I grew up in Tehran, where Farsi is used everywhere. It’s also my mother tongue. I scored high in the Farsi literature section of Iran’s competitive national university entrance exam. I think Farsi sounds as pretty as French. If more …
Essay
Passing: An Elegy in VIII Parts
I.
As a child, you hate sticking out the way you do: weird house, weird family, weird language. But your father calls you a princess, claims his uncle had sworn to royal blood even on his dying day. Regardless of …
Blue Daniel
He was in his early forties, married, with the blackest hair I’d ever seen on a white man, dusted with dandruff he was either trying to get rid of or felt no particular way about. As I stood across Eighth …
Murky Waters Rising
Prelude: “The Fox and The Hummingbird”
In the backyard of my grandmother’s house, there was a fox that lived in a ditch. Darting across the edge of the forest between the Vermillion River and the house, the cousins competed to …
Shadow Family
We were the fun family. All the kids wanted to play at our house. Working class and artist poor, we always found room for guests. Most weekends, using battered equipment, we hiked, camped, swam, or cross-country skied. We shared library …
Unwomaning
“Pink or Blue? Which is intended for boys and which for girls? This question comes from one of our readers this month, and the discussion may be of interest to others. There has been a great diversity of opinion on …
Grief Teacher
I want to tell my first-year students too many things. Some are relevant to the course they’re signed up for, but most of them aren’t. I went here, too, I tell them on the first day. Grad school too. What …
Never Trust a Man With a Pinky Ring
I.
When I was young, my father was full of aphorisms, some of which made sense.
Such as the time I was seven and got kicked out of school for fist-fighting a redneck named Jaxton. My mother quoted Christ’s Sermon …
daily routine
We don’t know how to move through this house the way we once did. Tía and Mama and Abuela and me, every hour of ours unfolding in a series of fours—four mugs filled up to the lip with café de …
Your Life, After All
During those bookish Midwestern college years of buzz-cut, leather jacket, and youthful butch bravado she enthusiastically relents to the errant interpretation of her gender — as classmates and professors alike assume her masculine appearance is evidence of actual manliness. This …
