I had the best time chatting with Celeste Ng about, well, everything. One more time: if you've not yet read Everything I Never Told You, I hope you do, and then I hope you talk to me about it. That novel meant so much to me, and it was a joy to get to talk with Celeste! Siobhan Phillips wrote this terrific essay for us on women and the history of gin. Mallory's…
The Bartender is doing all fun things in the next few days (seeing dearest friends! Family! Steaks! Wave Hill! Cloisters! More fun things!) and spirits are high. Also The Bartender's mom made the cookies pictured above (all made by her including the apricot and sour cherry jam) and The Bartender ate them ALL.
I've been thinking a bunch about this Sady Doyle piece, which is just chock-full of horrible stuff you might not want to know about, but also has some interesting nuance on being wrong and trying to fix things, and how best to facilitate that as a society and as a person:
Horovitz explained it pretty clearly, in the context of a song he wrote …
Thank you for making my birthday so nice yesterday! I picked Fury Road for my birthday movie (the NON-cut-for-Delta Airlines-version, SAUCY!) and ate an A+++ frozen mac & cheese I had shipped from Murray's in NYC for breakfast, then fasted and drank tons of water all day to create the MAXIMUM amount of space in my stomach for Indian takeout for dinner. So, all in all, I would say I crushed it. OH! OH! ANNNNDDD…
It is my birthday. I am 33 years old today! I love my job, and I love all of my weird librarians and archivists in their sexy glasses, and today I am PARTICULARLY filled with gratitude for the undeserved goodness of my life. For my birthday, if you're so moved, could you find some cause you believe in and give them five bucks? And maybe tell us what that cause is? And if you don't…
The faces and stories of transgender teen America: People call me a "transtrender." It’s people who pretend to be trans to be popular. It’s because of what I look like and how I’m not taking hormones for my transition, but there are plenty of transgender people who don’t want to go through that process. I like how I look, I really do. It’s up to other people to change their perception of me rather than…
I saw HAMILTON. It was a life-changing, transcendent experience. I wish every single high school student in the nation could see it. I wish you were seeing it right now. No praise is sufficient. It made me feel better about art, and the United States, and I both laughed hysterically and sobbed and it was better than CATS. (That part is a joke. I have good taste in musicals, I promise.) I saw it…
“You are the butter to my bread, and the breath to my life” ― Julia Child
First of course, Roxane breaks the terrible news: The Butter is saying good-bye.
HUGE, teary thanks to all you brilliant Butter writers, so much butter to our bread. It's been a joy to read and publish your work. And to you readers for loving it all as much as we did.
Hi Toasties! Toast Points will be short and sweet this week, because I have to go meet my kids' teachers this afternoon. (oh thank you Lord Jesus the end of the summer is nigh, HIGH-FIVE ME ONE AND ALL) This week, we got to read Texts from H.P. Lovecraft. Our beloved Green Gables got the Great House Therapy treatment. Christienna Fryar wrote about her years as a competitive swimmer and the need for…
Happy Friday, Toasties! It's my dad's birthday, so I'd like to wish a very happy birthday to the man who is never too busy to take my calls or challenge my deeply held beliefs about Star Trek and sports.
That night, Grace Jones sang “I Need a Man” just like a man might—tough and lusty, she was a woman who was not just singing to them, but also forthem, as them. She was as queer as a relatively straight person could get. Her image celebrated blackness and subverted gender norms; she presented something we had never seen before in pop performance—a
We'll be talking to Friend Of The Toast Kate Harding a BUNCH about her new book in September, but in the meantime, she's tearing up the press rounds with a ton of great reviews and fascinating interviews:
You point out in the book that a lot of politicians, including our current president, frequently use "wife, mother, daughter" language to talk about issues like sexual assault. You aren't a fan of
Jelani Cobb: Jamaica had become an institution of the type that has vexed city policymakers and educators: one charged with serving a majority-minority student body, most of whose members qualified as poor, and whose record was defined by chronic underachievement and academic failure. Even so, word of the school’s closure angered students and their families, the community, and alumni. I was among them—I graduated with the class of ’87—and for me, as for many…
This short anonymous essay about misconduct involving patients in the Annals of Internal Medicine is rough, and I'm glad it's out there: Someone gasped. I stared at David. He shifted in his seat and crossed his arms on his chest. A splotchy red rash appeared on his neck. Staring down at the table, he murmured, “Man, I was just standing there trying to learn. The guy was a dirtball. It still pisses me off.” David…
This week, Mallory launched the Convert Series with this great interview of poet and publicist Kima Jones, who converted to Islam when she was a teenager: I spent my eighth grade summer, the summer before high school, away from my home with my father. We would talk long into the night about God, but especially the Trinity and especially the Holy Spirit. We were very close, very very close, and he gave me books to…
