masks 2017
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R.I.P.: Who Died in This House?
Death stigmatizes a property. I also believe that it stigmatizes a person.
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Both Outsider and Participant: Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi
In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain.
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Sound & Vision: Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw
Allyson McCabe talks with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw, two of the founders of the performance group Split Britches, about their lives and work.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: My Name Is Jean-Pierre and I Am Still an End Table
I am glad to be free of that tyrant, even if it means I am an end table waddling inch-by-inch down this path on a foolish mission that might prove impossible. I may be an end table, but at least…
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Hooters Chicken
I applied for a job at Hooters on a dare a few weeks before my nineteenth birthday. A shoe salesman who worked across from me at the mall told me he’d pay me twenty dollars to apply.
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Scars of War: Watching Battle of the Sexes
Until 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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Midnight Screams
She did everything I told her without realizing that it was hurting her and she was me.
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Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Rachel McKibbens
I cut off my nose, / her nose collapses. / Chop down my hair & / hers shrieks from the sink. / How many poems do I / have to write ‘til she / gets dead, how many / live-wire…
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Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from I, Parrot
An exclusive excerpt from I, Parrot, by Deb Olin Unferth & Elizabeth Haidle, forthcoming from Catapult and Black Balloon on November 1.
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STRIPPERDADDY
My thoughts hovered above the scene pondering the reasons why and time felt like the waves of a puddle lapping against cracked asphalt.
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Lady Killers and Our Obsession with Murder: Talking with Tori Telfer
Tori Telfer discusses her first book Lady Killers and the fragile “social saran wrap” that keeps us all from killing each other.
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Heartbeat Detected
I don’t want to say “calculated conversations.” I don’t want to say “I push my needs away.” I don’t want to admit I can’t control how our interactions go.