In the year since Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, graphic videos and images of police brutality against unarmed black Americans have flooded social media feeds, thanks to the potent combination of ubiquitous cell phone cameras and the tireless efforts of Black Lives Matter activists. Like many, I’ve followed this stream of events with increasing frustration and horror, as these incidents remind us of racism and police brutality’s knock-on effects. Racist police brutality degrades community morale,…
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…
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…
"Tita," my eleven-year-old niece says. "Why are you always talking about yogurt?"
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I am living in the Philippines on a Fulbright fellowship for half a year, so the only way I can see my loved ones back home in the U.S. is through videochat. The twelve-hour time difference and the spotty online connection in my Manila condo means that when we do appear on each other's laptops, the moment is precious. I hadn't…
"Tomorrow, if we go get rubber gloves – I'll pay for them – I can clean your stove. Not that it's not – you know what I mean!"
"Are these Tupperware clean or dirty, sweetheart?"
"[After seeing the contestant who custom-makes prosthetic limbs for people who have lost their limbs] What a nice thing to do. They say they can do it with those 3D printers now."
Previously by Carly Lane. Growing up, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by birth. I’m rarely a latchkey kid who frequently comes home to an empty house at the end of a school day. My little sister and I make the trek home from the bus stop, let ourselves in, and ease our backpacks from our aching shoulders. Our mother greets us from wherever she was in the house, asks us about our…
I’ve always loved the sound of the words Fertile Delta. The liquidic sound of the vowels coupled with the l, the hard D of delta, Greek for change, speaks to the power of a seasonal, shape-shifting body. Fertile Crescent makes another lovely pair. Crescent, so soothing, this half-moon, this womanly way to describe the cradle of civilization. Fertile, crescent, cradle, delta. The opposite of these words: barren.
Tasbeeh last wrote The Names They Gave Me, which is one of Nicole's favourite pieces.
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We don’t have much time to grieve before the guests come pouring in through our door. The news travels fast to all our kith and kin scattered across continents. Facebook statuses and tweets dispatched, emails sent to all appropriate community listservs. Instagram photos treated with a somber filter. Tiny digital memorials erected across the
My mother is a sweet, humble woman until you get her to speak of Cuban food. To her, a Cuban immigrant, cooking is as much a part of the soul as any religious experience; a more logical way of approaching Transubstantiation, perhaps, though we are not at all religious. Had the Catholic Church been founded by Cubans, the wafer would be replaced by pastelitos guayaba, the wine with a cafecito. She calls the sofrito the…
When my cousin invited me to her wedding, I couldn’t bring myself to repeat any of the auto-responses I’d stocked up over the years to get out of going home. Instead, I blurted out: “I’m super happy for you, but sick of pretending like I'm Single in the City -- like the love of my life doesn’t exist -- for the sake of other people’s feelings.” “So…” she said, “who is he?” “She,” I choked out. “Her…
There are many traditions in my family that have never been fully explained to me. When I ask why we observe them, the answers I get often amount to little more than “that's just how it is.” On Christmas, we eat sotanghon -- a sort of Filipino chicken noodle soup. On New Year's Eve, my mom tells me to jump up and down with coins in my pockets so I can get taller and richer.
Rohin Guha's previous work for The Toast can be found here. BRB, setting up my biodata Tick tock tick tock. There is no technicolor line of cousins and relatives lined up and dancing at my wedding to bombastic bhangra. We are Bengalis; our weddings are somber affairs. That’s not why, though. The cousins and relatives who exist in my periphery–and seemingly only when there is a wedding or a funeral that brings us together–don’t…
mensah demary's previous Liner Notes columns for The Butter can be found here. More than sports, perhaps, music served as the bridge between my brothers and me. They are eleven and seven years older than me, respectively. The years between us sometimes creates a space that can’t be measured quantitatively and seems impossible to traverse, to narrow, and even possibly close. I perceive their ages—the fact that they are older than me—as though they…
