A Political and Literary Forum
“Healing never restores us to the way we were before getting hurt.” A trip to Machu Picchu ends up offering surprising insights into what it means to be a survivor of the genocide of Native Americans.
Deborah Taffa
Indifference toward the most vulnerable has driven the death toll of COVID-19, just as it did during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Against this backdrop, even small acts of kindness can make a difference.
Michael McColly
On Ashura, Shi’a Muslims grieve the Prophet’s grandson. But with Iran crippled by COVID-19 and U.S. sanctions, it was also an occasion this year to mourn the country’s deaths from disease and despair.
Nargol Aran
Set against the backdrop of Seattle Pride, a personal meditation on trauma, loneliness, and the paradox that gay community is often both life-giving and terribly disappointing.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
“This sudden attention to the ongoing grief of black life can also feel like a slap in the face. Didn’t you notice we were dying?”
Marina Magloire
Despite the myth that deaths of the elderly are never untimely, the author mourns a friend, fifty years his senior, who succumbed to COVID-19. She taught him that a moral life entails wanting those rewards not only for yourself but for everyone.
Simon Waxman
Allies can be powerful aides to social justice movements—but it is their responsibility to make sure they don’t become a distraction from the cause.
Rigoberto González
On being awestruck by literature, and the necessary pleasures of intimacy—near and remote—during quarantine.
Peter Coviello
During the AIDS crisis, different contingents of the LGBTQ movement set aside their differences to prioritize mutual care. What can we learn from this strategy today? And why is it still so difficult to talk about AIDS?
Amy Hoffman
December 22 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Romanian socialist state of Nicolae Ceaușescu. In a work of memoir, Nachescu recalls growing up under communism and wonders about the world Romanians hoped would follow its fall.
Ileana Nachescu
Grammy winner David Ritz, who cowrote Marvin Gaye’s legendary “Sexual Healing,” recalls how the song emerged from Gaye’s struggles with faith, drug addiction, and childhood abuse.
David Ritz
A personal essay on family, death, and the healing power of music.
Peter E. Gordon
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