Issue 516 | The Sun Magazine

December 2018

Readers Write

Moving On

A mother’s memories, a child’s fears, a dead man’s secrets

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

December 2018

Featuring Tim Wise, Odetta, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

Praise Song For The Day

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

By Elizabeth Alexander
Quotations

Sunbeams

Everybody remembers the first time they were taught that part of the human race was Other. . . . It’s as though I told you that your left hand is not part of your body.

Toni Morrison

The Sun Interview

White Lies

Ijeoma Oluo On Privilege, Power, And Race

White supremacy is not just Nazis marching in the street. In the U.S. it’s always been a part of the economic and social system.

By Mark Leviton
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Notes On Surrender

Over and over I have discovered that my children feel alienated in environments where, at their age, I felt an automatic sense of belonging.

By Krista Bremer
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Ghost Of A Boy

You can belong to yourself, but it’s lonely, and you can belong to others, but there’s loss built into that, in uncountable forms.

By Piper Vignette
Fiction

On Becoming A Cat

Please understand: the external metamorphosis comes only at the very end, after a long, sustained effort. There is a lot of inner work you have to do before then. Also there is luck involved.

By Emily Mitchell
Fiction

The Other, Invented Man

For many years — the majority of my life, in fact — acknowledging death’s inevitability exerted little psychological pressure on me. I had no fear of passing, as they say, from this world into the next, or, assuming no next world exists, simply entering oblivion.

By Matthew Vollmer
Poetry

Selected Poems

from “In The Beautiful Rain” | Hearing that old phrase “a good death,” / which I still don’t exactly understand, / I’ve decided I’ve already / had so many, I don’t need another.

By Tony Hoagland
Poetry

Stories We Keep To Ourselves

They gather in lodges, these unflinching, / gray-haired men in caps with unit insignias. / The meat loaf and gravy on styrofoam goes / mostly untouched.

By Bill Glose