When I was in the third or fourth grade, we were given an assignment to write a letter to our future selves. Presumably our teacher didn’t have a lot of faith that we’d remain functional members of society for much longer, because she put the delivery date of this missive a scant year or two…
Durham felt familiar somehow. Neither of us had ever been there before, but the streets weren’t foreign to us. When the light of the setting sun hit a row of brick buildings it felt like a memory, like a painting by Hopper I’d seen long ago and forgotten about. Rand made me run to catch the…
Late last year, Rand and I visited Raleigh, North Carolina, and after reading glowing online reviews for it, I spent an afternoon at the North Carolina Museum of History. I was appalled by it. I’ve heard of revisionist historians, of people who claim the Civil War was about something other than slavery, but I figured…
I nearly forgot to tell you about the pilgrimage we made last summer to Stratford-upon-Avon: the home of that great Bard, of the man who wrote the sonnets and plays that shaped my awkward adolescence and escorted me to an awkward adulthood. I will confess: at first I found the little town kitschy. The endless…
Like most of you, I recently read the Elle article about what Amanda Chantal Bacon, a woman who may just be a low-blood-sugar-induced hallucination of Gwyneth Paltrow’s, eats in a given day. It was a lot like the first time I read Shakespeare or heard an interview with Bob Dylan. I knew it was English, but…
The prescription says “post coital.” It actually says that on the bottle. When the doctor told me my instructions for taking the antibiotic, I sincerely did not think that he would have the nerve to relay that information to the pharmacist. I figured he’d use some sort of vague jargon like, “as needed” which is…
Last week, a dear friend of mine from childhood texted me to let me know that her mother had died. I’d known her – and, by extension, her mother – since I was in the third grade. During our awkward, formative years my friend and I and a cadre of other girls (equally nerdy and well-behaved, for the most…
When you are my age, everyone starts caring about your uterus. Not in a fun way, where they send it text messages or memes featuring shirtless Jeff Goldblum circa Jurassic Park, but in a very critical, “what the fuck is wrong with your downstairs human factory and, by extension, you” kind of way. Because if…
I spend a lot of my waking hours feeling subtle pangs of regret for all the things I should have said but didn’t, for all the tiny little things that I really wish I had done but ultimately did not. I am haunted by the specters of unrealized acts and things unsaid. In my life,…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Paperback Available March 11th
Also available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook from these booksellers:
