Essay |
“Elizabeth Warren’s Withdrawal from the Race Isn’t Just Bad for Women. It’s Bad for Men.”
“When our beating hearts are not drowned out by the sound of us being beaten down, men start to hear their own heartbeats, too.”
Essay |
“Russian Lines and American Lines: Traveling America with Sergey Gandlevsky”
“The name Gandlevsky comes from the Ukrainian word meaning revenue or earnings. They must have been peddlers of some sort. ‘Do you know what this means?’ he explained. ‘I was born to be a charlatan!'”
Essay |
“No Finer Form” and “Misfits”
“Then they argue over whether Poseidon or Neptune is the god of the sea, refusing to believe that it’s both.”
Essay |
“Banding”
“Someone posted today that ICE vans were out in force, hunting the valley for illegals …”
Essay |
“Thirteen”
“When I was your age the girl I loved dumped me the night a ball went through Buckner’s legs and the Sox would lose the Series and she kissed Dave.”
Essay |
“On The Level”
“When the grass ripens, Dad mows, rakes, bales, and wraps it alone, in rotations that last throughout the summer. Sometimes he manages to hire a cousin or neighbor, but help is hard to find in hay season.”
Essay |
“The Past Tense of the Census”
“There were heads to count, assessment questions, and not every house, she soon learned, was welcoming. House trailers were rare and always alone …”
Essay |
“Recognition”
“An asylum, one day, was identified from our car. My mother, tired of my ‘acting a fool,’ said, ‘A wing is reserved there for children’ …”
Essay |
“The Silence of the Wasps”
“The morning of my hospital appointment, I research the humours in medieval medicine – black bile, blood, phlegm and yellow bile. Yellow bile is choleric, inciting anger, irritability, envy and jealousy.”
Essay |
“Jabas”
“If you were really Cuban, you would have learned sooner to carry plastic bags, tucked in your purse, in pockets, down the front of your shirt.”
Essay |
“How The Sausage Is Made” and “Dispatch”
“He eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watches a television show about vocabulary. His father calls to say goodnight and is mildly disgruntled that the child is watching television.”
Essay |
“The Gift of the God”
“… they come shopping for organic tomatoes because they heard organic might cure their cancer or black lung. They come lugging their oxygen-tanks along with them …”
Essay |
“Rated M For Mature”
“When I ask him if he thinks Grand Theft Auto could influence kids in negative ways, he says, ‘Maybe some kids. But Mom, I know it’s just a game.'”
Essay |
“The Small Psychoses”
“But that night before the robins. Coyotes and a struck sheen of moon. Others heard or you would have thought it was just your mind again.”