Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Two years ago, I published my first essay. Since then, I’ve published nearly 30. If I can do it, so can you. There is no get-rich-quick formula. But, if I could sum up the process, it would be this: Work you’re a$$ off. (I am not glorifying […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! By Tamara MC For fans of Educated by Tara Westover, Maid by Stephanie Land, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Michelle Dowd’s debut coming-of-age memoir Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult contains echoes of all three, yet it is wholly unique unto itself. Dowd was born in the 1970s into a survivalist cult […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Dr. Tamara MC is a cult, child marriage, and human trafficking survivor/activist and cheerleads worldwide for girls and women to live free from gender-based violence. Her Ph.D. is in Applied Linguistics, and she researches how language manipulates vulnerable populations. Tamara attended Columbia University for an MFA and […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! I’ve ridden my bike 12.2 miles daily for the past three years. The night before, I make sure my Airpods are charged, and I head out in the afternoon during the warmest temps of the day. I live in Arizona, where we had 85-degree weather this past […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! James laced a telephone cord around his mother’s neck and pulled until he asphyxiated her. I knew James since first grade. In fourth grade, he sat behind me in Ms. L’s class. He kicked my chair throughout the school year. My head bounced back and forth like […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! A hybrid dish born out of solidarity has launched a food and arts movement. Feng-Feng Yeh became passionate about Chinese chorizo during the 2020 pandemic shutdowns. “Food is a carrier, a message to speak to people,” says Yeh, a multidisciplinary artist in Tucson, Arizona who previously worked as an executive […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Uncultured, Daniella Mestyanek Young’s powerful debut memoir, is perhaps the next runaway sensation, the succession to Educated (2018) by Tara Westover. Both memoirs are stories of triumph, resiliency, and audacity. Both girls blaze from the confines of their fundamentalist Christian upbringings to shelter identities separate from their groups. They […]
As soon as I heard about Daniella Mestyanek Young’s book Uncultured (St. Martin’s Press), I knew I had to interview her. Both of us are “cult babies,” children born or raised in cults. Young was born a third-generation member of the Children of God, the infamous sex cult alleged to have encouraged sex with children as a way to get closer to God. I grew up in a Sufi cult in the eighties in Texas, and although our cult was not a sex cult, our girls were sexually assaulted. I was married at age twelve in an Islamic temporary marriage called a mut’ah, and most of the girls I grew up with were married off at age fourteen to men much older than them and usually in plural marriages. So, although we grew up in different places with different religions, our experiences mirror each other in many significant ways.
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! BEFORE: Hot water burbled in samovars. You strolled cobblestone streets, clicking your heels. DURING: You sipped grass soup. Dug the ditch for your murdered mother. AFTER: You slaved stitching stockings in sweatshops. My alcoholic grandfather cracked open your skull with a cast-iron skillet. You danced at Roseland Ballroom, smelling of bleach […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! When I gave birth to my first son 27 years ago, the hospital’s lactation consultant recommended Fruit of the Loom’s Beyondsoft Front Closure Cotton Bra. I was 22, and my husband and I were struggling financially, so I was happy to learn I could pick up the […]