From the Archives: The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Bad Blood
To give blood in the United States today is like joining an elite, profoundly uncool, hyper-exclusive club.
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Join NOW!To give blood in the United States today is like joining an elite, profoundly uncool, hyper-exclusive club.
...moreTo ghost, to refuse, to satisfy yourself with yourself, felt impossibly newfangled, like something I’d like to try.
...moreMatthew Clark Davison discusses his debut novel, DOUBTING THOMAS.
...moreMy dad, a psychiatrist, wants to write a sex book.
...moreThere is nothing I want more than a happy ending.
...moreThese are not poems of self-pity. Far from it.
...moreMy body tightened as the knee-jerk worry of being seen and outed flooded back.
...moreJD Scott discusses their new story collection, MOONFLOWER, NIGHTSHADE, ALL THE HOURS OF THE DAY.
...moreI needed to reshape the definitions of words that were used against me.
...moreBishakh Som discusses her debut graphic story collection, APSARA ENGINE.
...moreGarth Greenwell discusses his new book, CLEANNESS.
...moreCameron Dezen Hammon discusses her debut memoir, THIS IS MY BODY.
...moreDishonesty became a form of protection.
...moreSavannah Sipple discusses her debut collection, WWJD AND OTHER POEMS.
...moreThey had, together, built something that, while not without its faults, was strong.
...moreWe were beginning to exist on the periphery of our own lives.
...moreA flap to determine entry, or deny it. A flap whose failure determines choking.
...moreJennifer Martelli discusses her new collection of poetry, MY TARANTELLA.
...moreIn The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
...more“I can tell my story with precautions; others strip away my armor and expose a beating heart.”
...morePlace is context in part, but it is not context in summation.
...moreQueer literature isn’t a box to unlock so that it can unlock me.
...moreRebecca Makkai discusses her forthcoming third novel, The Great Believers, how she arrived at the book’s structure, and the story and its characters.
...more“I wanted to make these characters much more complex than the individual boxes we normally see.”
...moreJoseph Osmundson discusses his memoir, Inside/Out, intimacy, trauma, and the sometimes violence of desire.
...moreTo us he was Professor McClatchy, and he presided over our Wednesday afternoon sessions with the grace of an elegant, erudite gentleman.
...moreTo the extent that America—that great big word that makes us all so anxious—exists at all, it exists as a vast and noisy sheet of bubble wrap.
...moreThe experience of migration lies not in binaries—pleasure-pain and triumph-catastrophe—but rather, like life itself, it resides in the space in between.
...more“The freedom to have a sovereign identity is so often a trap. It’s impossible.”
...moreUntil recently, coming out was almost always dangerous—not only to our careers and our relationships but also to our bodies. And so hiding was (and sometimes still is) a necessity.
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