Issue 3.2

On the Cover 3.2

Édouard Manet’s painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) has inspired multiple homages since its scandalizing debut in 1863. You’ve seen it: two overdressed men (dandies) join a totally nude woman/prostitute (likely the model, muse, and artist Victorine Meurent) for a picnic while another woman/prostitute in a slip crouches behind them in knee-high water. The male figures gaze into an indeterminate distance, but our nude looks at—or at least toward—the viewer with a

Read More »

Editor’s Letter 3.2

Dear Readers, This is the long-awaited “Fall 2024” issue arriving in January 2025. Here is part of the reason why—in addition to the arbitrariness of print publishing deadlines in the current era, the second half of 2024 contained more panic, rupture, and change than any previous year of my life: a sudden divorce, urgent move, dropping off son at college, overseeing son’s leaving said college, spending half the week as writer-in-residence at Smith and the

Read More »

Poetry Comment 3.2

I love it when a poem teaches me something I didn’t know about the endless strangeness of our human past. I had never heard of chicken skin gloves before reading Evangeline Riddiford Graham’s wonderful poem about them. All the rage in Europe from the eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, the gloves were intended to soften and whiten the hands of aristocratic ladies, and were made not out of actual chicken skin (phew—that does sound rather gross)

Read More »

Letter to the Editor 3.2

To the editor of LIBER, I knew I was gonna love Jessica Baumgardner’s piece about Catherine Newman’s novel Sandwich (“Flesh and Blood,” volume 3, issue 1), and then I loved it even way more than that. The writing about Jessica’s inner life and relationship to her family is so vivid—it all resonates and shows me things I might have missed otherwise. (Like, a 4:30 p.m. rage hour is a thing?!) I loved what she says

Read More »

Words Fail: An Interview with JinJin Xu

JinJin Xu. What Would You Hear If You Could? #8: Against This Earth, We Knock. Site-specific installation. Old pots (collected in JiangYong), coal ashes (collected in JiangYong), resin, mechanical installation, 2024. Photo courtesy of How Art Museum. Since 2017 JinJin Xu’s head has been full of voices. What the voices are saying is impossible to summarize. Here are some fragments: I tried to feel this is my home.I don’t think I am a foreigner.I hope she’s

Read More »

Thoughts on the Long Road to Regaining Abortion Rights

On June 26, 2024, a group of feminists whose work focuses on all things reproductive gathered to begin strategizing for the long term about how to regain the rights lost by the Dobbs decision. Our group ranged in age from seventeen to seventy-eight and included a journalist, a playwright, three actors, a novelist, two lawyers, a doctor, and the founder of a women’s health clinic. We started the meeting with a scene from Rose of

Read More »

A Feminist Ethic of Silence

During the twelve-month gap between undergrad at Penn and postgraduate studies at Harvard Divinity School, one year into my Buddhist practice, I felt it was the right time for a five-day silent meditation retreat. I had heard from other practitioners how transformational sustained silence could be, although more seasoned enlightenment seekers cautioned me to go into the experience with as few expectations as possible.  The retreat center in western Massachusetts implored us to put away

Read More »

“Gloves” and “Scouring Pad”

Gloves In another century he gives her a pair of chicken skin gloves. Chicken skin gloves, dark cream from the top of the bottle, worn so close the ripples of her cuticles show through—fine gloves, rolled up inside a walnut shell and carried with a ribbon. Chicken skin gloves. Draped over a mouth, they soften a beard, take the bristle out of a goodnight kiss. How’s this? Wear them to bed, your hands age free

Read More »

“Liars: A Novel” by Sarah Manguso

In both her 2016 and 2018 Netflix comedy specials, Ali Wong was seven months pregnant. In both, she wore skintight minidresses in wild prints. She looked feral, grouchy, and ready to spring. It was striking. Her latest, Single Lady, is about her life after divorcing her husband of ten years. She wears a bow-necked white maxi dress/nightgown. Only her arms are exposed, and the look conveys someone older, richer, and more powerful—more Goop—than the Wong

Read More »

‘Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs’ By Judith Barrington

There is a gorgeous moment in Judith Barrington’s new book where she helps Adrienne Rich into a hot tub. It’s a vulnerable moment between two women, just one of many in Barrington’s collection of linked essays. Each written to stand alone, together the fourteen short memoirs offer an exhilarating ride through second wave feminist London in the 1960s and ’70s, as well as providing highlights from the influential women’s movement in the Pacific Northwest during

Read More »

Sign-up to receive our occasional newsletter, updates, and offers!

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.