“Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow…” --Little Women
The CW Network recently announced the development of a 'hyper-stylized, gritty adaptation' of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women set in dystopian Philadelphia. Here are our suggestions for what that show could look like. In the year 2266, Contentment has become the most coveted -- and expensive -- resource in the United Colonies of Amerasia. As the March family toils away,…
1. Mallory, did you even know what the Army Rangers were before you heard about Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, the first two women to complete the grueling Army Ranger School training? I did not. 2. Do you have complicated feelings about the role of the American military at home and abroad? I do. 3. How many times did you have to re-read this article before you realized that finishing Ranger…
The knot descends on the pit of my stomach when I cross the Potomac, tightening as I make my way south. I barely notice Virginia. North Carolina greets me with tobacco farms, their large green leaves rolling out before me for acres. They die a bit each year, a cancer wrought on the terrain. I pass the pig trucks on the highway, their cargo tainted with purple blotches, bound for the slaughterhouse. I meet the…
To be a woman who dares overstep her place in the physical or the digital worlds is to be branded a target by men, men who wish to return to halcyon days: of women only seen (except when they shouldn’t be) but not heard, of apron-donning, of apple-cheeked ma’ams bowing to their every whim. For these men, food -- or rather, feeding -- is the second most important women’s work (with the first being to…
Things That Are Meant To Make You Feel Safe And Comfortable In A Psych Ward That Just Make You Feel Crazier: Writing in crayons Eating meat with a spoon Measuring time in meals and snacks The conspicuous lack of plastic I predicted this would happen. This is not impressive in the slightest, as this outcome was obvious given my history. Yet I was still left shaky and confused by just how accurate my precognition was,…
No, she's a monster, obviously; Frank Norris' The Octopus might as well have her on the cover. Forbes ran one of the neatest, soundest, trimmest little hit pieces I've ever sen on Elisa Stephens & co. and their dreadful, exploitative Academy of Art University racket this week. It's a wretched Rube-Goldberg machine designed to match up human beings with vast quantities of debt and everyone in San Francisco has at least one friend who's lost something…
I read the Dee Barnes piece on Straight Outta Compton, oh man:
That event isn’t depicted in
Straight Outta Compton
, but I don’t think it should have been, either. The truth is too ugly for a general audience. I didn’t want to see a depiction of me getting beat up, just like I didn’t want to see a depiction of Dre beating up Michel’le, his one-time girlfriend who recently summed up
“Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed; ‘I am half sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott.” –Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The ocean spills from my conch shell ears. I hear only my own sighing, as though I am still half-submerged—the last of the lily maids, a creature too destitute for a barge…
When I was a kid I spent the better part of August standing with my grandfather on the spongy dirt floor of his basement, canning tomatoes and making sausages amid the smell of mold and mud. Even in the dead of winter, when the earth was frozen and the atmosphere static, the basement’s mustiness was inescapable. If you only went down there for a minute— to grab a jar of pickles or bring up an…
Friends and lovers! Earlier this year, I got to write the introduction for Harper Perennial's newest edition of Charlotte Brontë's Villette, which means that no matter what else I accomplish in my nubile, fresh-scented life, I will at least have her legacy to glom onto as we sail on into eternity. It will be available after 9/1/15 and you can preorder it here. Would you like a SNEAK PEEK at said introduction, to entice you…
"If the witch understood the true meaning of sacrifice, she might have interpreted the Deep Magic differently, for when a willing victim who has committed no treachery, dies in a traitor’s stead, the stone table will crack and even death itself will turn backwards." "Oh, how interesting," Lucy said. "What is the true meaning of sacrifice, Aslan?" "It is an artificial anti-concept," Aslan said in his low, golden voice. "It is the ultimate force of…
For the Creative-Anxious Parent™ the world is a veritable junkyard of nightmare futures just begging to be collected-- what if my child is bullied ferociously? What if my child makes some disgusting sex party urban legend indisputably real? What if my child keeps large, seemingly-immortal snakes as pets? In developing one’s irrational, ultimately pointless parental anxiety, it’s important to integrate less obvious, more esoteric fears into one’s 2:30 am worrying practice. Here, some…
Tucked away on English Street is a small apartment complex of twelve units. It doesn’t look like an apartment complex from the cobblestone roads, which is what makes it so perfect. Maybe not, though. It doesn’t look like an apartment complex so the police might pass it by, lights flashing, sirens wailing, before, finally, the cop in the passenger’s seat says, “Pull over, for fuck’s sake it’s supposed to be right here!” The apartment is…
