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Culture and Society

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Macho Baby

I know that what we call hate is sometimes love that was pushed under a rock, love deprived of light and water. “Tell me to what you pay attention,” writes the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in his book Man and Crisis, “and I will tell you who you are.” How much love is putrefying inside boys this very moment, starved for nourishment?

By Nicole Graev Lipson December 2023
Poetry

Key Marco Cat

Legs folded / under its body, / the figure sits / straight up, alert, / an incarnation / of stillness, of eyes / looking everywhere / at once. I look at / this possibility of me/ rooted in the dark, / invisibly still.

By Robert Cording December 2023
Fiction

Basements

I was considered “good,” considered a “good influence.” It amazed me — like the cool feeling of Marshall’s tongue on my labia had amazed me — that I could possess all of these qualities; that I could be both warm and cold, virtuous and defiant; and that someone could love me for all of it.

By Lauren Hohle December 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Abandon All Expectations

The fish is now thrashing at the surface. Unlike every other captain I have seen, Cuervo uses a net, not a gaff, to bring it aboard. He has enough experience to know that, by the time a full-grown yellowtail is brought to the boat, it has essentially fought itself to death. Rich lets the captain take over, and Cuervo handles the marvelous creature with a tenderness that has been missing from most of my charter-fishing experiences.

By Dave Zoby December 2023
The Sun Interview

Under Fire

Thor Hanson on How Animals and Plants are Adapting to a Warming World

We’ve got changes playing out now with astounding rapidity. Biologists can see natural selection occurring over the course of a field season. . . . Studying these adaptations can help us identify the issues that are most important and the species that need the most help. This may not make us worry less, but it can help us worry smarter.

By Mark Leviton December 2023
Quotations

Sunbeams

When I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc. — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country. . . . To my chagrin I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.

Henry David Thoreau

December 2023
Photography

La Diáspora

People of sub-Saharan African descent have lived in what is today Mexico since the early days of Spanish colonization. . . . Today there are only a handful of communities left with large Black Mexican populations. The Costa Chica, the coastal region of southern Guerrero and northern Oaxaca, boasts the greatest number. . . . My experience in Juárez and the relative scarcity of information about Mexico’s Black communities made me curious to visit the Costa Chica myself. So a few years later I did. I ended up staying there for six months, forming friendships and documenting the residents’ daily life. This is a selection of photos from my time there.

Photographs By Hank Baker December 2023
Poetry

This Little Bit I Am Trying To Hold

Poems About Departures

Listen to the poets in this month’s special poetry section read their poems about leaving and letting go. To listen, click the play button below each title in the article.

 

I will leave you, / and I will / leave the sudden // darkness of afternoon thunderstorms / and I will leave / the rain and its patience in shaping mountains

from “I Will Leave,” by Michael Bazzett

 

I am here to translate my father’s death / into fruit. Something that can be held. To bring / it up to your lips the way I spooned strawberry / yogurt up to his and said to him the word “Eat.” / There was no use, in the end. There was no hunger.

from “I Did What I Could to Keep This,” by Peter Markus

 

Tonight, because all matter is dissolving, you & I / are being gradually undressed by the universe — // silk & wool molecules mingling with cells / rising from skin like souls

from “Everything,” by Terry Lucas

By Michael Bazzett, Peter Markus & Terry Lucas November 2023
Fundraising Appeal

Become A Friend Of The Sun

Every person around us contains a whole universe. The Sun has always seemed to me like a place where we throw a bunch of universes together and see what happens. . . . If you value the way The Sun brings a variety of voices to your ear — some candid, some cajoling, some joyous, and all of them looking you in the eye and telling the capital-T Truth — then I hope you’ll consider making a donation and becoming A Friend of The Sun. Any amount you give helps bring us together in the magazine’s pages month after month.

By Derek Askey November 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Letter From Sy’s Desk

In January my implausible idea of working at the magazine for fifty years will have come to pass, and I will comfortably step into a new role as editor emeritus. That having been said, it’s hard for me to say goodbye.

By Sy Safransky November 2023