Object-ives #16: The Inheritance I Bought
A dead woman’s milk glass collection became the family heirloom I never had
Stardust and Saltwater
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with Artist, Academic, Archivist, Activist Tamara MC, Ph.D.
The Lip Bar: Detroit’s Black-Owned Beauty Brand That Proved the Sharks Wrong
I remembered The Lip Bar from their infamous 2015 “Shark Tank” rejection—the moment Kevin O’Leary called founder Melissa Butler and her creative director “colorful cockroaches” and told them they’d never succeed.
The Sensory Chronicles of Christmas
Most people complain when stores put out Christmas decorations “too early.”
I live for it.
Mother, Daughter, Memory Keeper: Julie Brill’s Triple Role
Julie Brill’s memoir Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia
“There were hundreds crawling across the trail.” Huge, hairy animals surround hiker in Texas desert
Tamara headed to a Texan national park with the hope of spotting a black bear – but stumbled across something more ominous
My Husband Told Me He Couldn’t Be Married Anymore — So I Made A Decision I’ve Kept Secret For 12 Years
This piece was originally published in June 2024 and is being rerun now as part of HuffPost Personal’s “Best Of” series. In 2010, after a 17-year marriage, my husband asked for a divorce, saying he couldn’t be married anymore. We had two sons, 14 and 16, not quite two years apart, whom I had nursed […]
Book Review of a Well-trained wife: My escape from christian patriarchy
Tia Levings’s powerful memoir, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, delivers a searing critique of patriarchal religious systems through the lens of her own harrowing journey. As a Gen X survivor of religious fundamentalism, Levings provides a revealing window into the oppressive structures of Christian patriarchy, offering both personal testimony and broader cultural commentary. […]
Tamara MC’s “The Night Sinéad O’Connor Found Me in a Convertible”
This summer, I am running a series of essays about Sinéad O’Connor to celebrate the publication of our book: Nothing Compares to You: What Sinéad O’Connor Means to Us. Our Westport Public Library event on Aug. 6 was incredible, including a panel with contributors Nalini Jones and Sharbari Ahmed as well as Beth Boquet singing […]
Poetry: Fish by Tamara MC
Our toilet grew shadows that morning, breathing ammonia. The steward fed it bleach until it learned to swallow properly. At 2:30 a.m. the sea counts minutes. He splits from our bed like cell division, returns with salt in his pores. We share a queen size ocean, legs evolving into separate species until I graft mine […]