Essay – Page 5 – Michigan Quarterly Review

Essay

NIGHT MILK

On the subject of milk: Gayle tells me about Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, which she is able to quote readily, having read it often with her kids. I’m visiting her in Saint Louis and finally meeting her two children, who are now five and three. We’re well into the pandemic, and Gayle and […]

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On the subject of milk: Gayle tells me about Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, which she is able to quote readily, having read it often with her kids. I’m visiting her in Saint Louis and finally meeting her two children, who are now five and three. We’re well into the pandemic, and Gayle and

MOVING THE INCONSEQUENTIAL LOOP: SOMATICS, FEMINISMS

Here is a story, particular in its expression, common in its effect. In 2009, I was on a panel at an experimental writing conference hosted by the University of Buffalo, NY. The panel had been convened by a friend and writer I admire. It was titled: “Inconsequentiality: Why It’s Important.” I was presenting alongside this

MOVING THE INCONSEQUENTIAL LOOP: SOMATICS, FEMINISMS Read More »

Here is a story, particular in its expression, common in its effect. In 2009, I was on a panel at an experimental writing conference hosted by the University of Buffalo, NY. The panel had been convened by a friend and writer I admire. It was titled: “Inconsequentiality: Why It’s Important.” I was presenting alongside this

Image of a grouping of trees in a flat, snowy landscape.

Loving

When I was 15, my mother fell in love with a man who was not her husband, who was not my father. The man was in every way the opposite of her husband, my father, a Chinese immigrant with a Ph.D. in political science. The man my mother fell in love with was a white

Loving Read More »

When I was 15, my mother fell in love with a man who was not her husband, who was not my father. The man was in every way the opposite of her husband, my father, a Chinese immigrant with a Ph.D. in political science. The man my mother fell in love with was a white

Uncertainty

Hopwood Lecture, delivered April 6, 2022 at the University of Michigan. Here’s what I remember from my time in Ann Arbor. An apartment on the second floor of a pale blue house that shook from the noise during every football game, a Japanese maple that ruffled gently in Technicolor outside the window next to my

Uncertainty Read More »

Hopwood Lecture, delivered April 6, 2022 at the University of Michigan. Here’s what I remember from my time in Ann Arbor. An apartment on the second floor of a pale blue house that shook from the noise during every football game, a Japanese maple that ruffled gently in Technicolor outside the window next to my

Confident Incontinence: A Century of Campaigns to Make Excretion Dignified

A coming out party for underwear In 2021 the New Yorker’s inside back cover—a full-page ad, hard to miss—shows a tall, hefty man of color, solidly planted on shapely legs, arms crossed over his chest, smiling, while wearing nothing more than Depend’s line of “absorbent underwear.” The bold word reaching across his entire chest reads

Confident Incontinence: A Century of Campaigns to Make Excretion Dignified Read More »

A coming out party for underwear In 2021 the New Yorker’s inside back cover—a full-page ad, hard to miss—shows a tall, hefty man of color, solidly planted on shapely legs, arms crossed over his chest, smiling, while wearing nothing more than Depend’s line of “absorbent underwear.” The bold word reaching across his entire chest reads

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