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Last week, I finished Sing, Unburied, Sing, the novel by Jesmyn Ward, and today, I’ve been mulling over baby talk. Sing, Unburied, Sing won the 2017 National Book Award — the author’s second, in only three novels! — along with heaps of critical acclaim. The story concerns racism, and its impact on three generations of
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Like many women (and maybe men, too?), I’ve been thinking about what I’d name my children since childhood. Early on, I had a fondness for long, flowery names — Priscilla and Narcissa were particular favorites — as well as actual flowers: Camellia, Dahlia, Poppy. Later, the names came from whatever book I was currently reading,
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If I were to make a pie graph of my activities in the 24 hours following my son’s birth, it would be: 35% holding him and staring at his miniature, perfect features — the button nose, the seashell ears, the outsized fingers and feet, 28% watching family (three and then four of them, crammed into
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Thoughts about space and work — specifically creative work — have been bounding in and out of my head since the fall, when I came across and plowed through Shirley Jackson’s two memoirs, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. Jackson is best known for her short story “The Lottery,” wherein Rockwellian pastoral cedes, with
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It started with raw fish. I was ten weeks pregnant and riddled with low-lying nausea that reared up at the very thought of vegetables — any vegetable, though the leafy green ones were especially noxious. After a lifetime of balanced eating, it was hard, mentally, to recast mac&cheese and buttered pasta as daily staples. No,
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I bought my copy of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News in a bookstore in New Orleans’ French Quarter (‘ol’ E. Annie,’ the owner called her), right before I had to leave for the airport. I don’t remember what drew me to the book (I had not heard of ‘ol E. Annie, nor seen the film
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What would you do if your son was at home/ Crying alone/ On the bathroom floor/ ‘Cause he’s hungry and the only way to feed him is to/ Sleep with a man for a little bit of money? Our eighth grade art class had been tasked with creating CD jackets to songs or albums we
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an (non) Actor’s Lament “He stole my scarab beetle!” I mumbled. “No, no, no. Again, stronger please.” Each shake of Professor C’s shaggy head was rife with that combination of exasperation and despair so particular to the French. “He STOLE my scarab beetle!” Professor C sighed. I was supposed to be furious, yes? So, where
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I went to see the new Emily Dickinson exhibit at the Morgan this morning. I’ve liked Emily Dickinson since I was a child, without knowing more than the most famous of her poems. I read and reread Michael Bedard and Barbara Cooney’s picture book about her, and the little girl who spotted the train of
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Yesterday, it was beautiful in New York, unseasonably warm, but with November’s brand of curling sun. Perfect weather for waiting in a long line to cast a vote and then walking around with a multi-pronged, fuck-yeah ebullience. In email chains and Facebook posts and Instagram comments, there were giddy, reclamatory uses of “nasty” and “badass,”
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