Literature

What It’s Worth Giving Up to Stay in a Family Manuel Muñoz Share article “Compromisos” by Manuel Muñoz Mauricio would stop and buy the oranges on his way back into town. He would need them as a treat for his young daughter, Rocío. She had the unfortunate gift of sensing unease in a silent room

The first movie I saw in theaters was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It’s perhaps my earliest memory, I was two years old. My brother, who was three, was afraid of the beast and had to be escorted out of the theater. I, however, was quite taken with the monster. I think about this experience

I’ve been wanting to see Jordan Peele’s Nope in theaters for a while now, but I feel uncertain about it. I’ve never been much of a moviegoer, but I make an exception for iconic Black films. I saw Get Out three times when it first released; currently, I have only seen one movie in theaters

The VHS tapes waited inside a small pull-out cabinet: Frankenstein. Dracula. The Mummy. The Wolf Man. All of these movies had been recorded off Syfy. Early ’90s Sci-Fi Channel, as it was then spelled, was a television treasure. It was dark, it was scary, and to my child’s mind it seemed to reveal the hidden

Display Me in the Museum’s Secret Room Museum in the back of the museum is the oldest room the door is always shut but unlocked when you go in no one will stop you no one else is ever inside the ceilings are low dark hushed still air in the room a dozen glass boxes

Sometimes the only way to approach history, particularly a history that has excluded you or one which you felt trapped inside, is to deface it. Defacing—like a form of graffiti—can take the form of literally writing or collaging on top of the record so that your words are visible, but so is the history you

Angie Cruz’s latest novel How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is a study of a class of forgotten women: the 55 to 65-year-olds who lost their jobs during the Great Recession and were never able to regain long-term employment. Cara Romero is one of these women. When the factory where Cara has

Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel, Best of Friends, explores how a long, complicated friendship is shaped and tried in tumultuous political landscapes. Maryam and Zahra are unlike in several respects—the families and social classes they come from as well as the values they intend to live by could not be any more different. Yet, in ‘80s

The summer after our college graduation, a few friends and I decided to pool our money together and find a stage big enough for our real lives to play out on. We set our sights on leasing a temporary apartment in Atlanta with a self-imposed move-in deadline of early August. The hope was to reclaim

Moms are weird. Scary, even. You were inside her. She’s still inside you: seeds of dysfunction planted by even the most well-intentioned, over years of clumsy tending. She was a mere mortal, suddenly transformed into a minor god, blessed with raw human material and challenged to shape it into something as close to perfection as

Mom’s Ghost is Trapped in the Mouth of an Alley Cat Nick Otte Share article Eau de Mims by Nick Otte Mims has been complaining a lot lately that Jodie’s breath stinks like dead fish left too long on a hot stoop. She’s not wrong, but I’m tired of hearing about it, so I tell

Being young is an embarrassing thing. I say this as a former young person myself. The worst of it is your teenage and early adult years when you’re trying to figure out who are you. The easiest way to do this is to find out who you’re not. I am not an athletic jock, so

Hollywood’s perpetual hunt for literary IP, or intellectual property, has given audiences an ever-expanding library of book-to-film adaptations—some exhibiting more intellect than others. Without the proper care and insight, a book undergoes a flattening effect when transferred from page to screen, as nuance and ambiguity are smoothed over into something that’s easier on the eyes,

The Most Exclusive Cruise in the Apocalypse Here’s the pitch. Pretend you had to sell it, this life you’ve been given. Watch how quickly the term thyroid goiter becomes scenic esophageal overlook. Hypertension becomes a live demonstration of the heart’s amazing high-volume pumping capacities! You must take up embroidering the truth with the same fervor

It’s difficult to say anything that hasn’t already been said about Torrey Peters’s debut novel, Detransition, Baby. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a national bestseller, a NYT Notable Book, and named a Book of the Year by more publications than my word count limit will let me include. Not only is it an incredible

I was fifteen when my mom announced that we’d be moving to the US because she had a new job there. My younger brother was not thrilled by the prospect of the move and tried to negotiate a way to stay in Nigeria, perhaps with relatives or friends. I, for my part, was ecstatic, my

As an editor and writer working in an industry that has historically failed to integrate (or even acknowledge) disability experiences, I was thrilled to receive an announcement that the Ford and Mellon Foundation had selected this year’s recipients of the only national fellowship devoted to supporting disabled artists.  The Disability Futures Fellowship supports twenty disabled

It’s been 3 years since our last masquerade, we’ve missed you all and we are so ready to party. Yes, it’s official: the Masquerade of the Red Death is returning. This year, it’s on October 21 at Littlefield in Brooklyn.  If you want to know how to come to the party, you can find out