Standards of Care

Rolonda Donelson on Bias and Anti-Science Attitudes in Medicine

The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

Our Fraying Hearts

I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

The Good End of Pleasant Street

When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

The Feeding

Some leeches have two jaws. Others have three. Some have teeth on their tongues. There are protective leeches who hover over their eggs, and leeches who carry their newborns in pouches like tiny kangaroos.

Formed Otherwise

There’s a presumption that to raise a child with disabilities makes you brave. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t always a stellar mother, either. But I studied my daughter as if she were an ancient text to see what was beneath the chatter and the rage

The Empty Room Inside Each of Us

Crumb is always right, always the one telling the story, always the one who turns the drab, lonesome plains they call home into a world that’s dramatic and necessary.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

City Chickens

I never thought // I’d end up like this, domesticated as a pet lamb, / with a mate who worries our hundred-year-old house // needs new everything, shingles to foundation.

Because I became allergic to chocolate when I was seventeen

because a rash spread on my chest when I ate mole sauce at Sanborns; because acne populated my face every time I drank hot cocoa; because I believed it to be easy to give up something I loved