Browse Sections
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Leaving The Reservation
Hannah Two Shoes was six feet tall and all bones except for the hard, high bulge of her pregnant stomach. Her thin, black hair was pulled back from her forehead in a skimpy braid, and she wore black-rimmed men’s glasses.
June 1995Daughters Lost
It is difficult to convey the horror of losing your children like this. I found it hard to sleep, to concentrate. Every night I had beautiful dreams in which my children were young and loving, and every morning I woke up to a reality more like a nightmare.
June 1995The Stranger
He continued riding down the hill in front of my house, wobbled a bit, then lost his balance and fell head first over the handlebars onto the asphalt, the bike toppling and twisting behind him.
June 1995This Land Is Your Land
Not surprisingly, they resisted encroachments on their land, first by the Spanish, and later by Americans. Navajo raiding parties regularly made off with the settlers’ horses and livestock, but the Americans kept coming — encouraged by a government that believed in its “manifest destiny” to occupy the entire continent. Finally, in 1864, U.S. Army General George Carleton — who called the Navajos “wolves that run through the mountains” — ordered Colonel Kit Carson to get rid of them.
May 1995The Train To Westchester
When I was a child, raised less than twenty miles from Manhattan, the city was mysterious to me, and dangerous. It was the edge of the world from which some people accidentally — and sometimes not so accidentally — fell. I knew, for instance, the worst thing that could ever happen to a young boy like myself was to let go of his mother’s hand or the back of her coat in Macy’s, Penn Station, or the subway.
May 1995Everything I Thought Would Happen
In July 1971, my father’s heart exploded, and, faced with a comfortless, parent-snatching universe, I said to my husband, “We need to move out of this city. I’m afraid of becoming one of those assholes who wear aviator sunglasses and scream at cabdrivers.” In fact, I already was one of those assholes and had been for quite some time.
May 1995Drinking The Rain
Then suddenly the dull light in the car began to shine with exceptional lucidity until everything around me was glowing with an indescribable aura, and I saw in the row of motley passengers opposite the miraculous connection of all living beings. Not felt; saw. What began as a desultory thought grew to a vision, large and unifying, in which all the people in the car hurtling downtown together, including myself, like all the people on the planet hurtling together around the sun — our entire living cohort — formed one united family, indissolubly connected by the rare and mysterious accident of life.
May 1995Global Depression
Global depression, I could call it in clinical jargon to indicate the pervasive nature of the disorder in the psyche. But lately the term has taken on a new meaning for me, suggesting a worldwide malaise shaped by the unconscious link between our suffering and the wounds the earth itself sustains. It seems as if the degradation of nature has produced a dark, subliminal undertow affecting the collective psyche.
May 1995The Battle
They were so angry that they decided to have a battle. So terrible was their anger that they would not wait, but declared that the fight must be fought now, immediately, on this very spot.
April 1995My Breasts, Adored
When I was younger I wanted Barbie-doll boobs: lavishly large and perpetually perky. Never mind that her breasts were two cold, lifeless knobs of hard plastic. They looked good.
April 1995
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today