The practice of learning new languages is a humbling exercise. The act transports you back to your toddler self, vulnerable to mistakes; at once you are morphed into a Socratic state of awareness that you have so much more to learn.
Finding Yourself in Translation Read More »
At eighty-three years old, Richard Hunt still works almost every day in his studio in Lincoln Park—a cavernous, mid-twentieth century power substation for the Chicago Transit Authority.
Natural Tendencies: A Studio Visit with Sculptor Richard Hunt Read More »
Improbable combinations of species have a history in many cultures as mythical hybrids—sometimes as gods, but just as often as monsters. Long past believing in griffins, the public still reacts strongly to “unnatural” combinations; the current GMO contention is a prime example.
Animate Matters — Sci-Fi, Empedocles, and GMOs Read More »
A body is neutral, objective, a fact—no more meant to be interpreted than a rock or a car. Different bodies shouldn’t mean different things, and yet. Other people have different interpretations of my husband’s body: its intent, threat, capabilities, worth.
The Body Is a Shield or a Sword Read More »
In Ann Arbor, I’d been known as “the Alaska guy,” which now felt like a pose. Feeling too Alaska for the MFA book-world had supplanted how much of my life I’d felt too book for Alaska. Maybe that was why I’d been unable to progress on my novel. I’d left this place, after all. Had I ever really loved it, or just the way it let me represent myself?
Ann Arbor, Alaska Read More »
As a toddler, I devoured reruns of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and even in the 1970s still occasionally saw the civil defense film Duck and Cover. It was an everyday occurrence to see the yellow and black signs marking the way to the nearest fallout shelter in schools, post offices, and stores. There was no escaping the Cold War’s shadow.
Through a Russian Lens Read More »
The thing about identity is, people are always trying to define who you are for you, to tell you what you mean. And we should be interrogating our positions in society, our privilege relative to our oppression, but we should also be skeptical of those who insist we are definitively one thing or another.
Writing My Way into Jewishness Read More »
To forget Etta Moten is to miss the chance to celebrate a life as eventful as the twentieth century she traversed, an American biography that boasted not only a second act but a third and a triumphant fourth.
Remembering the Forgotten Woman: The Twentieth-Century Life of Etta Moten Barnett Read More »
So here’s the thing: I didn’t learn how to diagram a sentence until I was twenty-eight.
It Happened to Me: I Don’t Know Grammar Read More »
One might argue that blackface performances of the thirties and forties (and earlier) are so far in the past and such a product of their time as to be beyond judgment, but I’d disagree. I’d rather assessments of artists be made with knowledge of their warts and all.
Fred Astaire and the Blackface Talking Read More »
