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Memoir

Arts in Society

The Millions

“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.

Arts in Society

Caring in Viral Times

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

Global Justice

Mourning in Tehran

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.

Gender & Sexuality

Translation

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

Race

Black Bereavement, White Condolences

“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

Class & Inequality, Politics

A Politics of the Future

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.

Race

The Privilege of the Ally

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

Arts in Society

Mercy Hours

On being awestruck by literature, and the necessary pleasures of intimacy—near and remote—during quarantine.

Gender & Sexuality

Love One Another or Die

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?

Arts in Society

Walks in the Park: On the Foreignness of the Socialist Past

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

Arts in Society

The Origins of Sexual Healing

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.

Arts in Society

Lenny Boy

A personal essay on family, death, and the healing power of music.

Peter E. Gordon

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