Journalists are synthesizing for a popular audience what historians have long known: Free women make their way in the world, availing themselves of new technologies and economic opportunities as they go. Girls—they’re just like us!
Sitting on a cot in the emergency room, I filled out paperwork certifying myself as the responsible party for my own medical care—signed it without looking, anchoring myself to this debt, a stone dropped in the middle of a stream.
I’m looking for poetry I can’t resist. Poetry that arrests me, reads me its riot act, signals my rights, detains me with its linguistic and thematic force (high volume or seductively subtle), and liberates me with a subtext of human...
The summer of 1989, shortly after my second husband and I married, we buckled my two daughters, who were seven and three, into the rear seat of a used car purchased for cash. We told no one where we were going. We meant to disappear.
I can remember the way he ripped the pages out of my notebook, wadded them into a dense ball, and said, in a voice free of emotion, “False Image,” as if that was all they were.
Fire does not abide by reason. In its destructive trail, there are empty bank accounts, unreturned voice mails, FedExed checks, hours upon hours of smooth-jazz hold music, fine print written in inscrutable jargon, and the summary Laurie...
On two occasions, during the preparation of this piece, people stopped me in cafés, pointing to the stack of Krasznahorkai’s books on my table, expressing their enthusiasm for his bleak comedy and particular brand of absurdity. The...
