From the Archive: The Saturday Rumpus Essay: DNA
Of course, maybe dividing the world into two kinds of people is just another way of making sure there is a crack in everything. When can you smooth out this fault line?
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Join NOW!Of course, maybe dividing the world into two kinds of people is just another way of making sure there is a crack in everything. When can you smooth out this fault line?
...moreDani Putney discusses their debut poetry collection, SALAMAT SA INTERSECTIONALITY.
...moreMelissa Febos discusses her new essay collection, GIRLHOOD.
...moreAthena Dixon discusses her debut memoir-in-essays, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN.
...moreMelissa Faliveno discusses her debut essay collection, TOMBOYLAND.
...moreEmily J. Smith interviews her mentor, Chloe Caldwell.
...moreAlia Volz discusses her debut memoir, HOME BAKED.
...moreCo-editor Amy Roost discusses the anthology FURY: WOMEN’S LIVED EXPERIENCES DURING THE TRUMP ERA.
...more“For me, when I write nonfiction, my mind moves from the outside to the inside.”
...more“Being misunderstood is a really terrible feeling.”
...moreTrisha Low discusses her new book-length essay, SOCIALIST REALISM.
...moreKendra Allen discusses her debut essay collection, WHEN YOU LEARN THE ALPHABET.
...moreMisogyny reminds us of our place: down girl.
...moreEsmé Weijun Wang discusses THE COLLECTED SCHIZOPHRENIAS.
...moreStaring at that profile picture, I couldn’t not click.
...moreSusan Shapiro discusses her forthcoming book THE BYLINE BIBLE.
...moreA writer must push her pleasure into risk, expose herself publicly to strangers with no knowledge of how she might be received, and become something that must be seen.
...moreOur American obsession with the personal and individual has made us the tremendous resource consumers we are in the world.
...moreAlana Massey discusses her debut collection, All the Lives I Want, the best piece of writing advice she’s ever received, and acknowledging the work that women do.
...moreWith these young women, I no longer slip in and out of places undetected. With them, my cloak of invisibility—my only known superpower—has been removed.
...morePerched on the shoulders of generational trauma sit these two theses: suffering begets cruelty begets suffering begets cruelty, and pain is empathy’s catalyst.
...moreA first day means there was a never-day.
...moreEverywhere people are shoving things into the ground—time capsules not to be opened until the year 2100, the more optimistic postmarked for 3000—letters to the future in the language of the now.
...moreWhen I give lectures to writing students I tell them to not get discouraged if they do not enjoy writing. “I hate writing,” I say, “It’s horrible. It’s hell.” They are shocked every time, but I mean it. I often finish essays feeling like I’ve had to cut away a part of myself in the […]
...moreJami Attenberg wrote a personal essay in Lenny Letter about finding home in unexpected places: I found myself uttering these words: “If I lived here, I would never want to leave.” No one was more surprised than me when I said it; they rose up from somewhere new in me. I didn’t even know that […]
...more1964, a month prior to the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, a different home movie shot. Infant toss. Up-down. Plummeting. I’m ten months of age—picking up speed.
...moreAt Lit Hub, a former student talks with Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams, about expressions of emotion in personal essays and why “confession and sentimentality [are] taboo.” For Jamison, the investigation of writing emotion began in her MFA program: “I hated this sort of smug assumption that we all knew what was bad.” […]
...moreWhen I told my friend Aharon that my family name used to be Schwartz, he said, “Used to be Schwartz—sounds like a Borscht Belt act.”
...moreShe studies you, still panting with an energy that consumes the room, and whispers in a reedy voice: “They say you fucked up your heart.”
...moreThere were chains. History books always describe the chains.
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