There was something very claustrophobic about being in Nigeria. Nigeria gagged its people. Nigeria strangled people’s voices. People were often afraid to speak out. People were always afraid for no reason, and so being in Nigeria was the last thing you wanted to do. You wanted to move out of Nigeria. If that would not be possible, then you wanted to connect with people who were not Nigerians. You wanted to know more about the world. You wanted to move into the real world. You wanted your mindset to morph from Nigeria to The World.
Category: essay
ESSAY | Trying To See – Erin Ruble
On a sunny September day in the early 1990s, a German couple taking a shortcut through the rock spires on the Austrian-Italian border spotted the head and back of a man jutting from a patch of half-melted ice. The couple, thinking they’d stumbled across the corpse of a mountaineer, told the owner of the inn they were staying at. He, in turn, contacted the authorities, who sent a forensic investigator.
COMFORT FOODS // Ends and Pieces – Lisa Ochoa
You’ve probably never noticed them. Their red and white box usually sits well below their thick-cut, smoked, and maple-flavored cousins in their clear ‘look at me!’ packaging. Or, sometimes, Ends and Pieces aren’t displayed at all, and you have to ask the butcher for them. Because mind you, they are the ends and pieces, the leftovers, the scraps. Who would want them?
My mom, that’s who.
ESSAY | Initiation – Kate Stukenborg
I wanted to be a part of their club, their conversations, their laughter. Eating, I decided, was my way in.
It’s Always Going Away: Losing the Places We Love – Nina Smilow
New York is often unfairly maligned for being unfeeling, but that’s just what we call uncontrollable things, which the city is. It tumbles on, transforming a million times over the course of a decade before remaining stagnant for far too long. Occasionally, shifts rise rapidly from seismic events. I’ve seen sudden pivots in the wake…
COMFORT FOODS // Cutlets – V.M. Braganza
Cutlets (also called potato chops), much like my family and their language, resist any attempt at tidy or singular classification.
One Book: What Would You Save From Being Destroyed for Ever? – Hunter Liguore
If all the books in the world were being burned in a fire and you had the chance to save just one, what book would you save? For some this might be an easy answer; for others, this question might need the utmost consideration—as an avid book reader, with piles of books lining all corners…
On Appearance: Disordered eating and the body, Kelsey Osgood’s ‘How to Disappear Completely’, and how language makes illness appear to us — Lizzie Hudson
An exploration of the impact of literature about eating disorders on readers. TW: Discussion of eating disorders and self harm.
Feed Me and Tell Me I’m Pretty: A Personal Essay – Charley Barnes
C.S. Barnes reflects on her complicated relationship with food through the years, from comfort eating to comfort starving. Features discussion of eating disorders.
What Makes a Proper Yorkshire Brew? – Lucinda Maitra
Rather than a distant past we can simply overcome or attempt to forget, our relationship to the historical atrocities of violent imperialism is difficult and clearly far from over, despite attempts to suggest otherwise.
Feeling Myself – Dolly Church
When my body was made up of straight lines it felt boyish and uninteresting, and when those lines finally bent, they felt uncontrollable.
Killer (non)fictions: Is true crime miscommunicating truths in favour of entertaining audiences? – Charley Barnes
. True crime, by its very titling, leads audiences to believe that they are consuming something inherently true in nature. True crime is categorised as a non-fiction form of media, regardless of the means of communication – whether it be written or visual. This alleged truthfulness raises intellectual and moral ambiguities. The rate at which…
Porridge 