illness
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Thunder, Thighs
Over one third of the women in my survey had been called “Thunder Thighs” at some point in their life. Many were still haunted by this. None of them interpreted “thunder” to mean “power.
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Survivor Literature
YA authors now find themselves walking the fine line between fiction and reality. They have a duty to portray illness accurately, as they must avoid harmfully romanticising dying…they must also be careful not to cross into territory which is too…
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The Last Book I Loved: Beautiful Ruins
I’d been treated for cancer, left my husband, patched things up, and just as life was veering back towards Normalville, it took a headlong swerve.
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Something Small and Heavy
This is not a biography, photograph, or method of cloning, not footage, not a transcription—in short: this is not faithful.
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How to Make More Room
Nowadays I am amazed by my former self’s blend of optimism and delusion. I wonder how I got the idea that kindergarten was some magical threshold where children and parents smoothly separate.
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Dispatch from the Carnival #4: Taking in the Sword
What is this body if you take its power over you away? In the torture arts, you are both the creator and recipient of your pain.
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Super Hot Prof-on-Student Word Sex: Julia MacDonnell
Julia was one of those “students” whom you suspect, after maybe fifteen seconds, should actually be teaching the class you are currently (allegedly) teaching.
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The Animals in My Home
I let the flame get low. I fall asleep before blowing it out. I know I shouldn’t, but in the moments when I wake from nightmares, I like the warmth the candle offers, despite the danger.
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Don’t Dream It’s Over
One of the surest indicators of change on the horizon (per the standard tropes of dream interpretation) is being pregnant in a dream.
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Treatment as Metaphor
In our daily efforts to stay healthy, to invent solutions for staving off death, have we already put ourselves in treatment for diseases yet to come? Conner Habib writes about his cancer diagnosis over at The Stranger, challenging Susan Sontag’s…
