Essays
Imagining Mothering (excerpt)
1. A friend says motherhood is like living with your heart outside your body. This is more like science fiction than it seems at first, I decide days after we’ve…
Un Regno (A Kingdom) Among the Weeds
I speak to my son in Italian—I am a so-called heritage speaker. Teaching your child a second language, according to many studies, increases not only linguistic ability, but also cognitive…
Undone by One Another
About a week into winter term, Zelda, a two-year old Pitbull mix who had been found abandoned in the high desert, gave birth to a litter of eight puppies. The…
Between Light and Dark
We’re folding laundry on our bed. What do you call a pregnancy scare without the “scare” in it? Thomas asks. Close call? Nope. Still sounds negative. He means, what…
Failing to Make : Out of Absence : Toward Poiesis
“And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and…
My Son, Outnumbered
There’s my eleven-year-old son walking down the sidewalk. He has a bounce to his gait, a little shuffle, taking an extra small step when he comes to a stoplight, almost…
Re-Hump [Video]
Re-Hump (2007), a demanding duet for two pregnant women, is a feminist reconsideration of physical and psychological limits explored through the signifying potential of the body. The piece experiments with…
Love Behind Locked Doors: Phyllis Bottome in the Age of Trump
In January 1933, German President von Hindenburg offered the position of Chancellor to Adolf Hitler after his Nazi Party captured a majority of seats in the German Reichstag. In the…
The Revolt of the Perfume Recordist
She embodies an unknowable politics by deepening the shadows in places, tarrying with the anarchy of impersonal memory. Her autonomy undoes itself and disperses into a devotedly plural materiality. Her…