Issues Archives - Page 7 of 26

The Thread: On ‘Judy Chicago: Herstory’ at The New Museum, New York, NY October 12, 2023–March 3, 2024

Jennifer Baumgardner

Judy Chicago, 2023. Photo by Donald Woodman. Here’s an origin story for you. Just as America was emerging from the Great Depression, a progressive Jewish couple from Chicago, Arthur and May Cohen, welcomed their first red diaper baby: Judy. Six years later, when Judy was home alone with her little brother, she heard a knock at the door and opened it to two FBI agents. When May arrived home, she found the men interrogating her

‘SLUTS: Anthology’ Edited by Michelle Tea

Tara Perkins

Convinced that the vast volume of murder podcasts I was listening to was making me both dumber and more paranoid, I recently made a major intellectual upgrade and tried out . . . murder audiobooks. The kind of terrible women’s psychological thrillers that usually feature secret pasts, betrayals, specious plots, spouses who are not who they seem to be, etc. So some miscellaneous Lisa Unger was the soundtrack to my dish washing and laundry folding

Plastic Love: On Face Surgery

Kian Braulik

The Mrs. Doubtfire house in 2008. Ousterhout purchased the house in 1997. Photo by Jodie Wilson. In the 1993 trans polemic Mrs. Doubtfire, Daniel Hillard (played by Robin Williams) confesses to a family court judge why he pretended to be an older British governess unwittingly employed by his ex-wife. “I’m addicted to my children, sir. I love them with all my heart, and the idea of someone telling me I can’t be with them, I

‘A Termination’ By Honor Moore

Mya Spalter

In 1969, while a grad student at Yale, the renowned poet and nonfiction author Honor Moore became unexpectedly pregnant. Today, she teaches poetry at the New School and is the author of several award-winning books, as well as the co-editor of Library of America’s 2021 volume collecting the greatest hits of the second wave. At the time of the pregnancy, though, she was not really aware of the burgeoning feminist movement and was by her

Sanora Babb

Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Sanora Babb. Photo by Don Ornitz; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. Courtesy of Joanne Dearcopp For the last several years, I’ve been working on a biography of the writer Sanora Babb (1907–2005), a rebel for any age and master of reportage who is today basically forgotten. Raised poor in eastern Colorado and the Panhandle of Oklahoma, Babb’s métier was humanistic portrayals of inhumanely treated workers. Babb reported on the dangerous conditions at the Hoover dam

Let Me Tell You What She Means: The Rebranding of Joan Didion

S. C. Cornell

We know how Joan Didion saw the world because she told us herself, quoting a psychiatrist’s report written during her 1968 breakdown: It is as though she feels deeply that all human effort is foredoomed to failure, a conviction which seems to push her further into a dependent, passive withdrawal. In her view[,] she lives in a world of people moved by strange, conflicted, poorly comprehended, and, above all, devious motivations . . . A

From ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’

Brontez Purnell

Alumni Sweater I graduated from UC Berkeley the summer of ’88 I am a crowning achievement of liberality I often wear my Berkeley sweater some thirty years after its relevance to me near as I can tell when the fabric clings to my perfect goddamn muscle daddy gym body to the rest of the world all my bullshit is rendered virtually scentless it’s a look that reads “I fuck white boys and voted for Biden”

‘Salt Lake Sonnet,’ ‘Meno Pause,’ & ‘Confidence Men’

Alissa Quart

Salt Lake Sonnet Basalt rocks, gnats, red sea, plankton, skin fried. Holy Water cafe: where blondes eat sweets. Extinction all in CAPS. All signified. Hot Dome; salt dust. Canada’s forest heats. Bible landscape. A geologist shows me some Quartzite rock—my name—also in vain. What is worth saving now; the sand, seas, Spiral Jetty & other weathervanes. Geologic time? Yet we still decay: Oil pipelines mock parks; ski lifts snark Nature Smoke; 100 degrees! More *sad face* days. Without words, we

‘Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop’ By Hwang Bo-reum, translated by Shanna Tan

Young Kim

Bloomsbury, February 2024, 320 pp. Like all first signs, it was easy to dismiss. Even more so since it came from an English teenage model. I was hanging out with her godmother during Paris fashion week about five years ago. As we left an event and passed a scrum on the streets, the girl stopped in her tracks. She’d seen a member of BTS. I was barely aware of what that was. A Korean boy

‘You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other than Love’ By Marcia A. Zug & ‘Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story’ By Leslie Jamison

Linda Simon

Steerforth, January 2024, 336 pp. Along with enticing images of gowns, news about celebrity weddings, and tips for choosing rings, a recent issue of Brides magazine offered “65 Happy Marriage Quotes that Will Inspire Every Couple.” The quotations, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Justin Timberlake, George Clooney and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, among scores of others, celebrate love, romance, and the enduring happiness that marriage can bestow. “Be married to your best friend,” Sting advises, for

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