The Boy Writ Large: A Review of Garrard Conley’s BOY ERASED
It seems a particularly vicious crime to deprive an artist of art, to take from the gifted their gift. Yet this is exactly what happened to writer Garrard Conley when he enrolled in the erstwhile “ex-gay” ministry Love In Action. His first day, Conley was forced to surrender his Moleskine journal, whereupon it was destroyed. [...]
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Dressed for a Funeral
When I lived in Minnesota, I belonged to an award-winning chorus. We staged three major productions a year, and performed at smaller venues in various capacities, as well. The chorus was a marvelous experience overall. Curiously, it was also one of the most socioeconomically diverse groups I had belonged to since high school. For one [...]
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On Height
I am 5' 11 1/2" tall without shoes. But since you’re probably not going to see me without shoes, I usually just say I’m six feet even. When I’m sitting, I look even taller, about 6' 3", because I am all torso with short legs. In other words, I’m tall -- taller than the typical [...]
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“Like a Dry Sponge Looking for Water”: An Interview with Chelsey Zibell
helsey Zibell was raised in the village of Noorvik in northwest Alaska. She attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a UA Scholar and obtained a BA in English and Iñupiaq Eskimo. She is working on an MA/MFA in Poetry. Chelsey’s goal is to teach high school English (and hopefully Iñupiaq) in rural Alaska and […]
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On Being an American
I’ll be honest. I’m not much of a patriot, and I never really have been. As a child, I would put on the English accent I learned from BBC rebroadcasts and fool random strangers into thinking I was visiting from London. While on a high-school trip to Toronto, I took great pride in the overheard [...]
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What I Taught and What I Learned
There’s an ugly trend nowadays whereby teachers write mean-spirited blog posts and splashy click-bait articles that lambaste their students for not knowing things. They may feel justified because they’re anonymizing their students, but there’s still something dreadfully wrong with this fad. If you’re a teacher, it’s your job to teach the students what they don’t [...]
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On Terminology
I may have given some readers pause with my debut article. They would be savvy to the fact that the term “intersectionality” was coined by black feminists to describe a phenomenon distinct from and more complicated than white feminism, to point out that white women enjoyed privileges that women of other races did not. They [...]
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Spaghetti Roundabout
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