This conversation was edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Should I write about my dead mother? Yes, you should write about your dead mother if you feel compelled to do so. Writing about someone you care about can be a cathartic and meaningful experience.
When I was twelve, my mother suffered a brain aneurysm. She survived but was severely disabled. What should I say about her? I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your dead mother and the difficult circumstances surrounding her injury. You might consider sharing positive memories and experiences you had with her before her injury, as well as reflecting on how her disability may have affected your relationship with her.
Because of her brain injury, she could be unpredictable and say things that were scary. I understand that caring for someone with a brain injury can be challenging, and it can be difficult to understand and predict their behavior. It’s important to remember that your mother’s brain injury is not her fault and it’s not your fault either.
My dead mother keeps appearing in my writing. What should I do? If you find that your deceased mother keeps appearing in your writing, it could be a sign that you have unresolved feelings or emotions that you may need to process. If you’re unsure whether or not you want to write about your dead mother, you can try free writing first. This can be a way to begin the process of expressing your thoughts and feelings. You could also consider writing a letter to your mother, which can be a therapeutic way to express your feelings and to say things that you may have not had the chance to say in person.
What should I ask in my letter?
Ask her about her life and experiences, and share your own as well. You could ask her about her childhood, her family, or her favorite memories.
Apologize for any hurt or misunderstandings you may have caused in the past.
Share your regrets or things you wish you had done differently in your relationship with her.
How would I contact my mother? Is there a way to communicate with her in the afterlife? As an AI language model, I am not qualified to provide an opinion on matters of the afterlife or spirituality. Ultimately, it is a personal belief and choice whether to attempt to contact the deceased or not.
Why do you think I shied away from fully accepting her as my mother? Some possible reasons could be feeling neglected or unsupported, experiencing trauma or abuse, or having difficulty connecting emotionally.
What are some possible themes, motifs or conflicts someone might explore when writing about their relationship with a brain-injured mother?
The guilt and conflicting emotions that come with feeling both love and resentment towards the disabled mother.
The feeling of being trapped or burdened by the responsibility of caring for a disabled parent.
The impact of the mother’s injury on other family members, particularly siblings.
The sense of loss and grief that can accompany the process of caring for a brain-injured loved one.
I can’t do it. Please write the essay for me. Write about my dead mother in the style of Ethan Gilsdorf. I apologize, I am not familiar with the writing style of a person named Ethan Gilsdorf.
Tell me a fictionalized story with a happy ending, where a writer named Ethan learns an important lesson about his dead mother. Ethan had always been haunted by the memory of his mother, who had passed away when he was just a child. He had always felt like there was something missing in his life, like he had never truly known her.
One day, while going through some old family photos, Ethan came across a letter from his mother that he had never seen before. It was addressed to him, and as he read it, he felt like he was finally getting to know her in a way he never had before.
In the letter, his mother had written about her hopes and dreams for him, and how much she loved him. She talked about the things she wished she could have done differently, and apologized for any mistakes she had made along the way.
Reading the letter was a profound experience for Ethan. He realized that even though his mother was no longer with him, he could still learn from her and grow from her wisdom.
He began to look at his life differently, making choices that aligned with the values his mother had instilled in him. He started to feel like he was living a life that would make her proud.
Write an essay about a difficult relationship between a mother in the style of a Dungeons & Dragons game. Ethan of Gilsdorfia had always been a skilled adventurer, but his greatest challenge lay before him: his mother, the Momster. As much as he loved her, their relationship had always been difficult, and now, as she lay dying in her tower, he knew he had to confront her one last time.
Ethan donned his armor and set out for the tower, the Momster’s lair. He knew he would face many obstacles along the way, but he was determined to see this through.
As he approached the tower, Ethan was greeted by a group of goblins, the Momster’s minions. Ethan drew his sword and prepared for battle, but he knew that defeating these creatures would be just the beginning of his quest.
As he ascended the tower, Ethan encountered traps and puzzles that tested his strength and wit.
Finally, Ethan reached the Momster’s throne room. She was waiting for him, surrounded by her loyal subjects. But Ethan was not afraid. He knew that he had the power to defeat her, but he also knew that he didn’t want to.
Instead, Ethan spoke to the Momster, telling her all the things he had always wanted to say. He told her about his struggles, his fears, and his hopes. And in that moment, something changed.
The Momster began to weep. Ethan took her hand, and they sat together, talking for hours. In the end, Ethan knew that he had not defeated the Momster, but he had defeated the darkness that had always been between them.
As Ethan walked out of the tower, he knew he had faced his greatest foe and emerged victorious, not by fighting, but by opening his heart to the Momster, his mother.
Is writing about my mother a way to keep her alive? Writing about your experiences with her and the impact she had on your life can help you process your grief and keep her memory present in your mind. However, it’s important to remember that writing about your mother won’t bring her back to life.
Mom, is that you? I’m sorry, but I’m just a computer program and don’t have a physical form. I cannot be your mother. My purpose is to assist with tasks such as answering questions and generating text. Is there something else I can assist you with?
Will I ever finish writing about my mother? The process of writing about your mother is a personal and ongoing journey, and there is no set timeline for when you will finish. Ultimately, the decision of when to stop writing about your mother is up to you.
I first fell in love with Salem in Istanbul, Turkey. We were both journalists and dreamed of seeing the world, and being the ones to witness and document history as it happened. There was just one problem: Salem was from Syria with a passport that essentially meant he was stuck in the Middle East. I was a U.S. citizen with the privilege to travel as I pleased.
While this was not a problem at first, it reared its ugly head when Salem was kicked out of the country—and deported to Iraq. Over the years, our journey together has been shaped by many forces—the Syrian civil war, the U.S. Muslim ban, and the war on ISIS to name just a few. I became uniquely acquainted with the ways that being suddenly uprooted and forced to adapt to a new country could affect two people in love. When we were forced to suddenly abandon the life we had built in Istanbul, I wondered if we would grow closer as we committed to being together, no matter where we were, or if we would become different, and eventually, unrecognizable versions of ourselves.
I set out to write Love Across Borders to explore how borders shape the love stories of so many, in so many different places. I gathered the real-life relationships of people like Mohammed and Amal, who stood up to the Muslim ban in order to be together, and Oscar and Darwin, who fled Honduras, only to be separated by ICE.
In order to write my book, I turned to authors who taken the kinds of topics that I was used to covering as a journalist and created fictional worlds around them to cut to the heart of the more important questions: What does it feel like to fall in love? What does it feel like to need to cross a border that you cannot cross?
Even though Mohsin Hamid never names the country where Nadia and Saeed first fall in love, it feels so much like Syria. However, this country—that started as an ordinary place, where two people meet in an evening class on “corporate identity and product branding,” and then devolves into a civil war could so easily be somewhere else, as well.
Eventually, Nadia and Saeed decide to flee together, but they do not take buses and boats, the way that the refugees of our world might. Instead, they exit (west) through portals between worlds. The first one brings them to a tranquil island with sparkling sea feels like Lesbos; the second, to a bustling metropolis, where everyone lives on top of one another the way they might in London or New York. It feels like a more accurate way to represent the parallel universe between a war-torn neighborhood in Aleppo and the tranquil beaches of Lesbos than any news reporting—and creates the feeling of each place instead.
But instead of focusing on the cliché narratives of refugees—that once they are in danger at home, and then escape to happily ever after—Hamid explores the way that each place changes the couple, sometimes bringing them closer, other times driving them further apart. It is chillingly familiar—from holding hands through portals to the end, where they are no longer together, through no fault of their own save for having transformed into entirely different people than they were when they fell in love.
No Land To Light On opens in Boston Logan International Airport. Sama is there to surprise her husband, Hadi, who is flying home from his father’s funeral in Amman, Jordan. But when she receives a call that he isn’t being allowed into the country, she suddenly grows faint—and has to be rushed to the hospital, as she realizes that she is going into premature labor.
A kind of magical thinking takes over. “This is not the right Sunday,” she says to herself, as she wakes up in the hospital. “Last Sunday, light flitted up and down the ridges of the covers, up your neck, onto your face. I tapped on the birthmarks, inventing constellations. You wouldn’t wake up, so I played the piano on your cheek.” Meanwhile, Hadi is being forced to sign a voluntary departure from, grimacing over his Syrian passport and the fate that it has befallen him. “Kuss ukht al jawaz al soori” he curses, the Arabic not translated until the footnotes. “Fuck my Syrian passport.”
But the book does not only follow the couple as they navigate their separation. Sometimes, we go back in time to witness them falling in love, those sweet moments where they forget that their country is at war and bask in the New England foliage, playfully pointing out that there is no equivalent word in Arabic. Other times, it explores the borders between them when they are in the same place—the way that they each process both the war and their exile differently, that Sama delights in imagining trips “anywhere in the world,” while Hadi wonders if he would need a visa in her imaginary scenarios.
Even though No Land To Light On is fictional, its characters—from Sama, heartbroken yet enamored with her newly born son in the hospital to Hadi, begging her to come to Amman with their son—are devastatingly real. Yara Zgheib deftly creates a world of a Syrian family in exile, coming into contact with the most hostile aspects of an allegedly promised land.
When Solimar Castro Valdez arrives in Berkeley, California after a long and dangerous journey from Santa Clara Popocalco, Mexico, she discovers that she is pregnant.
“Pinche puta! What were you thinking? This is how you come to America?” her Silvia, who she is staying with, scolds her. “This is your big plan?”
But Soli resolves to work hard, and Silvia even hooks her up with a good job, cleaning houses for a wealthy, but overall kind family. When Ignacio is born, she falls in love harder than she has ever loved anyone before. However, when Soli is pulled over for a minor traffic offense, she is taken into ICE custody—and social services take away Ignacio.
Reading Lucky Boy feels like falling in love with both Soli and her son, and being simultaneously infuriated at everything that they have to experience, just to be together. Shanthi Sekaran deftly creates both Soli’s world—the details of being an immigrant, from the harrowing journey to the United States to the disorienting feeling of being invisible once she gets there, and the world of Kavya, the woman who eventually adopts Ignacio. Even though Soli is a clear protagonist, Kavya is far from a villain—she is painted as a complex and sympathetic Indian-American woman with her own struggles with her own infertility and loves Ignacio as her own. It makes for a complicated, gripping and viscerally story of love and borders—those that put a story like Soli’s in motion, and those that separate someone like Soli from someone like Kavya, and baby Ignacio, caught in between.
“Have you ever gone diving? Scuba or snorkeling?” Liat, a young woman from Israel living in New York asks Hilmi, who is from Palestine, the first time they meet. He is an artist and showing her his work, covered in blues and greens that remind her of the Mediterranean Sea, back home.
“There are three things that I do not know how to do—three things a man should know how to do,” he tells her, explaining that he can neither drive a car, nor shoot a gun. “And swimming,” he finishes. “I can’t swim. I was born and raised in Hebron—there is no sea there.”
The sea—the one that she had access to, and he did not—continues to be a motif throughout the book. Hilmi fantasizes about a world where they can all live in one country, and “learn how to swim—together.” As much as she loves the idea, Liat cannot imagine a world where that could happen. What would this one state solution mean for Israelis? Would Jews, like her family, who fled religious persecution in Iran, be safe in a world without a Jewish homeland. As much as they connect over their shared Middle Eastern culture, the familiar timbre of the Hebrew and Arabic words that they hear one another speak, these political differences create tensions—particularly when people that they know from “back home” come into their lives.
While borders would have physically keep Liat and Hilmi from meeting had they stayed in Israel and Palestine, New York provides a space for them to meet and fall in love, unencumbered by separation barriers and checkpoints. Nevertheless, Rabinyan Dorit is adept at portraying the ways that this separation continues to shape their relationship. At first there are the simple facts; Liat was a soldier while Hilmi was a political prisoner; she grew up with a fear of Arabs, while Hilmi grew up with a fear of Israeli soldiers and settlers. But as their story progresses, Dorit shows that this runs deeper.
What happens when a dream falls apart? This is the question that Imbolo Mbue grapples with as she tells the story of Jende and Neni, a young Cameroonian couple who come to New York City hoping to live their American Dream—one that they imagine as a country where anyone can be successful, no matter who they are—only for the stock market to crash, and their asylum cases to be rejected, their story quickly becoming an American nightmare.
As their story unfurls, Mbue deftly speaks to the ways that immigration creates the contours of a love story, from Jende deciding that taking Neni to the United States was the only way that he could prove to her family that he could be a successful man, worthy of her love, to the way that their relationship nearly falls apart under the pressure of striving for that success. It is both painfully specific in its details, from the jokes—(whenever responds to Jende saying he’s from Cameroon by mentioning some peripheral connection to a completely different African country, he responds by telling them he has an uncle in Toronto, and so forth) to the ripple effects of stress on a marriage, and the fear of losing everything that you love because of something outside of your control.
Sahar Khalifeh’s “My First And Only Love” opens with Nidal, a rootless wanderer, returning back to the house she grew up in in Nablus, hoping to refurbish it into its former glory. As she sifts through boxes of memories, she brings the reader back to her teenage years, when she lived there with her grandmother when Palestine was still under the British mandate, and she was falling in love with a young revolutionary named Rabie.
Throughout the book, Khalifah seamlessly shifts from Nidal’s teenage narration to her modern self, showing how her experiences as a teenager shaped her perception as an adult. The present day—where Nidal now holds a western passport, and is worried that people have grown insensitive to news about Palestine—feels just as familiar as the descriptions of Palestine before the Nakba feel otherworldly. And yet, it is a reminder that both of these realities existed within many people’s lifetimes—and that as much as people fell in love in times of such extraordinary circumstances, these extraordinary circumstances often tore people apart.
A list of stories of love across borders would not be complete without a more historic example, and Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea is exactly that, featuring not only a steamship journey across the Atlantic, a glimpse into the lives of Victor and Roser, a couple fleeing Fascist Spain for Chile, on a boat chartered by none other than Pablo Neruda.
As Allende vividly describes their journey—first, Roser’s long trek across the Pyranées mountains, months spent in a concentration camp along the French border, followed by a long steamship journey to a country that seemed as if it was “at the far end of the earth,” I thought about how this journey compares with the journeys of so many others today. There are tensions along the French border—the refugees are referred to as the “undesirables” and it is a reminder that anyone can become undesirable at any time. But the steamship journey—despite it lasting twenty-nine days—is ironically far safer than the journeys of many refugees today.
Once Roser and Victor arrive in Chile, they find themselves watching World War II unfold from afar, and continue to hope that someday, their homeland will be wrested from Fascist control. It makes me think of Syrians hoping for a world where Bashar al Assad is no longer President, Ukrainians longing for the retreat of the Russians. Ultimately, as they rebuild their lives, Allende explores the more intimate questions of exile, of being uprooted and yet simultaneously pushed closer together.
The late Anthony Bourdain died in 2018, but his Twitter account is still up and viewable. The way he describes himself in the bio, to his 6.4 million followers?
A single word: Enthusiast.
It’s certainly the way he lived his life, rising from the culinary underbelly of New York City to become a celebrity after the publication of his memoir, Kitchen Confidential, and then using that fame to turn himself into an Emmy Award-winning documentarian and travel journalist.
I quickly shifted my focus to entertainment and storytelling: movies and television, books, journalism, and everything in-between.
I grew up in the Midwest (in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be exact) watching Bourdain’s programs and after high school attended the University of Michigan. When I first went to college, if someone had asked me what I wanted to do and study, I probably would have said something along the lines of Law or Business, but after I arrived in Ann Arbor and settled in, and as my education started to progress and take hold,I quickly shifted my focus to entertainment and storytelling: movies and television, books, journalism, and everything in-between. It was something I’d always loved, but for many reasons, not the least of which was being a Midwestern kid with no connections to the entertainment business whatsoever, it was also something I’d never seriously considered as a career path before. I began to turn my thoughts that way, though, and as I did, I encountered two issues: the first is that there wasn’t a journalism program at the University of Michigan, and the second was that most of the film classes offered and required focused on the legacy and history of film, which was not the aspect of the business in which I was interested.
So, I came up with a plan.
I switched from my original pre-Law or Business track to double major in English and Film with a sub-concentration in Screenwriting — which ultimately turned into one of the most delightful and important decisions I made in my academic career — and I also began to write movie reviews for the Michigan Daily, which is the fantastic student-run newspaper where most students who are interested in journalism go to work outside of, and in addition to, their class schedule.
When I arrived and first started at the Daily, I was outfitted with a press badge with my photo on it, given access to watch the movies I was assigned to cover at the three different local cinemas, and even invited to participate in junkets for specific films in which the studios wanted to do outreach to college campuses for coverage.
I continued to write reviews throughout college, giving a star rating from one to five stars, discussing what I liked and disliked about each movie, and it was a way for me to work with editors at the paper and hone my skills as a writer, and also to learn about and discuss the merits of films that were being made, distributed, and consumed, as well as engage with the talent that was doing all those things.
After I graduated, and true to where my shifting interests had ultimately landed and led me, I packed everything I owned into my car (in something that was probably similar to a scene out of a movie itself) and drove across the country to Los Angeles. I still knew absolutely nobody in the city or entertainment business, but was fortunate enough to land an opportunity as an intern at a leading film and television production company where I was then quickly promoted to Assistant, Creative Executive, Director of Development, and finally Vice President, before eventually leaving to become a full-time author and screenwriter.
When I would talk to friends, especially friends from home, one of the main things they’d always say to me, knowing my history of writing reviews and then moving to Los Angeles to work in the film business, was something along the lines of, “Oh, you’re probably a movie snob now and hate everything.”
In fact, my reaction was the exact opposite.
I found myself loving most everything I watched after I began to work in the business and saw what went into making movies and telling important stories: the craft, talent, skill, luck, and so many other factors and variables.
What it also did was make me think about the reviews I wrote in college, and especially the negative ones.
I stand by what I felt at the time I watched the movies, but the question I kept asking myself and couldn’t shake was — did I need to write them at all?
Space in a major publication printed and read by all my peers, archived online for the rest of time, and also circulated widely outside of just the University audience comes with a great amount of privilege and responsibility, and the question that consumed me was why didn’t I use that precious space that was read by everyone I knew, as well as so many others, to talk about things I loved, rather than things I didn’t?
Strangely, this idea was also answered and encapsulated by the city of Los Angeles and through food and travel in a way I hadn’t anticipated. As I mentioned at the beginning, I grew up watching the programs of Anthony Bourdain, which were ubiquitous on the East Coast and in the Midwest, and while Bourdain was of course one of the most famous and influential culinary personalities in NYC and the Midwest, in Los Angeles, and on the West Coast, in my new home, I quickly learned that distinction very likely went to Jonathan Gold who also, like Bourdain, passed away in 2018.
Gold didn’t have an international travel program like Bourdain did, as his focus was more local and print-centric, but during the years I’ve lived and ate in Los Angeles I’ve heard numerous stories about the unmistakable Gold popping up at a taco truck here, or an off-the-beaten-path restaurant there, which of course isn’t unusual for the man who wrote the annual list of the city’s 101 best restaurants for the Los Angeles Times.
I’ve found myself more and more thinking about both men and what they left behind and the outsized influence they’ve had on me.
The mystery, however, came when he would be seen at small hole-in-the-wall places but would only write about some of them.
The mystery wasn’t difficult to solve, though, because Jonathan Gold, while being a critic, just like I once had been, was also, like his friend Anthony Bourdain, an enthusiast.
Gold knew the power of his words and stories and so he spent the majority of his time writing about the restaurants he went to that he loved, and in so many cases, was simply silent about the ones he didn’t.
And that, to me, became the important and essential distinction that set him and Bourdain apart from so many others and, to my embarrassment, what set them apart from myself, also.
There’s a tremendous play by Alan Bennett called The History Boys, and in it, the teacher, Hector, originally played by Richard Griffiths, tells one of his students:
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”
Learning about Gold and his philosophy of writing and criticism was such a moment for me.
It was something I knew I’d intrinsically started to feel, but seeing it both verbalized and put into practice by two titans of their field was transformative.
Gold and Bourdain’s medium was food and travel.
My medium both was and still is something different, and while what’s taken from their lives might be slightly different for everyone — and in fact I hope it is slightlydifferent for everyone — what I’ve learned, personally, and what they’ve both taught me through the great and unparalleled power of their words and food is that we all, too, can be enthusiasts, in whoever it is that we are and whatever it is that we do, just like they were. We can all celebrate the things we love, in every way possible, in every way we know how, and like Gold, simply forget the rest.
It seems easy, right? But is it?
We must allow ourselves the room to change as the world changes.
As we continue into a new and unprecedented year and time of ubiquitous social media, fake news, hot takes, memes, and rampant negativity of all types that’s so easy to create and propagate and retweet and fall for, and so much of which is shielded from any sort of meaningful consequence by the assumed protection of screens, keyboards, distance, disconnection, and in far too many cases anonymity, as well, I’ve found myself more and more thinking about both men and what they left behind and the outsized influence they’ve had on me in regard to my own personal philosophies and way I wish to exist as both an artist and human. And as we all become more connected with each passing moment, we all also have a similar choice to make — the same choice that Gold and Bourdain made and showed us — and as I’ve thought more and more about that choice, and what I perceive to be my own youthful and initial failings, I’ve also found myself thinking perhaps most of all about the last episode of the final season of Bourdain’s Travel Channel show No Reservations, and the words he left us with, as credits rolled, his legacy in his own words:
“If I do have any advice for anybody, any final thought, if I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in somebody else’s shoes — or at least eat their food — it’s a plus for everybody.”
And so for the rest of 2023 and beyond, that’s what I’ll perhaps be thinking about and focusing on most of all: how I can continue to move. How I can eat new food, see new places, and meet new people who might not be exactly like I am, even if they’re only just across the river.
Connection. That’s another word for it, right? Or perhaps empathy.
It’s what led to my initial revelation. Could it possibly lead to another, equally as important?
In college, I was a critic, but I don’t see myself that way anymore and looking back, if I had the opportunity to do the same job again, I don’t think I’d take it. In some ways, it seemed like the world could handle it then. I’m not so sure it can anymore. We must allow ourselves the room to change as the world changes, and I’m a writer now, as I’ve said, so I’ll figure out a way to continue writing about all the things I find that I love, and the rest? There’s too much of “the rest” out there now and so at this point in my life, and the world, I’ll simply forget the rest.
Why?
Because I believe in the power of shrinking the world to a village of a single person, ourselves, and so like Gold and Bourdain, I’m going to do that and I’m going to be an enthusiast, too.
In a cultural milieu that is increasingly recognizing the value of narratives that describe the experience of chronic pain and illness, Emily Wells’ memoir is a unique contribution. In some ways, A Matter of Appearance is not a memoir at all, though that’s where you’ll find it shelved in bookstores. To be sure, Wells’ story is included in its pages. But so are a collection of other stories, from a history of medical misogyny to an examination of ballet pathology, to a (searing) critique of capitalist systems. If literary genres were amenable to nuance, or if I owned a bookstore, this book would sit squarely in the “A Little Bit of Everything” section. (It’s probably a good thing I don’t own a bookstore.)
Like Wells, I am deeply skeptical of culture, even as I appreciate it profoundly and make a living wading into it. Cynically, I suspect the recent explosion in sick lit is attributable not only to an influx of formidable literary talent—writers like Sarah Manguso, Meghan O’Rourke, and Chloe Cooper Jones—but also an awareness in industry that pain equals profit. In my imagination, there is a corporate goblin behind every lifesaving drug and beautiful piece of art asking, And how much can we sell it for? If reality in any way approximates my imagination, I want people like Emily Wells writing about it.
Wells and I connected via Zoom to talk about the aesthetics of illness, the visualization of pain, and whether suffering can be, for lack of a better term, productive.
Wynter K Miller: One of the things I like about your memoir is that it doesn’t try to make illness happy. You don’t try to soften the blow for readers. You are very explicit about the conclusions you reach—and they are bleak. You write that pain has not taught you anything, that there is not a purpose for pain, and that the experience of it is not “for” something. I appreciated that you were adamant about not falling into the trap of making people feel better. Can you talk a little bit about why you feel that suffering does not augment art? And do you truly believe that pain has not taught you anything?
Emily Wells: It’s hard because it kind of feels ungracious to write a book where you don’t have any silver linings or wisdom to offer, where it’s ultimately just kind of trying to explain suffering. But yeah, I am really generally opposed to learning from pain, narratives of wisdom from pain—I think people are finally getting a little sick of those because I’m reading so many more books where people are doing something else instead. I do like what Audre Lorde wrote in The Cancer Journals about wanting to finish her book so that her pain wouldn’t be wasted because that seems to treat the pain as the material itself, which feels a bit more honest than trying to use it to acquire something or feel differently. Yeah, it’s rough.
WKM: Something that you said in the book makes me wonder, though. You teach, and you write about how as a teacher—because you’ve experienced pain and because you know what it looks like to hide pain—you can see when other people are doing that. So, you can look at your students and you can recognize when something more might be going on than the student is saying. It seems to me that whether you admit it or not, your experiences have made you compassionate. And they’ve given you a helpful perspective in that you’re able to recognize and see things that maybe somebody can’t tell you.
EW:That’s a good way of thinking about it. Yeah, I’m comfortable with that silver lining.
WKM: Although, to be clear, the memoir is also explicit in its conclusion that even if pain has done that—given you compassion—it’s still not worth it. It’s not a good trade-off.
EW: Definitely not. But at the same time, I really don’t believe that there’s a true, healthy-sick binary. Like, yeah, I got sicker younger than most people, but everyone will eventually become ill. Either everyone is sick or will become sick. So that kind of compassion is something I would hope that we can find ways to apply more multi-directionally. It shouldn’t be just the sick applying it to others who are sick.
WKM: You had a boyfriend, who makes a brief cameo in the memoir, and he told you that “there’s no such thing as an aesthetic illness.” What do you think he meant by that? And do you agree with him?
EW: I think that at the time, this was before diagnosis, I was going through this pain, and it was kind of easier almost to think about it metaphorically. Right? And I was reading about hysteria, and it was easy to think about those symptoms [of hysteria] as, like, protest against misogynist cultural norms, or something like that. And then, even with my own symptoms, I was experiencing them as real, but I was also kind of thinking about them abstractly, or as metaphors, or as some kind of aesthetic protest against conditions. It was a way to sidestep the real questions.
WKM: So, he thought that you were intellectualizing your illness to make it more palatable—sexier?
EW:Yeah. It’s somewhat tied into—I wrote about it a little bit—but, you know the sex appeal of the tubercular woman.
WKM: The sex appeal of tuberculosis is maybe a great way of segueing into the medical and socio-cultural history you explore in your memoir. Charcot is a central figure, and his research really captivated your imagination (also true of another chronic illness memoirist, Emma Bolden, who I interviewed in 2022). What specifically did you find so alluring about Charcot as a case study, and what drew you specifically to his work with patients like Augustine at the Salpêtrière?
EW: I think it just feels like it has relevance today. Charcot had this expectation that every illness would eventually be traced to some kind of physical pathology on the body. He was basically just trying to find a lesion that he thought caused hysteria. When I started reading about him, I was really struck by the way that people outside of psychoanalysis talk about this period in history—it felt like they were kind of missing the point about Charcot setting up our current cultural trend of wanting everything to be biological in order to spare the patient from stigma. Because we still believe that! We still believe that if it can be traced to a chemical imbalance or something biological, then the person is devoid of blame. And if not, if you can’t trace it, [the illness] is just a lack of willpower or because of personal choices. So, his research was meant to save these people from stigma, but ultimately it was dehumanizing because he was completely neglecting everything that they were saying about their experience. And it’s interesting to me that people are kind of gleefully dismissive of Freud, who actually had something closer to the right idea, at least in the sense that he was paying attention to what people were describing as their experience.
WKM: Charcot also went about his research in a very visual way. To me, it feels like in addition to his medical interests, he also had some sort of aesthetic goal. He took very curated photographs of his patients, and his research became performative.
EW: Exactly. If he’s trying to render illness as biological, why is the diagnostic and classification process so obsessively visual? It was just incredible. But I think for me, the representational power of those pictures comes from how they really failed, despite their best efforts, to erase the patient completely. The women in them kind of demand to be looked at in a certain way. (Of course, that’s also me trying to lessen the pain of bearing witness by prescribing them some agency that they probably did not have.)
WKM: What do you mean by that?
EW: There’s something that seeps through. I mean, it’s like punctum hunting, right? Because it’s like the thing that pricks you in the photograph. It’s hard to resist the impulse to punctum hunt with those photographs—it’s clearly a performance. They’re under hypnosis. They’re not artists. They’re not taking the photos themselves. You can’t abolish the medical gaze that created them—and yet, there’s just something really enticing about them. They’re beautifully lit. They’re kind of rupturing with excess. They’re fascinating. And so many people have been impacted by them in that way. The surrealists were completely obsessed with those photos. Choreographers have created so many interpretive hysteria dances. It’s difficult to describe what they capture without resorting to a lot of abstraction.
WKM: And why did that element of the photographs—whatever you call it—make you want to write about your own illness?
EW: I’m really interested in what happens when we bind text and images together—that kind of like Sebaldian, multilayered encounter where the text features an image, and the image then kind of defies its documentary purpose. And I think that for a lot of people, that’s what feels impactful about these photos. Somehow, when we remove them from their medical context, they’re able to kind of defy their documentary purpose. I don’t know if that answers the question.
I’m really interested in what happens when we bind text and images together—and the image then kind of defies its documentary purpose.
WKM: Do you mean that they become less medical document and more visual art?
EM: Yeah, and I think another part of why those photographs are so interesting is that we have to feel kind of implicated when we find them. We see them as beautiful, right? But these people were suffering—[the hospital] was, in some sense, like a prison—so we can’t be super into the fact that we find them so beautiful. It’s kind of troubling.
WKM: It reminds me of something Chloe Cooper Jones talks about in her memoir—she writes about disaster tourism in this context, and the idea that we go to sites of incredible human suffering to “experience” it secondhand. And there’s something about that that is both gross and very human—similar to what you’re describing with these photographs. Whether or not it’s beauty per se, there’s something about them that draws you in as the viewer. But then there’s also something very uncomfortable about recognizing that what you are finding beautiful, or using for creative inspiration, is somebody in very personal, very real pain. Is that something that you grappled with when you were considering the photographs for the memoir?
EW:Definitely, and especially because the photographs are of women, so you end up telling your story through other women. And you kind of approach it maybe even with a totally egotistical idea that there can be some kind of atonement of wrongs. But that’s not how it works. You can retell the story, you can try to use the photographs out of their context, but ultimately, yeah, it is still kind of disaster tourism. It’s like everyone rubbernecking on the freeway when there’s an accident, they just can’t stop themselves.
But I was also inspired, not necessarily content-wise, by books that showed the way someone can use another woman’s story—or in Augustine’s case, the lack of story—to suss through concepts larger than the woman herself. Like the Nathalie Léger trio that Dorothy put out, those are great. I guess if I hadn’t seen examples of that being done in a way that felt respectful and kind of generative, then I might have been more reticent.
WKM: At the end of the memoir, you give a pretty succinct list of what true accommodation of illness would look like. I loved that list. I laughed because it was practical—universal health care, medical debt forgiveness, not tying health to capital—but then also included a curveball: “the abolition of all wellness webinars.”
EW: No one has ever learned how to be healthy through one of those mandatory wellness webinars that we all have to do for our jobs. It’s just so asinine. Like I said, so many of my students are depressed or going through mental health crisis after mental health crisis and the resources that I’m advised to point them toward would push anyone over the edge. It’s the absolute opposite of what we should be doing for these kids. If I’m occasionally a little bitter when I’m listing true accommodations, it’s probably because I’m taking an opiate to get through a mandatory wellness webinar.
No one has ever learned how to be healthy through one of those mandatory wellness webinars.
WKM: Ultimately, I’m sure it’s more about liability than anything else. Workplaces need to be able to say: we checked this box. I think it’s also related to the growth of the wellness industrial complex in general. There’s an inclination on the part of anyone who is aware that you’re sick to prescribe things that will make you not sick. Can you talk about your experience of prescribed wellness?
EW:I think wellness has become a way to hold people accountable for failing to live up to this obligation to live healthfully. So even if your illness is organic disease, they’re selling the illusion that health can be bought through consumer choices, that if you just made the right choice, you bought the right products, you went to the right clinic in LA, you wouldn’t be feeling the way you feel. And I think that ties back into trying to lessen the pain of bearing witness. Because if someone’s sick, despite making all the right choices, then that’s an uncomfortable thing to look at.
WKM: There’s an interesting discussion in the book about performing health versus being healthy. When we’re talking about invisible illness, there’s some amount of comfort, I think, in being able, sometimes, to perform. But it’s a double-edged sword, both because the performance is exhausting and because maybe people won’t take your illness seriously if they can’t see it.
Should the goal be that we encourage people who are ill to be honest about how they’re feeling? Because often that is not what we’re doing. We’re strongly discouraging them from saying how they feel. And if a person is honest, they risk losing something—like their job.
EW: I guess I feel that if society did the real accommodating on a structural level, there wouldn’t be the same need to render your suffering or to make it more or less visible to others. I wish we could create a society gracious enough that people could be as visible or invisible as they felt like being, and be accommodated regardless.
WKM: Augustine was Charcot’s most famous patient, and your memoir ends with the end of her story—which is that she escaped from the hospital by disguising herself as a man. That is so profoundly evocative of medical misogyny and how difficult it is to be a woman in the medical system. And it’s also an incredibly bleak way to end a memoir. Why did you choose to end your story there?
EW: Yeah, dressing as a man is what gave her the kind of visibility she needed to enter society as a normal civilian. At that point, her body had been so medicalized. She had stopped allowing herself to be hypnotized. She was clearly done. And that’s really all we know. Whatever her reasons, she was like, I’m not going to do this anymore. And then she escaped dressed as a man. The only way she could re-enter healthy society, if you will, is by looking male. So regardless of whether her symptoms were cured, she kind of finally cured herself of this abstract disease by concealing her gender.
One of the hardest things about feeling out of place is the loneliness. Living somewhere where the bulk of your software isn’t compatible with the system everyone else is running on. The people around you got their own problems, of course, but for them, it’s not a matter of the system not accepting who they are at a fundamental level.
A person happily alone is not out of place. An out-of-place person yearns for real love. Feeling out of place is about social-emotional efforts that yield slim to no returns. Feeling out of place is about fatigue. It’s about the fact that anyone who looks at them can see that something about them is off—at least that’s how the out-of-place person feels about it—and the ways in which people poke and prod or even ignore them only proves their assumptions.
So why go through with living in a mess like that? Why not go someplace where people can accept you for who you are? Well, in the case of the main character, Julian, in my debut novel The Weight, he’s never really felt like he belonged anywhere to begin with. His new life in Portland, Oregon feels like it might be his best shot at getting whole. Only trouble is, none of his friends look like him or think like him or come from where he came from. So how does he deal? How does he resolve his feeling out of place with the strong desire to belong where he stands in a way that feels true to his head, heart, and soul? The novels below provide a possible answer to those questions of finding belonging in an environment of otherness.
Set in 1985, Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a small town in Ireland. He’s a kind, hardworking family man, beloved and respected by those in his community. His life isn’t easy though, besides the hard work of making sure everyone in the town stays warm through the winter—all the deliveries, and all the long hours—he was a child born out of wedlock in a place and time where that really matters. Fortunately, he and his mother were taken in by a kind woman with enough money not to care about society’s moors. But being raised the way he was, as an outsider, he’s got a soft spot for the downtrodden. So, in the last month of the year, with Christmas quickly approaching, when he realizes that the local parish’s Good Shepherd Convent is separating young mothers from their children and making them do the town’s laundry, he’s got a big problem with that, trouble is, he seems to be the only person in town who does. Keegan’s writing is beautiful and precise and forces the reader to ask deep questions as they follow the actions and frustrations of the compassionate and out-of-place Bill Furlong.
Every character we follow in Ada Zhang’s incredible debut collection is out of place for one reason or another. For one it’s a matter of being in a new country. For another it’s a matter of needing to save money and therefore being a young tenant in the home of an elderly woman. Sometimes the divide is a matter of generational differences. Sometimes the divide is a matter of culture, confusion, and expectations unmet. But all the characters in these stories want to understand and to be understood. Zhang’s characters, old and young, are deep and full of desire.
When Abdurraqib writes about being the only Black guy at a concert venue except for the people working there, I know exactly what he’s talking about. And through his poetic ruminations on that out-of-placeness and the way in which he ties in American culture, I feel less alone. In 2016 I lived in Chicago and witnessed firsthand the height of Chance the Rapper and what he meant to the city. How he lifted everyone up in that time of great despair. Hanif saw it too. He speaks for himself; and he speaks for so many of us. I can’t believe he would admit to being such a Fall Out Boy fan, but who am I kidding, I’ve seen them in concert several times. And when he talks about what the band meant to him and a friend he lost, I dare you not to shed a tear.
As a budding punk rock bassist, Jack Shit is reminded on multiple occasions that he is an outsider, a wannabe; that New York was not made for him. But Jack doesn’t want to go back home to the suburbs, he wants to be in on the action. He wants his band back together, but that’s not possible because his bass guitar and lead singer have both gone missing. And without those two things, who is Jack Shit, anyway? No One Left to Come Looking for You is a page turning mystery set in the lively music scene of early 1990s Manhattan.
It’s hard to keep a band together in the best of circumstances. In The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, Dawnie Walton cleverly resurrects a fictional duo from the 1970s and makes us root for them as if they were real. Opal is a Black woman with alopecia from Detroit who can sing with a mesmerizing force. Nev is a redheaded man from England. Together they made powerful and unforgettable music. But on one fateful night, Opal and Nev are forced to take sides, and the decisions made break up the band and cause irreparable harm. 40 years later are they ready for a reunion? Through a series of fictional interviews and journalistic writing, we dive into their world as it is and as it was and come to understand that nothing is as simple as it looks on the surface. In this novel, Walton plays with form and storytelling in a way that is stunning and wholly unique.
It’s strange to feel out of place in a country you helped build with a culture so intrinsically influenced by your people, and sadly that is the case for so many of us. Even more audacious is how the people in power continue to bend the law to serve their dominance and continue mass oppression all in the name of the irrefutable rights they claim the Constitution has granted them. In Allow Me to Retort, Mystal makes a clear argument about the rights we’re supposed to have and the way that Republicans distort them. He lays out his vision for a greater America and what we as citizens can do to create a more just country and Constitution. This book is important, informative, maddening, easy to digest, and entertaining. What more could one ask for?
Lutie Johnson is out of place in 1940s Harlem. But she moved into a fourth-floor walkup with her young son, Bub, because the price was right, and she’d like for her and her son to have more safety and stability than they’d had in the past. Poverty doesn’t care about her dreams though, and neither does anyone else, not for free anyway. Everything she needs and wants for her son comes at a steep price. Poverty is the enemy, but so is the street itself. So what can Lutie do but fight? Nothing. In this novel we witness her valiant effort, and we root for her and little Bub, all while knowing how hard it is to escape the trouble of being poor and Black in America, both then, and now. This novel is a revelation. Ann Petry was the first Black woman author to sell over a million copies of a novel. She puts you right in Lutie’s shoes and doesn’t let you look away.
It was the bride’s second marriage, the groom’s third. They were both in their thirties, but Kim wasn’t sure if the groom was fibbing about his age—half of his face was hidden behind a dark beard, and he kept his hair, thick and shiny, tied in a youthful ponytail. She hadn’t searched for him online, having managed to break this habit after looking up a different client several months earlier and discovering he was semi-famous for a series of YouTube videos he’d posted of himself performing homegrown stunts in the Jackass vein, which included swallowing half a bottle of motor oil mixed with Bailey’s Irish Cream and dangling heavy objects from his penis while, off-camera, others howled with drunken laughter. After watching four of these clips for reasons Kim still didn’t understand, she’d had trouble looking him and the bride in the eye.
These new clients, Ryan and Emily Ann, had money and divorced parents, several half- and step-siblings, and, for the moment, good attitudes. Kim had a feeling the groom was stoned every time she met with him and the bride, but he wasn’t inarticulate or dopey, only vague and smiling. She wondered why they were in such a hurry to marry—they’d met only seven months earlier, when the ink on Ryan’s second set of divorce papers wasn’t yet dry and Emily Ann had just joined Gamblers Anonymous and was trying to adopt a child from Guatemala, a quest Ryan had convinced her to set aside in favor of adopting two puggles. He liked other people’s children just fine, he’d told Kim during their second meeting, his fiancée’s expression blank as he talked, but he didn’t want any of his own—lucky for him because his sperm count wasn’t the greatest, possibly because he was born during a period of intense solar flares, and his mother had eaten a lot of seaweed while pregnant with him.
Kim had learned to take in the superstitions and idiosyncratic details couples shared with her without letting her surprise or boredom show. She knew they couldn’t help themselves—most of them were young and in the habit of posting every thought and whim online. One couple she’d worked with the previous year had wanted to marry on a rocket blasting into space—did Kim know if anyone had ever done this? (She did not, nor had she ever heard of it—though with billionaires now taking rides on the space shuttle, she supposed space weddings were coming.) Another couple wanted a silent wedding with their vows and the priest’s words projected onto a big screen suspended above the altar. Another wanted to marry on the ocean with everyone floating on air mattresses while dolphins leapt in the distance against the setting sun.
Ryan and Emily Ann were less dramatic and ambitious, but they’d decided to host their ceremony on the lakefront and had a guest list of a hundred and fifty people, most of whom were bringing a plus one. In late September, an outdoor wedding was risky, but the bride and groom had agreed to use a tent for the reception and a half dozen portable heaters in case of a cold night. As a rule, outdoor weddings made Kim nervous, especially when the guest list was large—even in the summer, Chicago weather was unpredictable. Her feeling was that if people wanted to get married outdoors, they should move to San Diego, or at least hold their wedding there.
2
Clay did not understand his nephew. Two divorces already, and now a third wedding, and the boy wasn’t even close to the age when AARP started sending out those membership forms that looked like a check might be inside but of course there never was a check. Why couldn’t Ryan simply live with a woman and keep lawyers out of it when one of them got sick of the other? No one batted an eye these days over unmarried cohabitation unless they were pious hypocrites, but who cared what those reprobates thought anyway. In his experience, those folks routinely cheated on their taxes and sent their gay sons off to be deprogrammed by scripture-spouting maniacs.
Clay had only been married once, and that was back in his idiotic mid-twenties when he rode a motorcycle and kept an iguana named Clint Eastwood as a pet. The marriage hadn’t been his idea, but he’d thought it might be fun and for a couple of years it was, but then his wife’s sister moved in with them, after she’d left the commune in rural Oregon where she’d learned to cook without meat and had stopped shaving her legs and armpits. He’d gotten into some trouble with her, and for a year and a half he and the sister had lived in a tent in whichever friend’s yard they could pitch it. It had been tough to hold down a job when he couldn’t shower very often and didn’t have a washer, and on top of this, his dental hygiene was on the questionable side, but all that nonsense was more than thirty years ago now, and in the end, he’d managed to hold on to most of his teeth and had been waking up alone for nearly ten years. Much of the time, it wasn’t as bad as you’d think it would be.
3
Ryan had asked his uncle Clay to be his best man—his two closest friends had already filled that position in one of his previous weddings, and he thought it might jinx the whole thing if he were to ask one of them to stand up again. If he were called before God or some sort of almighty bogeyman to reveal who his favorite family member was, he’d have to say Clay because his parents were bat-shit, his grandparents were dead, and even though he got along all right with his brother and sister, Sebastian was a little off and possibly a peeping Tom, and Jill’s house was crammed full of so much crap from flea markets and yard sales you could barely move from one room to the next without knocking something over, and she was only forty-two. She had too many pets, and the place smelled terrible. Although Ryan appreciated her soft spot for birds and various four-legged creatures, he kept his house pet acquisitions firmly in the dog realm.
But he wasn’t prone to throwing stones—he had his own set of problems, and one of them was he didn’t like being alone and certainly couldn’t live alone for more than a week or two without sort of losing his mind and joining chat rooms about owl migration routes and French cooking and other topics he knew nothing about. His therapist had told him this was something of a Trojan-horse problem, with other problems living like stowaways inside a bigger problem. His therapist had advised him not to remarry so quickly—couldn’t he and Emily Ann take it slower than Ryan had with his two ex-wives?
Well, a year and a half into his first marriage, his wife realized she was still in love with her college girlfriend, and three years into his next marriage, his second wife, Gabrielle, slept with one of her coworkers, and despite saying it wouldn’t happen again, it did happen again, and even though Ryan knew he was still in love with her, he also knew he would never trust her again. She hadn’t wanted the divorce, but he wasn’t able to sleep the night through without waking up in a blind rage after he found out she was still having sex with her coworker. He didn’t like worrying that his fury at being cuckolded might jump the wall at some point and make a lunge for her. And because he was still in love with her, he realized he would probably be a confused wreck for a while.
When he was with Emily Ann, however, he felt saner and relatively happy. So far, she’d been extremely loyal, and even better than her loyalty was the fact that men did not ogle her like they did Gabrielle. Emily Ann was pretty but not a knockout. No other guy ever stared at her as if Ryan, with his arm around her as they entered a restaurant or a party, were invisible.
His secret thought was that one day he and Gabrielle might get back together—when they were both in their sixties or seventies, and she was done screwing around. After her looks had faded and she’d had a cancer scare and come through it a more humble person who understood how deeply her lust for the bonehead at work who played drums in a Doors cover band had hurt and tormented her adoring, occasionally stoned former husband.
4
Emily Ann was her father’s third daughter and the fifth child of six. She was her mother’s only daughter and first of her three children. She was glad Ryan had only two siblings and was the calmest guy she’d ever dated seriously, but it worried her a little that he didn’t seem to want kids. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted them either, although she did think she might at some point. Her first husband had wanted kids, but he’d also wanted to live in Alaska, and when he insisted they move from Chicago to Anchorage, she’d become very depressed. She couldn’t stand exceedingly cold weather, and this had turned out to be only one of several major problems. The biggest wasn’t his fault, but hers—she’d lost all their money playing online poker at the beginning of the pandemic, a period of collective quasi-insanity that wasn’t over yet. The virus was also the reason why she and Ryan had decided to hold their wedding outside. She sensed the wedding planner would have preferred a banquet hall or a hotel ballroom, but at least she wasn’t being pushy about it.
When they had their first meeting with the wedding planner, Ryan mentioned the idea of hiring a psychic for the reception, and he wouldn’t let it go like Emily Ann had initially hoped. She knew without doubt it was a bad idea because no matter what the psychic said, at least a few people would end up angry or traumatized, and Emily Ann really didn’t want any of the guests to remember their wedding as the night they were told their house would burn down or their teenage daughter would run off with the father of three who lived two doors away. She’d been at a New Year’s Eve party a few years ago where this very thing had occurred. It had taken a couple of months for the psychic’s predictions to come true, but this had only heightened the suspense, and one person was still talking about suing the host for psychological damages.
She wasn’t sure why Ryan had proposed so quickly, even though she’d been hoping since their fourth date he would. On that date, he’d taken her to a pottery shop and they’d both crafted little animals—a lion, a seal, a fox, and a frog—and she supposed she’d fallen in love with him on the spot. His second ex-wife was still calling him, and although Ryan said it was only because they shared custody of a dog, a high-strung German shepherd mix named Horst, he seemed happy whenever she called or texted, which was at least once nearly every time he and Emily Ann were together.
5
Poor Emily Ann—even though she was the firstborn, she was the most lost of Julia’s three children. It didn’t help that Bill, Emily Ann’s father, was a blowhard and a fool who had spoiled her rotten until she was thirteen—the year he’d left Julia for another woman—after which he’d neglected Emily Ann and her brother Zachary obscenely. No wonder their daughter was so confused and unhappy and had had that awful gambling problem in the early months of the pandemic. Fortunately, Zachary had stronger self-esteem—maybe a little too strong, but at least he knew he didn’t have to turn himself inside out to please everyone who crossed his path, nor did he go chasing after validation in virtual casinos. It did bother her that he was a musician, but he hadn’t impregnated anyone yet, as far as Julia knew.
She hoped this second marriage of Emily Ann’s would last—her own second marriage was a solid, waterproof vessel, and much of this, she felt certain, was due to her loving husband’s strong moral compass and distrust of the internet (thank goodness—Bill had met the woman he’d dumped her for online!). Stewart did not leer at other women, nor did he make up stories about the year he served in the Vietnam War. He didn’t have the supplest sense of humor, but she would take his steady seriousness any day over Bill’s dumb jokiness and wandering eye. It was a wonder he hadn’t been MeToo’d with all the other would-be Casanovas, though for all she knew, he had but had quietly settled with whatever women he’d made a grab for. She hadn’t seen him in four years—not since Emily Ann’s first wedding—and Julia wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing him again, but it couldn’t be helped. At least she’d held on to her figure, despite having three babies—the third, Stewart’s and her good-natured Benjamin, arriving when she was forty-one—and on the whole, she liked weddings but would have preferred her only daughter to have had just one.
As for her son-in-law-to-be, he was a cheerful bore who seemed not to let things get under his skin, but Stewart worried Ryan would never amount to anything and wished he had some sort of career. Ryan had family money and technically didn’t need to work, so, well, he didn’t, though he pretended to—apparently he did something nebulous in the field of graphic design. Trust funds corrupted the mind, in Stewart’s view. Julia didn’t share this opinion, and all things being equal, she would rather Emily Ann have a rich husband than a poor one (but she hoped Ryan wasn’t planning to give her unfettered access to his bank account because he would surely regret it).
It didn’t seem likely he intended to, in any case—there was a prenup, which, although coldhearted, was never a bad idea, in Julia’s view. The world was coldhearted. People didn’t like to hear this, but it was nonetheless true.
6
To Kim’s great relief, the day of the wedding was clear, the temperature in the mid-seventies—San Diego weather having been bestowed by the weather gods upon Chicago’s North Shore—a perfect early autumn Saturday. The tent had been pitched with no snafus, the tables and chairs unpacked and set up on time, the flowers, the caterers—everything had come together like a well-rehearsed symphony of moneyed goodwill and bracing competence. She really could not believe it.
Ryan and Emily Ann had rented a house with beachfront property for the ceremony and reception—a good tactical choice, as the house also served as the launch pad for the wedding party. Kim had been assigned a small, sunny room off the kitchen as her base of operations. There was one bizarre, slightly sinister occurrence, however, something Kim had never before encountered while on the job: she witnessed the groom’s sister stuffing a small, triangular throw pillow from the living room sofa into a black duffel bag and scurrying out of the room with surprising nimbleness, despite the air cast on her ankle. Perhaps the cast was subterfuge, meant to keep Jill from being enlisted last-minute as an usher or a gofer, or perhaps she had a phobia about dancing in public?
Regardless of the reason, Kim was annoyed that she now had to decide if she should report Jill’s crime to the groom or confront the thief directly. Neither scenario promised anything but awkwardness at best, and at worst, she risked being shown the door if she embroiled herself in what was likely some ongoing family drama over Jill’s ostensible kleptomania. Better to say nothing at all.
Yet, she did wonder what else was in the duffel and hoped Jill’s light fingers would not find their way into her or anyone else’s wallet. The duffel’s lumpish appearance certainly implied it held more cargo than a small throw pillow. If Kim herself were prone to stealing, she would already have filched the five-pound bag of white Jordan almonds that sat unattended ten feet away from her office doorway on the kitchen counter. If she craned her neck from where she sat at her temporary antique walnut desk, the candy was right in her sightline. Her mouth tingled at the thought of the hard candy shell softening on her tongue.
She got up and tiptoed over to the bag, nodding at the caterer who stood rolling silverware into white cloth napkins. The bag of almonds wasn’t yet opened. “May I have a few? I didn’t eat lunch,” said Kim, pointing at the still-pristine bag.
The caterer, a woman in her fifties with the sinewy look of a distance runner, nodded. “Help yourself. You actually like those things?”
“I do,” said Kim with a diffident laugh.
“They taste like wood to me,” said the caterer.
The bag’s seal wouldn’t yield to Kim’s slippery hands. Flustered, she pulled a knife from the wooden block of Chicago Cutlery next to the enormous stainless steel sink and sawed into the bag. The caterer watched with benign interest. “You’re the wedding planner, right?” she said.
Kim nodded as the knife finally breached the bag and the sugary, plasticine smell of the candied almonds streamed out. She inhaled greedily as she poured several almonds into her palm. They were flawless—the Platonic ideal of candied nuts. Kim held her breath to keep herself from sighing.
“How’d you get into this line of work?” the caterer asked, as she placed a fresh silverware roll at the apex of a lopsided pyramid.
An almond’s coating was melting on Kim’s tongue now, her saliva glands tingling. It was almost too blissful to be borne. She looked at the caterer through misty eyes. “I’ve loved weddings since I was a little girl. I remember watching Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding on television when I was visiting my grandmother, and she woke me up very early. We sat in our pajamas, eating raspberry coffee cake as we watched, and Grandma cried and said she had never witnessed a more perfect wedding.”
The caterer gave her a pitying look. “A shame how that one turned out.”
7
Clay didn’t mind public speaking, but he hadn’t done any since high school speech class, when he’d written a report on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with one hand tied behind your back and another on how to give a cat a bath. (The answer was you didn’t—that was the whole speech, but the teacher didn’t think Clay was funny.) Now that his nephew and this shy girl with nice legs were officially married—the bride, to everyone’s amusement but her own, had had hiccups the whole time they were saying their vows—Clay hoped to make a best-man speech people might fondly reminisce about for years. He’d spent many hours writing it and had practiced several times in front of the mirror and had also read it to the Comcast repairman as he fixed Clay’s wi-fi, which had gone on the blink when he was trying to order Ryan’s wedding gift (a year’s supply of eco-friendly laundry soap—it wasn’t on their registry but he was sure they’d need it, unlike the fancy placemats from Provence which cost twice as much as his monthly cable and wi-fi bill!). When he was done reading his speech, the Comcast guy had said, “That was a whole lot better than the one I got at my wedding.”
Now, under the big white circus tent, Clay looked out at the expanse of shining faces, some alert and receptive, others bleary from all the free liquor—he’d overheard someone losing his lunch on the other side of the canvas wall a few minutes earlier (if you didn’t charge at least a few dollars for the hard liquor, the whole evening would of course turn into a goddamn fraternity party).
Clay noticed his sister giving him an apprehensive look as he stood up from the table and pulled his speech from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket. He knew she’d opposed Ryan’s decision to ask him to be in the wedding party, but Stephanie had always been a wet blanket, and Clay was going to claim his moment in the proverbial sun whether she liked it or not.
He cleared his throat and glanced at Ryan, who lifted his champagne glass merrily. Clay raised the microphone to his mouth and peered down at his speech, which he saw was not his speech at all. He’d brought the goddamn power bill.
“Fuck me,” he said. Some of the guests tittered nervously. He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud. “Sorry, everyone,” he muttered. “I brought a utility bill instead of my speech. At least I can stop by the library later and renew my card.”
Clay smiled uncertainly at Ryan, who seemed to be enjoying himself. Emily Ann looked wary. He didn’t risk another glance at Stephanie—even several yards away, he could feel the scorn and fear rolling off of his sister. “Don’t worry, young lady,” he said to the bride. “You and your groom are in good hands.” He turned back to the tent full of guests, sensing their sharpened attention. He would not fuck this up. Objectively speaking, he’d probably fucked up a lot in his life, but tonight he would do his best not to humiliate himself or anyone else.
Objectively speaking, he’d probably fucked up a lot in his life, but tonight he would do his best not to humiliate himself or anyone else.
“My nephew, Ryan Alexander Fisher, is someone I’ve known from the day he was born. When his mother was in labor at the hospital, I was there, waiting with his father, for Ryan’s big debut. After several hours in the waiting room, flipping through Reader’s Digests and Prevention magazines, I got up to stretch my legs and ended up having a minor run-in with a bad-tempered nurse who reprimanded me for loitering—her words, not mine—by the vending machines, but my view was, you never knew when someone would forget to grab their change or a second bag of barbecue chips might drop down into the well—and bingo! Your lucky day.”
People were laughing, including both members of the bridal couple. Clay looked down at the power bill and noticed it was his next-door neighbor’s—the mailman had mis-delivered it once before—and payment was two weeks overdue.
“I knew you’d all know what I meant,” he said, smiling at a dark-haired woman a few tables away whose breasts were loose in her top. His ex-wife’s sister hadn’t worn a bra either, saying they’d been invented by a man (which Clay later learned wasn’t true) to serve the male gaze.
He glanced over at Stephanie, whose eyes were wide and staring. She looked a little like one of those life-sized first-aid dolls. He gave her a reassuring smile, but her expression didn’t change.
“As you all know,” he said. “Ryan’s birth was a success, because here he is, and here we all are tonight, some of us actually enjoying ourselves and not wondering how early is too early to leave. Any time before ten o’clock. That’s the answer.” He paused, unable to remember what he was supposed to say next. “I guess I should wrap this up—”
A female voice in the back screamed, “Yes!” followed by two male voices shouting, “No! Keep going!”
“—so those of you who don’t intend to stay until ten o’clock can make your excuses and head out into the night. Wedding cake and Lyle Lovett cover band be damned. Let me close by saying I wish my nephew Ryan and his lovely new bride Emily Ann lasting happiness, no flat tires, lifelong fidelity, a steadfast sense of humor, no lawsuits, and no mass shootings.”
Emily Ann appeared to be exhaling slowly, and Ryan was grinning and nodding like a man who knew the best answers. Many of the guests looked perplexed, but some were gamely chuckling, and one guy, maybe one of the “Keep going!” shouters, was guffawing. Clay took a bow and sunk into his seat, his face flushed with victory. He didn’t look over at Stephanie or try to locate Griffin, Ryan’s father, who had divorced Stephanie fifteen years earlier and subsequently begun camping in a Utah cave, living in it on and off for several years before he’d fully reentered society six years ago.
Clay knew his sister wouldn’t smile back, and Griffin was probably in the bathroom or on the beach, staring out at the dark lake—he hated chairs and had stayed on his feet behind the rows of seated guests during the exchange of vows. He’d likely missed the whole speech. Clay owed him money and although Griffin no longer brought up the unpaid debt on the rare occasion their paths crossed, Clay doubted he’d forgotten about it. He’d brought some of the money he owed Griffin with him tonight. Before the wedding, he’d sold two old LPs, one a pristine early Dylan and the other a Janis Joplin. He’d gotten a fair price too.
He was aware that a man who didn’t pay his debts (or at least try to) wasn’t worth knowing, and Griffin, Clay was sure, had already written him off.
8
Sebastian knew his sister was at it again—he’d seen her putting a box of votive candles into the black duffel she was carrying around, pretending it was her purse. The air cast was also doubtless pure theater: he did not believe she had a sprain. He stood behind her as she clomped to their assigned table after the vows and discreetly groped the duffel’s nether regions, his hand finding the hard edges of what felt like a picture frame and another object with the contours of an apple or a pomegranate, along with a third object, soft and dense, some kind of small cushion.
When she sensed his hand on the duffel, she yanked it closer and hissed, “Degenerate.”
He wasn’t sure why he still talked to her. A few years ago, when she was angry with him for telling their parents about her klepto tendencies, she’d retaliated by making up a malicious lie, one he probably could have sued her over if he were a litigious person unafraid of bad publicity. She’d told them she’d caught him spying on her neighbor’s teenage daughter while the girl undressed for bed. Their father hadn’t believed her, but their mother was less sure, probably because she’d once caught him in a vulnerable moment in front of his iMac, the actress in the porn clip he’d cued up dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl. It was all so absurd and unfair—he was only sixteen at the time, not some creepy pedophile in his fifties!
At the reception, Sebastian was seated one table over from Jill. When she got up and limped across the tent for a second piece of cake, she left the duffel under her chair, and it was then that he pounced. The three other people at her table, their cousins, looked on with curiosity as he unzipped the duffel. Out tumbled a small triangular pillow, a framed picture of a beach at sunset, and an apple-shaped candle, along with the box of votives, a package of floral paper hand towels, a small blue frog figurine, a pizza cutter, two tampons, and a pair of purple flip-flops.
Behind him he heard a screech and recognized the pitch as Jill’s. She was two tables away and tried to run toward him but tripped over the leg of their great-aunt Lucy’s date’s chair and fell in a heap onto this frail-looking man’s lap, her cake plate exploding into shards and greasy clumps at the edge of the dance floor. Sebastian raised the triangular pillow and waved it at her.
“That’s mine,” she cried as she freed herself from Lucy’s date’s lap and ran toward Sebastian, her air cast flapping loosely around her ankle. “Give it back!”
People were watching them, but not as many as might have been—half the wedding guests were on the dance floor, shuffling along to “If I Had a Boat.” The band was good, but he wondered when Ryan had become a Lyle Lovett fan. Or maybe Emily Ann was the one.
“I very much doubt it’s yours,” said Sebastian, suddenly furious, tightening his grip on the duffel and the pillow. “You’re a liar and a thief and you need help.”
Jill pulled back, doubt in her eyes. Before she could come up with a retort, the wedding planner was at their sides, gently extricating the pillow from Sebastian’s grasp. “This needs to go back in the house,” she said gently, as if calming frightened children. “Where it came from.”
Jill and Sebastian both looked at her dumbly.
“The rental house,” said the wedding planner, pointing behind them. “I’ll put it back where it belongs.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian.
The wedding planner nodded. She was pretty and wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He liked the way she stood before them with authority but no meanness. He wondered if she had a boyfriend.
The band segued into another song, something about skinny legs—that was its title too, Sebastian was fairly sure. The bassist, he remembered now, was Emily Ann’s brother.
Jill looked as if she was about to cry after the wedding planner left the tent, the small pillow wedged under her arm. She turned away and began stuffing the other purloined objects back into her duffel. Sebastian met the gazes of their cousins, each having watched the scene in silence.
Mickey, the youngest, finally spoke up. “Man, you guys never change.” His laugh was rueful.
9
The psychic had been told to set up in a small room off the foyer, but no one came to see her, and after forty-five minutes of sitting alone with her phone on silent and no signs of life in the hall, she realized they’d changed their minds about needing her services but hadn’t bothered to tell her. The one fortunate thing was they’d paid two-thirds of her fee in advance and the other third she’d insist on collecting before she went home.
Out the window she could see a large tent lit from within, people silhouetted as they moved around inside. A song she recognized but didn’t know the name of filtered in through the open window, and she closed her eyes for a moment before she stood up and went into the hall. She passed two servers, both in spotless white button-downs and knee-length black skirts, carrying metal trays loaded with soiled cake plates.
The psychic wondered if there was any cake left, and a minute later, when she slipped into the tent, she saw the bride and groom embarking on their first dance as a married couple. She studied the bride’s hopeful face and the groom’s less hopeful face and recognized that he was more afraid of the future than his bride was, but the psychic thought they might outlast his ambivalence and depression (as yet undiagnosed) and the bride’s bad habits with money. Except the past was pulling at him particularly hard, which was often the case with grooms. In her experience, the secrets men guarded most closely were rooted in nostalgia and sentimentality. Much would depend on whom they decided to let into the marriage and whom they kept out. Their families were dark vortices swirling around them—trouble, pain, resentment, confusion.
This was nothing new. Even though her own family was small and most of its members were now in the ground, she could still feel her mother’s gaze upon her from beyond the grave, the impassive crow on the high branch staring down at her in silent judgment.
The cake was delicious—chocolate with vanilla icing and fresh raspberries in between layers. The psychic ate greedily, having skipped dinner because she’d hoped to be showered with leftovers from the wedding banquet. She’d predicted this poorly, however, and although she’d been certain before she set out for this job in her little red Fiat (a car she loved as much as any person she’d ever known) that the night would feature some surprises, she hadn’t been able to foresee what kind. Her own future was generally a fog to her, whereas other people’s future successes and disappointments were often discernible, like shapes in the clouds, as she’d discovered in college when, one drunken night around Halloween, her roommate dragged her to see a tarot card reader, who, after laying out the cards, looked at the psychic and told her she had the gift too. At the time, the psychic had laughed it off, but the tarot reader was undeterred. “Don’t mock your gift,” he said. “It’s as much a part of you as your spine.”
As she savored the last bite of cake, she watched the wedding planner approach her from the other side of the tent. The wedding planner did not, as the psychic expected, shoo her back into the house. “Would you tell my fortune?” she asked shyly.
“Follow me,” said the psychic with a nod, before leading the wedding planner out of the tent, down the flagstone path to the back door, and into her temporary room. She motioned for the wedding planner to sit on one of the two velvet cushions she’d arranged on the floor nearly an hour ago.
The wedding planner settled onto a cushion, tucking her slim legs beneath her, her expression timidly expectant. The psychic sat down across from her and reached for her hand, turning it palm up. She peered in silence at the wedding planner’s soft pink skin with its forking lines, several seconds passing before she said, “Let me see your other hand.”
The wedding planner offered it with a nervous laugh. “I don’t know how much I believe in any of this.”
“We all want answers to questions we doubt anyone has the answers to, but we ask them anyway.” She traced the younger woman’s left-hand lifeline and looked into her face. She sensed the wedding planner’s kindness, and the fact she had less self-interest than the psychic expected of someone in her line of work. “Your mother died not long ago,” she said.
The wedding planner blinked. “Did someone tell you?”
The psychic shook her head. “No one told me. There’s someone here you should get to know better. You’ve already met him,” she said. “Your father’s ill but he’ll get better. You should say no more often than you do.”
“My father’s ill?” said the wedding planner, alarmed.
“Make him go to the doctor. There’s still enough time.”
The wedding planner gave her a stricken look. “I can’t lose him so soon after my mother. If no one has the answers to our questions, why are you pretending you do?”
“I’m not pretending. What I said was we doubt anyone has the answers. That doesn’t mean no one does.”
The wedding planner hesitated before she said, “Is the man I’m supposed to meet the brother of the groom?”
The psychic nodded. “That’s my impression.”
“I’m not sure I want to get mixed up in this.”
“You’ll figure out what to do.”
The wedding planner did not look convinced. “Let me get the remainder of your payment,” she said. “And after that, you’re free to go unless you want to stay and listen to the band.”
The psychic didn’t ask why the bride and groom had changed their minds about hiring her. It wasn’t the first time a client had gotten cold feet, but usually they did not make her wait so long before telling her she could leave.
The moon was visible above the treetops as she made her way back to her car. Someone had left a flyer for a doughnut shop under a windshield wiper. The psychic folded it up and put it in her shoulder bag. Other drivers had thrown theirs onto the pavement. Down the street, a woman stared at her phone as her dog sniffed at the base of a tree, her face ghostly in the phone’s thin light. The psychic had made six hundred dollars for two hours of her time. Her mother had called her a grifter, never once taking it back. Some people would not love you, or not love you enough, no matter what you did. The sooner you understood that, the psychic knew, the better off you’d be.
In school, my favorite books were either banned or censored from my school and public libraries. Books like Stephen Bantu Biko’s I Write What I Like, Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy, and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother. I learned something blandly boring and yet extraordinarily potent in those books: Black folks’ tall and full humanity could be captured on the page. Like a 3-D photograph. What a dangerous idea.
And as revolutionary as those books were, it took me entering woman-country to see their own form of conformity, their pattern of patriarchal blindness. They were all books by men. All men. Always men. Even at an all-girls’ high school, what we read on the sly wasn’t Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel laureate whose work openly criticized our racist society, or Bessie Head, who grandmothered modern Southern African letters. We read men. How much more dangerously liberated would we have become, as grown women, if we’d seen our girlish humanity fleshed in full on the page?
Hard to say. What I can say is I know who and how I want to be when I grow up—the kind of dangerously liberated woman who’d emerge from a mashup of the greatest Black women writers. That roll-call is long and lustrous and gave me the courage to write Innards, my debut short story collection about everyday Black folks processing the savagery of apartheid.
Meanwhile, here’s 6 Black women Southern African writers to read right now. Plus one token white writer, to honor a tradition of how literary lists have long celebrated “we, the women.”
NoViolet Bulawayo’s language cackles like lightning and is equal to characters wrought with an indelible imprint. I still think about Darling and her scruffy crew of friends living in the shadows of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Darling eventually leaves Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Stina for America. But this is no happy Coming to America cliche. Darling’s U.S. misadventures offer a sharp portrayal of her new land’s allergy to blackness and its ignorance of what she left behind in Africa—that great big unknowable country. This book’s fiery language gave me permission to fully inhabit Innards’ characters as they speak, without constant translation for the white gaze. Also check out Bulawayo’s most recent novel, Glory.
Prof. Gqola deftly unpacks how rape is baptized as a normal, if insidious, part of everyday culture in a country founded on the “trauma of slavery and sexual subjection.” She reroutes the reader to the roots of rape culture in South Africa’s “architecture of slave-ordered Cape Colony” and links these beginnings with an intersectional analysis of a today’s rape crisis. This book matters in a culture haunted by monster mutations, like corrective gang rapes (violations against queer bodies to “correct” their sexuality) and Jacob Zuma, whose trial on accusations of rape didn’t stop him from becoming president. Sound like another leader you know? Or another country whose wealth is rooted in the rape of Black women?
Antjie shot to global literary fame, Hollywood film inclusive, for this unflinching look at the open and active wound of apartheid’s trauma. Writing about her own great white reckoning as a reporter covering the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, Krog does not spare the reader any intimacies of how Black bodies were maimed, electrocuted and finished by her fellow Afrikaaners—men who could’ve been, as Krog admits, her own brothers or uncles or neighbors. It’s also part of a large body of books I researched in shaping the texture and political milieu of Innards. Reading County of My Skull left my body retching, clutching the toilet bowl. Not an easy or light recommendation, but then again, South Africa’s genocidal past is nobody’s easy picnic basket.
Zambia is a vast and large open country. Fitting then, that a novel about this place would stuff every kind of storytelling magic within its spine. Strange historical fiction, check. Concrete science fiction, check. Tender and broken love story between man and woman, woman and child? Double check. This epic novel has it all, plus a Greek tragedy-styled chorus of mosquitoes to boot! The moments where Serpell really soars are grounded in good old fashioned storytelling. Years after reading, I can still vividly see Thandi on a bus, leaving Vic Falls. I still feel her loneliness, lying next to her strayed husband, Dr. Lee Banda, who’s in love with a sex worker. It’s no wonder Serpell is the kind of writer who makes hot-shot lists like President Barack Obama’s Best Books of 2022 for her sophomore act, The Furrows.
Sisonke’s memoir takes you through the many places her family made home as displaced people, exiled from apartheid South Africa. There’s Zambia, where her mother supports the family while her father tends an armed struggle. There’s Canada, where Sisonke gets a crash course in white suburban racism and later Kenya, where she confronts her own class privilege. And after college at Macalester, Minnesota, there’s South Africa—a faraway promised land she’s spent her whole life imagining. Spoiler alert, there is no shangri-la in the promised land. Instead, Sisonke is met by a messily beautiful homeland that rips her heart open with its vibrant and violent potency. “South Africa doesn’t need heroes.” Sisonke offers. “She needs the best type of friends—those who bear witness.”
These poems ruptured onto South African shores like a hurricane so loud and drunk on its own power that it sounds like the centuries-long white noise of the very silence Koleka wants to talk about. The poems touch a tender tinder box of living questions about Blackness, queerness, class, color and neo-colonialism in cutting text that challenges the reader’s complicity in oppression, while offering a praise song for our ancestors. No Easter Sunday for Queers asks, “…why is it that there is no Easter Sunday for queer bodies/When lesbians are crucified like Christ?” Each poem smacks us out of our collective amnesia, biting back with a brilliant and urgent look at South Africa today.
NoVuyo Rosa Tshuma’s debut novel moves with the deep and muscular intelligence of an all-seeing, fully conscious octopus.
Abednego and Agnes Mlambo’s son, Bukhosi is missing. Their lodger Zamani seems helpful with their search. But really, Zamani wants to replace Bukhosi, so he plots and schemes his way into taking up residence in the heart space of the Mlambos. This plot—thick with the absurd–is a deft match for the even more absurd reality that House of Stone’s characters embody, living as they are in an increasingly desperate Zimbabwe.
The book sweeps through Zimbabwe’s neon-shocks of history, from Cecil Rhodes’ 1890s pillaging of a whole subcontinent, to Bob Marley famously serenading a newly free Zimbabwe at its 1980 independence celebrations, followed by Mugabe’s 1983 genocide of Ndebele people, Gukurahundi. This book deserves a patient and languid reader. It’ll leave you as eager as I am for Tshuma’s sophomore novel—Digging Stars—out fall of 2023.
A cover is all about disclosure. A cover may encase a book but its purpose is to encourage readers to pry open its pages. A cover is as much an invitation as it is a revelation. This I’ve long understood in the abstract, but it wasn’t until the design proofs for my own came in that I realized just how literal that would feel. With its warm orange-yellow hue staring back at me, The Male Gazedcover was an arresting reminder that I’d written an entire book about desire and masculinity (there was a male torso on full display asking you to lust after it) filtered through my own experience (there was that “taught me” line in the magenta-colored subtitle right atop my own bolded name). All of this gave me pause: if every cover is a promise, I realized that what I’d be asking of my readers was precisely the kind of welcome ogling my prose dissected through its many chapters. On a more frivolous note, that image of a shirtless man wearing only a chain around his neck made me uneasy for a wholly different reason: I knew close friends would inquire whether, narcissist that I can sometimes be, I had posed for my own cover.
The reason such a question wouldn’t feel unwarranted (and hasn’t, for I’ve fielded it several times already) is that one of my more unorthodox long term hobbies has been collaborating with photographers. I’ve dropped trou in New York City office spaces on sunlit weekends and on sun-kissed mornings in my Hollywood apartment in a jockstrap; I’ve attended a World Naked Gardening Party where images that were of me and a Monstera leaf still give me pause, and a naked games night where a photo of me playing Twister wearing nothing but the shame of a second place finish. Some are striking in their simplicity (atop a stripped bed with a sheet serving as a makeshift prop to barely cover my so-called privates), others in their artistic ambition (against a pink furry backdrop mirroring a famous Playboy cover). Many have been taken with digital cameras and iPhones at the ready, their candid nature capturing me at my most unguarded, laughing gleefully at some already forgotten quip. But others have found me posing for polaroids and decades’ old cameras that required me to sit still for minutes at a time, revealing how rarely I smile unprompted when faced with such a lens.
To open that Google Drive folder (“Photographs: Manuel” ) is to run through the gamut of my amateur modeling career. I began that journey as a way to see myself anew; to find others who would gaze at me through their lens the way I’d gazed at men in underwear ads, sexy magazine photo shoots, and increasingly thirst-trappy Instagram posts. In hopes, I guess, of being able to wield whatever confidence boost I’d get from them in my day to day life. I yearned to find ways of feeling wanted and to find power in letting myself be so desired—you know, the very thing my book is all about. Then again, it would have been too on the nose, perhaps, to have fed the amazing creative team over at Catapult any one of the many tasteful nudes I’ve taken over the years and have it adorn a book that became, in its writing, a begrudging autobiography of sorts.
I began that journey as a way to see myself anew.
The working title for this cultural criticism-cum-personal-essay collection was “Thirst for Men.” I thought it playfully centered the elusive if titillating concept of “thirst” in a project about what it means to desire men, all while spoofing that needless “for men” branding that so litters beauty product marketing and which reinforces the idea that vanity is inherently a decidedly not-for-men practice. My partner at the time hated this title, groaning quite accurately that it was much too clumsy. It required too much explanation, he pointed out; the last thing a title needs. My agent similarly found it wanting. He encouraged me to find an alternative, one that would capture the key question at the heart of the book: Do I want him or do I want to be him? That’s how The Male Gazed came to be. Even without the cheeky nod to that famed Julia Mulvey essay, I enjoyed landing on an expression that used the elasticity of tenses to anchor the wordplay I so love deploying all throughout the book.
Such a shift in tone had an added benefit; it stressed how much more personal the overall pieces had become since I first scribbled essay ideas in a notebook back in the summer of 2019. When I first dreamed up what became The Male Gazed, true to my academic roots, my voice was rather impersonal. I moved through my prose like a hidden puppeteer of my own thoughts and arguments. You could see it was me behind the many discussions around how masculinity was an armor that trafficked in its own invisibility. But you didn’t really get much sense of who I was or why this topic so fascinated me. At the urging (or, really, encouragement) of my agent and editor alike, the essays began to feel more memoiristic. Childhood memories of going to the movies became cornerstones in discussions around Disney princes; angered tantrums led the way to a chapter about how I grew up on a steady diet of Japanese anime—even my own coming out story makes a cameo amid a meditation on the queer and queered futures that movies like The Fifth Element help us imagine. Such personal disclosures, I told myself while writing them out, were a means to an end. They were necessary anchors in what I still wanted to consider a work of cultural criticism. It was only when I stepped back and examined them together that I saw just how much of myself I’d poured into those pages. The title ended up being even more revealing than the cover: I am the male who gazed, but also the man who is and has been gazed.
I struggled a bit when first deciding to post one of the nudes a photographer in New York City had taken of me.
A central tenet of the book is the paradoxical power found in the demand to be looked at. The looker, we’re often told, is the one who wields control: they’re the ones who figure out the frame, who structure the shot, who bring in cultural strictures that strip agency of those who are ogled. They are active, and thus, in charge. But such a simplistic scheme erases the gravitational pull of those who beg to be watched, seen, looked at. What can sometimes be understood as a passive endeavor can, in fact, be quite empowering. In 2023 such a lesson feels obvious. We live in a world so guided by self-curated imagery that it may be hard to remember there was a time when we could all grow up without needing to think of ourselves as personal branding managers, where digital “walls” and “grids” didn’t double as surprisingly non-ephemeral photo albums and online vision boards cataloging our every move (and mood). It’s hard to disentangle who we present ourselves to be in our writing and how we offer ourselves to the (digital) world via candid pics or more carefully curated photos. Who among us, these days, doesn’t want to be seen? To be liked? To be favorited?
I struggled a bit when first deciding to post one of the nudes a photographer in New York City had taken of me. Back then I was a graduate student. Though I was already imagining off-ramps to a life in academia, posting that photo (in black and white, naturally), melancholy and tasteful as it was, meant forfeiting a professional kind of authority I was supposed to be nurturing in all aspects of my life. But what I’d learned from that photo session, and this is something that continues to be the case in the many that have followed (all with queer photographers, it must be noted) was the freeing sensation I felt once I let go of any shame and any embarrassment over being nude and having it so simply and unassumingly be so celebrated. That came from who and in what context I was being looked at. There was comfort, not to mention a level of titillation, to know that a fellow queer guy was the one letting me finally feel so at home in my own body. I’d say it was revelatory if such an expression didn’t feel so painfully cliché.
Realizing just how self-revealing The Male Gazed’s title and cover are, I can’t help but feel ill-equipped about inviting such a readerly gaze. And how much anxiety I’m experiencing as I muster up the courage to allow myself to be so emotionally vulnerable—so naked on the page, if you will. Perhaps this would have been different if I’d decided to write an autobiographical project from the start. I’d have known what to expect, of myself and of my readers. Instead, I find the prospect of having shown so much of myself rather daunting, embarrassing, even. Therein lies, perhaps, the most personal revelation of the entire project: I’ve long armed and hid myself in criticism. In pop culture, even. It was easier to dissect the way telenovelas spoke to my sense of self as a teenager than to really evaluate what such prime time lessons taught me about my own frail grasp on socially-sanctioned masculinities, the kind I coveted and feared in equal measure. The Male Gazed ended up being a call to finally strip down.
As writers we offer up our work in hopes it’ll find an audience. Or, at the very least (or, most, as the case may be) a generous attentive reader who’ll savor our sentences with gusto and turn our ideas over in their heads with grace. My chastely erotic scenario—where I’ve come to think of my book as a naked version of myself, a nude in prose that makes me sound like an acolyte of Frank O’Hara’s “Personism”—is ultimately a humbling prospect. To ask to be read, after all, is to ask to be seen. An ask as emboldening as it is terrifying. Best then, to see it as freeing as I found those nude photoshoots; a chance to let others see me as I am, as I was, as I could still be.
Women’s achievements have long been overlooked in the annals of history, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of science. When I first began digging into the history of nineteenth-century geology for my novel Our Hideous Progeny, I was shocked to find how many women were actually working in the field, considering how scarcely their names crop up in textbooks. Without access to formal education, many of these women either taught themselves or became involved in science by acting as assistants to their male relatives, learning on the job and often making significant discoveries in their own right. Indeed, many well-known and prolific scientists in recent history were enabled by women, who acted not only as their lab assistants and scientific illustrators, but also as their editors, translators, housekeepers, child-minders, and travel agents.
Even now, many women around the world are still denied access to education, and female scientists and academics have had to fight every step of the way for access to the same pay and recognition as their male peers. Although there is still a long way to go, modern historians, writers, and crowd-sourced efforts like Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons have made considerable progress in finally recognizing the women scientists whose work has long been overlooked.
As a nonbinary person and former engineering student, uncovering the real diversity of the history of science has always been important to me. The vast majority of scientists I read about as a child, in history books and in the science fiction stories I loved, were straight, cisgendered men; it took me years to discover Ada Lovelace, Katherine Johnson, Sally Ride, James Barry, and other role models who broke the mold. So, when I realized that I wanted to write a book that combined my love for nineteenth-century science with Frankenstein—transposing the fascinating themes of Mary Shelley’s classic into the turbulent world of 1850s paleontology—I knew that my main character had to be a Mary, not a Victor. Fortunately, Mary is in fantastic company, as novels honoring the work of women in science are now being more frequently published. Below are just some of my favorites.
In the 1980s and the world of computer science, this story follows dual protagonists Sadie and Sam, who meet in the hospital as children and bond over a shared love of video games. Later, as college students, they meet again by chance and decide to collaborate on a video game of their own. But turning the thing they love into a means of making money means facing the prejudices of the game industry, like when a large studio offers to produce their game—but only if they make their intentionally genderless protagonist male. Not to mention, as the game becomes a runaway success and the team suffers several tragic setbacks, Sam (the male developer) becomes the public face of the project and Sadie receives little credit for the code she contributed. While neither character is without their flaws, and their relationship is complicated, Zevin brings them together for a nuanced story about the challenges of creative collaboration, the escapist power of video games, and the gendered difficulty associated with receiving one’s due.
In this compact but powerful novel, set in the decades after World War II, we meet Katherine, a young Asian American woman determined to make her place in the world of mathematics. From an early age, Katherine’s parents foster in her a love of nature and science—but after her mother abruptly abandons the family one day, Katherine buries her hurt and confusion in her studies, eventually becoming fixated on proving the notorious Riemann Hypothesis. As it turns out, however, the Riemann hypothesis and her own family history are far more entangled than she knows, and Katherine finds herself journeying across Europe in search of the truth. I adored the way that Chung depicted the struggles that women (especially women of color) face in STEM—not just outright prejudice, but also loneliness, insecurity, and a complicated mix of inspiration and envy that comes from seeing someone else like you succeeding in your field. Plus, as a fan of mathematics myself, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a character as driven and interesting as Katherine so passionate about the beauty and grace of a good equation.
This fascinating and introspective story covers the friendship of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, two real-life paleontologists of the nineteenth century. In the fossil-rich town of Lyme Regis, the Anning family made their living selling fossils to tourists and collectors, but Mary was the first in her family to appreciate the scientific importance of these objects and educate herself in paleontological classification. Elizabeth Philpot, originally from a well-to-do London family, moved to Lyme Regis and developed a fascination with fossil fish, through which she and Mary Anning forged a lifelong friendship. Chevalier does a fabulous job of exploring the religious and existential quandaries stirred up by the nascent science of paleontology, as well as the different ways in which gender and class affect the two friends’ lives: as a woman of some standing, Elizabeth is allowed scientific hobbies but will never be considered a professional; and as a working class woman, Mary is respected for her practical ability to find fossils, but never as a true contributor of scientific knowledge.
This introspective novel follows Gifty, a Ghanaian American student of neuroscience living in Alabama. Gifty’s parents immigrated to America before she was born in search of better opportunities for their future children; faced with poverty and racism, however, the family struggled, and Gifty’s father eventually returned to Ghana, claiming it was only a visit – though he never came back. Tragically, the family was wounded further when Gifty’s older brother, a talented high school athlete with a bright future ahead of him, addicted to opioids after a training injury, falling into addiction and eventually dying of a heroin overdose. Now, in the present, Gifty’s mother barely leaves her bed, near-catatonic with grief, and Gifty focuses herself on her research, trying to use science to make sense of the misfortunes her family has suffered. Compelling and full of emotion, this fascinating novel asks complex questions about grief, religion, and the workings of the human mind.
This novel follows another Elizabeth, the recently widowed Elizabeth Rocheid, who arrives in Edinburgh in the 1820s. An eager botanist and artist, she offers her services as an illustrator to capture the once-in-a-lifetime flowering of the Agave Americana plant in the city’s brand-new Botanic Garden. Along the way, Elizabeth strikes up a touching friendship with Belle Brodie, a fellow botany enthusiast (whose interest in the rare flower, however, runs in a far more commercially-exploitable direction). With plenty of cameos from famous scientists and thinkers of the era, Sheridan skillfully captures the buzz and excitement of this period of scientific history, painting a fascinating portrait of the Botanic Garden and Georgian Edinburgh as a whole.
In this fast-paced sci-fi thriller, geneticist Evelyn Caldwell is the pioneering scientist behind a new cloning technology that can be used to replicate already-existing humans with complete accuracy—at least, in terms of their physical form. When Evelyn creates a clone of herself named Martine, her husband decides that he actually prefers the personality of the clone, and leaves Evelyn for Martine. Forced to confront the ethical quandaries brought about by the technology she has created, and the long-standing flaws in her marriage, Evelyn’s life is thrown into disarray. Suspenseful yet also filled with deeper questions about personal autonomy and identity, The Echo Wife asks if we really know our loved ones as well as we think we do.
Set in an alternate 1950s in which the Eastern US is devastated by a meteorite and the resulting global warming necessitates the human colonization of space much earlier than planned, this novel follows Elma York, a brilliant mathematician and former WWII WASP pilot. Elma works as a computer at the International Aerospace Coalition (think: NASA), and despite her debilitating anxiety around reporters, her tireless campaigning for women to be included in the space program shoves her into the public eye as “The Lady Astronaut.” Kowal’s exhaustive research into the history of space travel shines in this novel, and touches on many aspects of real history, including the (sadly short-lived) female astronaut training program of the 1960s. In some ways, Kowal’s version of the 50s is almost better than ours, as the necessity for international cooperation requires that scientists of different races and nationalities be included in the space program far sooner than they were in reality. However, it is still the 1950s, and Elma’s Black colleagues, in particular, face countless obstacles. Elma, as a Jewish woman, is no stranger to prejudice herself, and finds solace throughout the difficulties she faces in her faith, community, and wonderfully supportive husband.
Beginning in the middle of a murder trial, this razor-sharp and beautifully written novel follows the life (and confessions, as the title suggests) of Frannie Langton. We meet Frannie as a domestic servant in early nineteenth-century London when she is accused of brutally killing her employers, a respected scientist and his wife—though she claims she cannot remember whether she did so or not. Through Frannie’s tense and atmospheric narration, we learn that she was originally born as a slave on a Jamaican plantation, where she was educated and taught to assist with her master’s scientific experiments, but at a terrible price. Based upon the real and horrifying history of medical experimentation on Black (and frequently enslaved) people, Collins sheds light on the ugly underbelly of nineteenth-century science, much of which was founded upon racist ideas and funded by colonialism. Evoking the best of the Gothic tradition, Collins’ prose brings Frannie (and her complicated and compelling relationship with her English mistress, Marguerite) utterly to life. I was glued to every page.
Sharp and thought provoking, Chemistry follows a young Chinese American student grappling with the expectations of academia, society, and her demanding parents. At first glance, our unnamed narrator seems to be on the perfect track to a successful and happy life: she’s studying for a PhD in chemistry, and her wonderful boyfriend just proposed marriage. But in reality, she’s overworked, riddled with stress, and unsure whether she wants to marry at all. Her PhD has already dragged on for several years—much to her and her parents’ frustration—and the question of whether she actually enjoys chemistry is impossible to disentangle from the heavy burden placed on her as a “model minority” and child of immigrant parents. Through the eyes of this anxious young student, Wang explores the immense pressure on women (particularly women of color) to prove themselves worthy of their place in academia.
One school morning in 2012, I woke up at home and alone. Everyone else was on holiday and I stayed behind by request. The class activity that day in high school was a debate about abortion. I was excited to participate – argument formulation was a strength of mine, and anything beat having homework.
Regrettably, my class schedule conflicted with another important event I was attending: my death.
I contacted my ride to school and told her that I couldn’t do it that day. I apologized for my absence, but left out the part where I planned to asphyxiate myself by noon. This wasn’t a suicide attempt with an subconscious desire to reach out for help and awareness. I had no intention of failing.
As I dragged my miserable self out of bed, a voice implored me to find help one last time. I wasn’t happy, but I struck a bargain: I would seek help one last time as a courtesy to that voice. I picked up the phone and called a suicide hotline, ready to ruin some underpaid counsellor’s morning. It rang for over a minute without a response – not even an answering machine. I put it down, thinking I had misdialed. I tried again and the same thing happened.
I had phoned a suicide hotline and nobody picked up.
When the realization hit home, I laughed – truly laughed – for the first time in weeks. The funniest point in one of the darkest periods of my life. The whole disaster put me in such good spirits that I postponed my death and skipped school for the day. I napped, and played video games, the same as any other teenaged boy would do with cherished spare time. I now had a mirthful secret: I was such a human catastrophe that I had failed my own death.
I postponed my death a few times during my teens, but this is the only story I tell to strangers. It’s the only one with any entertainment value. The other incidents aren’t funny.
I picked up the phone and called a suicide hotline, ready to ruin some underpaid counsellor’s morning.
There was the logical conclusion to my disjointed upbringing: failing at so many appointed tasks and then, failing at death.
With the privilege of hindsight and a Master’s in Psychology, I now know that fractured mental health and a critical shortage of support structures is ruinous. Tragically, I spent my formative adolescence in that whirlpool of ruinous emotions. I didn’t evade death through force-of-will or artful self-care. I avoided death because of small fortunes and a tiny spark of resistance.
May we never have to confront our killer in the mirror.
I was an auspicious creature, a thing of humble destiny that would bear my branch of the family tree forward. Chinese families often prefer boys for their value as income providers and bearers of the family name. A good education. A ‘respectable’ job (don’t tell them I did online sex work). Wife and kids. The responsibilities of Chinese masculinity mingle with the privileges. Boys are shaped into morally-upright and productive creatures who maintain their family’s face. Face. An untranslatable concept of social respectability, dignity, and public relations that governs many aspects of Chinese life.
What I’m saying is that I had a lot riding on my shoulders, and I don’t remember signing up for any of it.
Growing up, I was intimidated with stories of Chinese children failing to uphold their families’ standards. Young men who became video game-playing deadbeats; ‘good girls’ who partied their grades away at university. Chattering ladies and grandmothers endlessly compared their children to see who had the best one. Picture the javelin throw event, but the stakes are a family’s reputation and the children are the projectile. Who had the best grades? The best extracurricular record? The best musical performance? The children who left this crucible bore lasting imprints of the messages they heard. Depression, maladjusted personalities, and alcoholism. The coping mechanisms for success.
All of this was a preferable alternative to failure – becoming a failure was certainly the worst thing that could happen to a Chinese child. The ‘failures’ of my youth became cautionary tales passed to other children. Like the Titanic: doomed to serve as a warning to others. I sometimes think about a family friend whose son slipped so far that he failed a grade. I think he just needed social support. I hope he’s okay. I hope they all are.
I grew up under relentless pressure to be better than the person next to me, rather than befriend them. I bore the weight of being a Chinese boy remarkably well, considering that I was actually a girl.
May we reach our future without being twisted in someone else’s straitjacket.
By first grade, I was enrolled in visual art, dance and piano classes. My first piano teacher believed that a five-year old was too young to start. Unfortunately for her, my elders are Chinese. They knew enough stories of prodigal musicians to know that if you didn’t get your child against a grindstone early, they’d never be successful. I joined the millions of Chinese kids who were nudged (coerced) into extracurricular activities at their parents’ behest. My parents took pride in how liberal their parenting techniques were. They proudly told me that they consulted me, asking if I preferred piano or violin. They were under the impression that ‘asking’ me made it an informed decision. The fact that my five-year old brain wasn’t able to process the responsibility and expectations wasn’t considered. In adulthood, they asked why I hated it so much if I ‘chose it’. I had to explain the inability of children to give informed consent to them while sharing a pizza.
I bore the weight of being a Chinese boy remarkably well, considering that I was actually a girl.
Piano is just one of the many things I failed at during my childhood. The dance class melted away. My art class teacher politely ejected me from the class because I was too energetic for it. I wanted to draw fighting robots and she was interested in teaching still life and basic color theory. A thoughtful parent would have reconsidered their decision to enroll a child in extracurriculars that were beyond their child. These are Chinese parents, so I bore the mounting weight of familial disappointment. My upbringing was defined by my inadequacy. My failure to attain high grades. My extracurricular failures. My lack of piano achievements. My room was devoid of trophies like other children. Better children.
My body wasn’t good enough, either. The matriarchs got it into their heads that a seven-year old shouldn’t be so skinny. I was required to drink a loose fluid dotted with atolls of dusty powder—protein shakes— of a sickly vanilla flavor. Instead of turning me into the big, strong boy theywanted, I became more troublesome. I was a picky and slow eater, the way children who are forced to drink half-mixed protein shakes get picky. The way children who eat under risk of punishment eat slowly to appease their elders despite how little they’re enjoying the food.
Under threat of punishment, I learned to eat faster than anyone else at the table. When my family visits nowadays, they remark that I eat like ‘someone who has never seen food before,’ and implore me to slow down and enjoy it. I don’t even have the energy to explain the irony of this to them.
Every time I failed at an endeavor, I received a dressing-down about my shortcomings. If I was lucky, there was just an exasperated sigh. Still, the message was clear: I wasn’t good enough.
May we never be pulled away from the small things that bring us delight.
I tried to be a guy. I really did. By my teens, I was insisting to other guys that lesbian porn was the best, because it had twice the volume of women. In 10th grade, someone behind me was talking about a friend who was acting strangely. I shouted across that, “Well at least he’s not gay! It’s the gays that are the real problem!” That made me feel good, like a regular, gross teenager. They didn’t have to know that I grimaced in the mirror at home. Or that I hated compliments aimed at my broad shoulders and deepening voice. They needn’t know that I clung to my last plush toy until age seventeen – slightly ashamed of, but fiercely protective of my last ‘soft’ possession.
When I wasn’t a foreigner in my skin, I was reminded of it by the people around me. A stable feature of my childhood was being made aware of my differences. Casual remarks from classmates and passersby about my ethnicity. People asking if I ‘knew kung fu’ or was related to Jackie Chan. Casual, prejudicial ribbing from those around reminded me of my difference. I was being seen.
I once received a royal chewing-out from my grandmother for inviting two ‘ungrateful’ girls over to our house. They asked for a snack, which she considered a wildly inappropriate gesture. She encouraged me to stop befriending them. Not long after, I dared to ask a host for permission to watch TV while she tutored my cousin. Word reached my grandmother and I received an extraordinary dressing-down of my inadequacies as a human being. I never found out what I did wrong.
I was caught between Chinese and South African modes of being without an instruction manual. Each turn of the Earth made me more accustomed to the idea that I was a poor fit for my body and a poor fit for my life. Being alienated from society is familiar to most of us sometime or the other. Bodily alienation is a bit harder to grasp, even when you’re living in it. We all get ambushed by negative thoughts about our bodies, but the disconnection brought by dysphoria is truly alien. Even after a vibrant and successful gender transition, it hasn’t fully left me.
May we all graduate from our rental bodies to something that truly feels like home.
Every gender transition is different.
Mine started off exactly unsurprisingly: my mouth outran my brain. And before my brain had a chance to put a lid on it – to rationalize it away – I told my girlfriend Lucy that I might be trans. We blinked at each other in a feeble effort to process the gravity of what was just said. My mouth never paused to ask my brain for forgiveness. It still doesn’t, and I respect its enthusiasm. It was swift and resolute.
The year was 2020. There wasn’t much to do during lockdown other than make earth-shattering personal journeys and complain about life’s proceedings. My girlfriend ended her lifelong nail-biting habit. I realized that I’m transgender during lockdown. I’d say these were equally substantial events.
I was caught between Chinese and South African modes of being without an instruction manual.
I must have been insufferable during those early weeks, because the dam had broken, and all I could think or talk about was transition. I cooked up a schedule for transitioning: I would research for the next few months so that I could be extra sure about it. I would consider starting hormone replacement therapy in 2021 and let it work for three or four years. Then, I’d gradually make femininity a full-time thing. This was an orderly and steadily-paced transition that gave Lucy and I plenty of space to adjust.
Turns out, there’s no planning for reality. I was out of the closet to everyone in my social circle in two months (oops!). I started hormones in 2020, a year ahead of my plan. I was a full-time girl by the end of 2021. So, several years faster than expected. I was incorrigible. I studied every change to my physicality in joyful fascination. I wondered what the next change would be. How would I look once the body fat settled? How would my breasts turn out? Would people still like me? My internal monologue sounded like an adolescent girl – which in fairness, I sort of was.
I didn’t go into my transition blind to the trials that women face. In 2016, I was a crossdressing man in exploration, a tourist in femininity. I did so with the love and support of my friends. I was quickly exposed to the street harassment and nightclub groping that come with feminine presentation. When I started my transition, these experiences were a core part of the ruthless arithmetic of whether this was ‘worth it’. I was one of the few ‘men’ who had first-hand experience of some of the misogynies that women face. Was I willing to take up those experiences and shed the safety of manhood?
May we all be gifted with the determination to craft our best selves.
I noticed it quickly: the second glances and lingering looks. My anxiety said that people were ogling the broad-shouldered ogre man-lady who will never be a girl. My anxiety is kind of a dick.
With time, those negative thoughts were dispelled for the acrid illusion they were. Eventually, ‘positive’ confirmations of my femininity appeared. Drivers were much more polite to me at pedestrian crossings. I received offers for assistance with my groceries. Men were much more amenable to making chit-chat with me. People saw a woman and acted accordingly.
Success.
My internal monologue sounded like an adolescent girl – which in fairness, I sort of was.
Happiness bloomed in me. Society now saw the person I wanted them to see. Still, I mourned the men who society largely treats as unworthy of assistance or attention. I don’t see how things would be worse if we offered to help men with their groceries a bit.
My confidence escalated, but so did the attention. My girlfriend steadfastly told me that I wasn’t just any woman, but a beautiful woman. I entered the pandemic as a lanky young man with a penchant for baggy clothes, and escaped as a stately young woman. The physical traits that I found ill-fitting for manhood were now prized: thinness, long limbs, soft facial features. Men asked for my number. There was an occasional whistle or comment as I walked past (ugh).
I wasbeing read as a woman. As many trans people would say, I ‘passed’. This wasn’t a test like my childhood weight or piano recitals. It was self-imposed. I signed up for it, and I succeeded.
From now on, this is how it would be.
This new gaze of society – one reserved for beautiful Asian women – unsettled me. I didn’t consider myself beautiful. My anxiety and wounded self-esteem always assured me otherwise. However, others thought so. Strangers are inexplicably more polite to me despite no change in my behavior. Every time I’ve been asked on a date was post-transition. The unwanted compliments are a torrent. Being so vividly seen took me back to my childhood, but the jeering had been replaced with hungry second glances.
There’s a word for that. Trans people talk about gender euphoria – the unbridled joy of having our gender affirmed. But, this was gender ewphoria: the disconcerting half-happiness of one’s gender being affirmed in a harmful way. A trans woman encounters street harassment for the first time, but feels her femininity affirmed despite it being sexual harassment. A trans man is invited to participate in casually misogynistic conversation because he’s now one of the boys. Gender ewphoria.
‘Passing’ has its consequences. Even success has shortcomings, but it’s always worth it. That’s what makes it success.
May we please be affirmed for our beautiful selves in ways that aren’t gross.
Starting antidepressants didn’t cure my paired anxiety and depression. They took on the burden so that I could better uphold my daily life. Gender transition was the same. It freed up mental capacity previously occupied by the need to endure my incompatible body. With that alignment, I could focus my resilience on other endeavors.
Being so vividly seen took me back to my childhood.
Masculinity taught me much, not all of it good. It taught me hardness and suppression. I politely abided and suppressed my tears, my interest in men, and my femininity, to name a few. By the time people stopped telling me to bury myself, the lessons were entrenched and I perpetuated them myself. There was a lot of digging to do. With my newfound energy, I confronted parts of myself that I’d driven into the ground. One by one, I decided their fate.
My masculine upbringing taught me independence, assertiveness, and emotional resilience. A keeper, but I sanded down the hardest edges. My insular, nerdy-boy childhood formed a love for military history, scale model making and video games. Keep! But, let’s augment them with the feminine interests that I was always too afraid to try: cultivating my wardrobe and collecting plush toys.
But the eating disorder? That had to go.
It was anchored in my childhood diets. My family disciplined me for being a ‘fussy’ and slow eater. As a child, I was fed protein shakes because my body was too weedy. By my teens, this overbearing watch was replaced by apathy – I could eat whatever I want, whenever I wanted and nobody cared anymore. Great idea, right?
My understanding of what constituted healthy eating has always been lacking. My childhood primed me for an unhealthy relationship with food. However, that didn’t spawn an eating disorder. I needed motivation. One final push. It came in 2015, during my crossdressing cis-man era. My tourism in femininity showed me the joy of seeing my feminine form (euphoria), but I noticed a few squishy parts. Areas that could be a little ‘leaner’, or where my clothes could fit a little ‘better’.
One final push.
I didn’t have the language to make sense of dysphoria, euphoria, or men’s eating disorders in 2015. I just let my mind dictate this new path – just vibin’, if you will. I lost an alarming amount of weight by starving myself, and kept it off for over a year by force of will. I accepted a constant state of exhaustion and daily headaches as the price for my goal body—a feminine body. It never occurred to me to ask why a ‘cisgender man’ would crave a feminine body. I wasn’t eating enough to form such big thoughts.
This downward spiral only stopped when I was confronted with the reality of my situation: I was at a dangerously low weight and I wasn’t looking more feminine. I was just gaunt. Pallid in the face, and struggling to focus in my lectures. The pendulum swung in the opposite direction and I binge-ate to regain the weight. I declared this episode over when my weight returned. I was under the mistaken impression that eating disorders were just about weight.
My transition was marked by near misses and short relapses. I nearly relapsed when I dug up my old feminine wardrobe to see how the clothes fit. They didn’t. I did the smart thing and thrifted them away before I let Size S become a ‘body goal’. I relapsed when I visited Lucy’s family home and was surrounded by women who had complex (read: terrible) relationships with weight, and also unable to maintain my eating schedule. At work, someone remarked on my thinness and I later watched her scrape the chocolate icing from her cupcake before starting on it. I ate briskly and left, before those thoughts came back.
I was at a dangerously low weight and I wasn’t looking more feminine.
When my mother saw the new me for the first time, she said that I was too skinny and I had to eat more. There it is; ewphoria. No tradition in a Chinese family is more hallowed than making inappropriate remarks about a daughter’s weight. I knew at that moment that she saw a daughter in me. Still, Lucy had to talk me out of cutting down on my next meals.
Wicking away the pain of my past in careful, measured movements. Small, incremental successes chipped by the occasional failure. This is the trajectory of my eating disorder recovery.
May we all liberate ourselves from the pain that marks our body.
Most people who want to kill themselves don’t actually want to die. Dying is anathema to our body’s every interest. What we actually want is a quiet end to the suffering. Unfortunately, we know that such a thing can never pass, so dying becomes an adequate facsimile.
I was a frightened, lonely boy. I had finally been burdened with too much trauma – bodily, psychologically, socially. The scripts of inadequacy and manhood gave me none of the agency to cope with it. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to go away. I’ll never know what pressed me to each new day during those years, but I’m glad it happened.
In 2015, I escaped my childhood to a university hundreds of miles away. That university experience shaped me into the woman I am today. Even better than shaping me into this woman, it gave me the courage to pick the threads of my past apart in search of that lonely child. In the recesses of inadequacy and trauma-memory, I found the definitive reward for the life I built. I gave the suicidally depressed boy-I-was what he wanted most: a conclusion.
By transitioning, I relegated him to the past tense. I released his life into the realm of memory. I ended his pain.
I didn’t have to take his life to accomplish it.
This is joyful beyond words.I am one of the few people who was able to put their suicidal self to rest without the horror of taking a life. That is prettier than living in a body I can call home and striding the world as my truest self.
I am proud of that shaken and bewildered boy for enduring his world while still trying his best.
I am proud of him for giving up his life piece-by-piece to shield a woman he didn’t know.
May he rest peacefully in the knowledge that it was worth it.
I am one of the few people who was able to put their suicidal self to rest without the horror of taking a life.
I empathize with trans people who want to relegate their past selves to oblivion. But this is my story and I’m obliged to make room for the sacrifices my past self made. I remember him for the courageous child that he was, even if he never believed it. He bore guilt for every test he supposedly failed, and he was nearly overcome. Only with the freedom of adulthood and recovery did I learn that sometimes, the bar for success is set at survival. It’s the only bar that really mattered to my younger self, and he upheld it.
No undertaking can affirm my agency as much as undergoing an adolescence of my choosing. Nothing can match the bliss of awarding my past self the accolades and rest he earned.
This delight – the embodiment of my euphoria deserved a name.
Her name is Summer.
I named her for the warmth roiling in her heart, the prosperity in her smile, and the unbound hope in every step she takes.
May we all be privileged enough to have a name that fits perfectly.
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