Dreaming of a Homecoming: A Reflection on The Sellout
By Sophie Saddik I have made many absurd statements recently, such as; likening a homecoming to opening a book or…
Category: Essays (page 5)
A Love Letter to Troublemakers
In Rage, Sai Karavadi What does it mean to be educated? To be learnéd? In terms of what it…
The Case for Honesty in Homosexual Art
By Alejandro Villa Vásquez
Before shows like “Queer as Folk” and “The L Word” garnered infamy for their softcore-porn portrayals of gay and lesbian sex, no instance of homosexual film or television had successfully punctured the mainstream and (soon to be) unfashionably heterosexual conscious of the TV-watching American public. “Will & Grace,” with its gorgeously corporate cast of gay and straight Manhattanites, began to fascinate audiences when it premiered in 1998, so much so that it was resurrected after eleven years in the graveyard of primetime TV. But “Will & Grace” and its basic-cable virtues could never dive into the slutty depths like Queer as Folk” or the “The L Word.” The latter two were sometimes pornographic to the point of frightening.
Bilingual Insecurity in the Face of Loss
By Bailey Cohen-Vera
I didn’t go to the funeral. The previous Saturday had been the wedding; missing the busiest shift at the restaurant two weekends in a row was something I knew I couldn’t afford. My mother did everything she could. I could sense the frustration she tried to mask several times leading up to the weekend, when we talked on the phone and she reminded me to call Karine. “La mamá de Karine falleció el día de hoy, es muy posible que este fin de semana sea el funeral, apenas sepa que día te aviso,” she told me that Tuesday. It will probably be this weekend. I’ll let you know. I’ll admit, this should have been enough. I should have called out of work; I should have lied and said I was feeling terrible, gotten paid with the sick hours I managed to accrue exhaustively. I should have grieved.
Young Adult Fiction Reminded Me How to Live
By Olivia Liu
On my bookshelf sits a pale blue book. I have not yet read it in public without swapping out its dust jacket for another, more serious-looking one, preferably titled something very literary, like “To Kill a Search of Lost Pride and Prejudice in 1984.” This is what’s on the real cover: a princess, delicately beautiful, a tiara woven into her red hair. Flip through the pages and you’ll find the story is illustrated too: more princesses, more gowns, a map labeled in pink, girlish cursive. What is the book about? It’s part of a series, actually—“The Selection” by Keira Cass—and I own six of the books (I have yet to get my hands on the companion coloring book).
As You Dislike It: “American Pastoral” in the Age of Late Boomerism
By Jake Goldstein
It can be difficult, as young Americans, to empathize with the psychology of our parents’ generation. We seemingly live in two different worlds, and ours, by all accounts, is the real one: cynical and digital, disillusioned and nihilistic, sad and broke, an inherited mess made bleak by the countless transgressions of our older, wiser counterparts. We have a bone to pick, and it seems only reasonable given the present state of things. The globe is warming, the news is fake, we don’t get paid enough, and we’ll never own a home. When the climate apocalypse inevitably comes, we will die in the same small apartments we received our first meager pay stubs in; washing away in the Flood, we will take with us only our few worldly possessions and our final rent-checks, made out to Jeff, 62, who’s owned this block since the ‘80s and whose coked-out failure of a son blasts “The Eminem Show” late into the weeknight.
I Can’t Bring Myself to See it Starting: Mark Hollis and Talk Talk
By Joseph Barresi
I had a trundle bed in New Zealand. It belonged to my landlords and I slept on it in the basement room they had set up for their preteen daughter, until she developed a fear of living in a semi-detached space, darker and cooler, from her parents and younger brother upstairs. The bedroom was a soft pink when I moved in, and over three sunny late spring evenings in early December, I rolled white paint over it with my landlady, Kristi. It was just the trundle, there, under the bed, soft maple slats on its rollers. My landlords had taken the single futon mattress that had rested on the trundle for family guests that would occasionally visit. I would store miscellaneous shit in the gap between my mattress and the wood: half-dirty shirts and half-empty bottles of wine. They left, however, the heavy canvas curtains imprinted with the same four fairies in various states of repose and reflection, by soft shallow pools in verdant green shifting light. Two were brunette, one blonde, and one redhead. They wore Easter-colored dresses.