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 […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! How old are you? In July, on lucky 7/7, I turned 50. Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think? Maybe I still think I’m 38. I remember feeling so old when I was 38 because […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Adiba Nelson is the author of Ain’t that a Mother (Blackstone, May 2022) a hilarious and heartbreaking memoir about motherhood, palsy, and all the deets in-between. Adiba’s voice is unabashed, unflinchingly honest, and disrupts any stereotypes you may have about motherhood. Adiba is from my hometown Tucson, […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Adiba Nelson’s hilarious, heartbreaking, and bold debut memoir Ain’t that a Mother: Postpartum, Palsy, and Everything in Between (Blackstone, 2022) explores the cavernous lows of postpartum depression, the joys and challenges of raising a daughter with high medical needs, the naughtiness of burlesque dancing, and all the messiness in […]