“There will be people who’ll cross the street to avoid you because you’re black,” my mother would tell me when I was younger, in every conversation or argument about race we ever had.
Essays
Night Cycling
Gdansk Fever
Meditating with Mabel
If You Think You’re the Best
When I ascended to the den, pliers in hand, to watch the Americans go down in Lillehammer, I knew I didn’t want to go out like them.
For a While, For the Summer
I want an example, a model for how to live independently, with the smallest bit of indifference and anonymity, without fear, for a while, for the summer.
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The Edith Wharton Inside Me
I Was 16
I was 16 in 1994. I had a crush on a girl at my high school named Stacy. She was two years older — blonde hair, a grunge band on her t-shirt and a constant half-smile on her face — and it goes without saying that she had absolutely no interest in me.
David Foster Wallace and the Velveteen Rabbit
Whore of Babel
The place in the brain where language sucks meaning can seem like nirvana.
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Birth of the Cool
My Beijing
Noise
I would have to try even harder to get back the silence, not for my own peace of mind but out of respect for the dead.
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