These are extraordinary stories, exceptionally well-told. In a world where too many storytellers don’t tell truths, these writers do. Each one of these authors is steadfast and loyal, fierce and open, generous and unflinching. Their works deeply satisfy. Every story here made me consider my own life more carefully and inspired me to tell my own […]
...moreFirst, Brandon Hicks exercises his satirical muscle in “The Cartoonists: Profiles.” Then, in the Saturday Essay, Steven D. Howe bravely exposes his relationship with his father to the light, a relationship bruised by alcoholism and Howe’s own fear of perpetuating the cycle of addiction. In the end, the pain caused is tempered by moments of genuine paternal warmth. […]
...more
Sarah Einstein reviews Penny Guisinger’s new collection of vignettes, Postcards From Here.
...more
Traveling abroad, of course, the world insists, asks, Where are you from?
...more
Penny Guisinger reviews Mot by Sarah Einstein today in Rumpus Books.
...moreFirst, Brandon Hicks personifies a crucial part of all stories in “The End: A Biography.” Then, in the Saturday Essay, Lisa Ellison recalls the comforting presence of Molly Ringwald on her television screen alongside difficult memories of her mother’s drug and alcohol addiction. “Mom was our Molly,” Ellison says, “a natural redheaded princess who loved […]
...more
Mot was living my own fear… I wanted to learn from him how I might survive, if I too ended up without a home, without the resources to live what I thought of as a minimally decent life.
...moreFirst, Brandon Hicks gives us “Leonard: The Dad From A Different Generation.” Next, Gayle Brandeis offers a personal and insightful portrait of female body image in the Saturday Essay, “Thunder, Thighs.” Before Brandeis’s own view of her thighs was changed forever, they were her “friends,” her “freedom.” After much introspection, Brandeis learns strategies for coping with the […]
...more
We live our lives and then relive them on the page in a relentless search for some nugget of discovery, some further comprehension of what it all means.
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Sandie Friedman uses classic works of Holocaust literature to put her everyday stresses into perspective. Friedman’s early studies of feminism and time abroad in Dresden get her thinking about identity politics, particularly her own Jewish identity. A realization of this “inheritance” leads her to the Holocaust narratives, which “immersed me in a world that […]
...more
The author of The Way We Weren’t talks about why she decided to write about being a single mother, the effect it’s had on her daughter, and the adjunct crisis.
...moreThis week’s Sunday Rumpus essay by Jean Kim got me thinking about the kind of retrospective realizations that make us wish we could go back in time and do something differently, or at least apologize for our inability to do so. What synchronicity then to run across “Self Portrait in Apologies” by Sarah Einstein. Sarah […]
...more