
O my friend searching for an absurdity necessary to train the self to be tolerant . . . do not reconcile with anything except for this obscure reason. Do not regret a war that ripened you just as Augu...
Não queira nada que não seja o melhor para seus amigos, porque, quando eles são felizes e bem-sucedidos, provavelmente se tornará mais fácil para você ser feliz também.
Nostalgia is powerful. It is natural, human, to long for the past, particularly when we can remember our histories as better than they were. Life happens faster than I can comprehend.
Narratives about certain experiences are somehow legitimized when mediated through a man’s perspective.
Narratives about certain experiences are somehow legitimized when mediated through a man’s perspective. Consider the work of John Updike or Richard Yates. Most of their fiction is grounded in domestic...