#motherhoodthroughinstagram
My baby was 18 months old when I joined Instagram. I figured the platform would be a way to connect with other mothers and…
Read More
Everyday Geography
I have never been good with my hands. By this I don’t mean, “Oh, I can’t handsew little cat ornaments to gift at birthday parties,” or, “I could never make my toddler a homemade dinosaur costume for Halloween.”
Read More
Blogged Down
Each time my Mexican-American family returns for a stretch to Oaxaca, I start a blog. During our first week here on my Fulbright grant, I spend all day on the street, eating tacos, taking photos of topiary depicting Jesus on the cross, following the whine and bang of firecrackers to the nearest roving banda.
Read More
Writing Like a Mother(f*cker)
In the first few months after the baby is born, I experience a singing clarity: Milk! Diapers! Milk! Diapers! Lusty oxytocin! Sleep! Cheez-it binge! Sleep! I have cleared out a space–no, cleared out my whole brain–for this time, and I have no expectation of writing.
Read More
Sarah Menkedick’s Four Books on Early Motherhood
Sarah Menkedick recommends four books on early motherhood. “One of the many surprises of pregnancy was the craving I developed for literature, not too distant in its urgency from the craving for Haribo gummy raspberries.”
Read More
A Wilderness of Waiting
In the eighth month of my nine-month human pregnancy, I go on a binge-Googling of animal gestation periods. Frilled sharks, I discover, gestate for 42 months. Elephants take 22 months. Sperm whales: 16. Walruses: 15. Rhinos: 14.
Read More
Love in los tiempos del Spanglish
When I first met el Gordo – antes de que lo llamara el Gordo, cuando todavía era Jorge – we spoke puro español.
Read More
My Own Mexican Revolution
I was walking back from the grocery store, loaded down with bags, when a man came up the sidewalk. I looked down and away.
Read More
Hopes and Fears of the Writing Life
Fear that in the end, no matter how hard I work, no matter how many doors I bang on and with what frequency and obstinacy, no matter…
Read More
Learning to Float
It was gray, raining, but a narrow ribbon of cornflower blue ran between the stormy patches to the north. The ribbon ran over the long rolling hills…
Read More
It’s Not Personal
This past fall, I went with seven other third-year nonfiction MFA students from the University of Pittsburgh to New York to pitch editors…
Read More
Homing Instincts
There are five types of navigation, five ways to find your way home: topographic, celestial, magnetic, olfactory and true.
Read More