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“Names Have Power”: Five Essays on Names and Identity
Five essays on names and identity.
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Seriously, the Guy Has a Point
Greg Fallis writes about Fearless Girl and Charging Bull — the two sculptures staring each other down in Lower Manhattan — and about the difficulty of engaging others in nuanced arguments.
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My Daughter’s Birth
After her partner gave birth to their daughter, blogger and scholar Lucy Allen reflects on a complicated delivery, made more so by hospital staff making her feel unequal and unacknowledged as a parent.
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The Elements of Bureaucratic Style
Colin Dickey examines the syntax and bureaucratic voice in an email from United CEO Oscar Munoz: “Munoz employs the passive voice at key moments to make it clear that there are no other actors in this drama other than Dao.”
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“Names have power.”
Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, a writer and linguistic anthropologist, reflects on the power of names to shape our identity — and to highlight both privilege and discrimination.
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These days, I don’t wear my glasses when I’m out in public. . . . I can see the world, but it’s out of focus. I can’t make out faces, recognize friends. Most importantly, I can’t tell where anyone is looking. If men’s eyes consume me, I’d rather not know.
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Moved by Kim
“Through his tears, he asked if they’d let him use heroin there.” Seth Davis Branitz on his brother’s drug addiction and death, and burying his entire immediate family within two months.
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State of Being: Envisioning California
“California, the best of it, is what lives and prospers in a liminal, unnamed space—somewhere between dreams, disappointments, and recalibration.” Lynell George describes how California — Los Angeles and San Francisco — moves through you.
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Each Breeze Began Life Somewhere As a Little Cough
Poet Christoper Citro meditates on the omens — good and bad — that arrive on air: “I pierced the clear membrane and the coils expanded and the guest bed took its first deep breath. Each time a visiting friend or family member sleeps on it, it will take another.”
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Taking a Trip Through Love Canal: The Residuum
“That’s where we are at. As a society, our bodies and minds are in such a poor condition that we cannot touch our proverbial toes—we cannot control ourselves, yet we want to control something outside of ourselves.” Jack Caseros on environmental contamination, not climate change, as our most pressing environmental issue.
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The Complicated Past and Present of a California Utopia
“And yet, like all utopian experiments, Esalen’s cracks widened as it grew in popularity and began to attract this wealthier set. Today’s guests hardly care about any sort of counterculture; they care, as Wolfe pointed out, about self-improvement.” Cody Delistraty spends a weekend at Big Sur’s Esalen Institute, once a bastion of hippie counterculture.
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The Agony and Joy of the Great Scottish Outdoors
Beautiful and unforgiving, Scotland’s countryside offers Alex Cochrane, a travel and history blogger, a chance to savor extreme emotions and masochistic bliss.
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“To write feels like violence. All of us are mortal, but the text can survive long after its author: who are you, fleshy and contingent thing, who wants to live forever? To write is to stain clean paper, press sticks in smooth clay; in some sense always, to deform the world.”
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Homeless daughters of a hybrid diaspora
“Can you imagine being told from the moment you comprehend it that these four walls you call home, this shelter above your head, this comfort you look forward to each time you return from school or mosque, is not yours?” Zoya Kubra, currently based in Qatar, reflects on male privilege and gender inequality.
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What we neglect when the children are young
“But what nobody told me while my house was falling apart is that I would start to see clearly again, how this particular fog would lift.” At Motherwell, Lauren Apfel reflects on reclaiming her body — and her house — once on the other side of pre-schoolhood.
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