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Whenever we heard the word layoff, my siblings and I thought of the food we’d soon be eating: watered-down beef stews and jar upon jar of canned beans and tomatoes that had been put up at the end of the previous summer. Meals during a layoff or a strike were always an inferior imitation of the ones we’d been raised on, as if someone had replaced our mother’s cooking with a cheap, generic version, all bland vegetables and thin broth.
By Doug CrandellMarch 2009New math, Hiroshima, pear rabbits with cottage-cheese tails
By Our ReadersMarch 2009When I was six, my mother finally got tired of the beatings and left my father for good. I remember the final blow: I was standing outside, looking through the front-door window at my father mercilessly pounding my mother’s face into the checked tile floor of our run-down two-bedroom house on the outskirts of Slidell, Louisiana.
By Louis E. BourgeoisFebruary 2009Making green-chili stew, answering an ad in the “Casual Encounters” section of Craigslist, writing the number 8
By Our ReadersFebruary 2009Photography suited my father, loner that he was. He’d come home from his job as an airline pilot, give Mother a peck on the cheek before changing out of his uniform, and drive off again with at least one of his three Rolleiflex cameras. When I was a child growing up in North Carolina during the early fifties, he’d acknowledge me only if I was in his direct path.
By Mary ZelinkaFebruary 2009A hockey rink, a volume of Anne Sexton’s collected poems, Planned Parenthood
By Our ReadersDecember 2008Cross-dressing, a lifelong eating disorder, the dazzling white image of life
By Our ReadersOctober 2008The summer after my father attempted suicide, I found myself wandering through a graveyard near my house, up and down the rows of sunken headstones and faded pink cloth roses. I didn’t know a soul buried there, and I didn’t know what solace I expected to find.
By Gregory MartinOctober 2008Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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