In March 2020, about a month after the South Korean film Parasite won four Oscars, including Best Picture—the first non-English language film to ever earn the Academy’s highest honor—US states began issuing lockdown orders for COVID-19. Shortly after, we began to hear reports of Asians and Asian Americans across the US being beaten, spit on,
Life & Love
On my more hopeful days—when my dad got his first vaccine appointment, when the weather popped up above 50 degrees—I let myself imagine it. I consider the possibility of being maskless on a run, exhaling thoughtlessly the whole way through. I wonder what last night’s takeout might look like plated at a restaurant, surrounded by
For many of us, the last year was as clarifying as it was challenging, with isolation and grief sharpening our focus on what truly matters. The things we thought made up a life were forcibly supplanted by the things that actually do: it became, quite suddenly, deathly important to find joy anywhere—in blossoms that appeared
Before the pandemic, Kristen Wilson, 33, was a reluctant gym-goer whose discomfort in fitness environments caused years of unpleasant experiences. In group classes, she’d push herself to the point of pain, overextending because she didn’t want to look out of place among the workout zealots beside her. “Even yoga, which is supposed to be relaxing,
Carly Leahy went into 2020 with a plan: She’d get married to Charlie, her fiancé of nearly two years, and then down the line the two would try to have children. Instead, the 31-year-old co-founder of the reproductive health company Modern Fertility was met with a global pandemic, an unexpected pregnancy, a cancer diagnosis for
Before her viral essay grappling with the death of her mother and Korean American identity, Michelle Zauner was best known for her work as a musician—she’s released two albums and toured the world with her Philadelphia-based band, Japanese Breakfast. (The band’s third album, Jubilee, is set for release this June.) Her book Crying in H
Mother’s Day has been celebrated for over 100 years now, but it feels especially meaningful after the year we’ve all been through. Now’s the time, as the weather shifts from brisk to balmy, to express your gratitude for the woman who gave you life. And yet: Moms (and grandmas, aunts, wives, cousins, sisters, and friends)
What if you could speed past the endless “How r u”s, bathroom mirror selfies, and interminable texting to get right to the good stuff: A relationship with a decent person who can form complete sentences and seems genuinely interested in more than your tatas. I know what you’re thinking, Is there an app for that?
Over the phone, Vanessa is telling me about her upcoming Sayulita, Mexico vacation. There’d be a house with a pool, another house “in the hills,” a bunch of people, and long, lazy days spent drinking and hanging out. I’m doing my best to actively listen while my 3.5-year-old daughter is jumping on me, gleefully yelling
Imagine walking into a crowded bar. A crowded bar full of unmasked people, talking and laughing and breathing and spewing aerosol particles into the air without the threat of an airborne virus looming over the room. We should be stoked, right? This no longer feels like a far-off fantasy. The mass tragedy of COVID-19, where
Once, in the span of a single conversation, a friend nearly two decades older than I am and I realized we were both running out of time. I clearly was not going to have my life “figured out” by age 25 or 30 or whatever the appropriate marker is. While she was grappling with the
For over two decades, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was an extravagant showcase for the popular lingerie and sleepwear brand. It helped establish the careers of supermodels like Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Adriana Lima, and Alessandra Ambrosio. Its runway show is was a stomping ground for today’s in-demand models like Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid.
The big day is finally here! Bachelor in Paradise couple, Raven Gates and Adam Gottschalk finally walked down the aisle on Friday, April 16. The duo tied the knot at The Olana in Dallas, Texas, surrounded by 20 guests, many of whom took to social media to show a more intimate look at the wedding.
On March 16, a series of shootings within a single hour at three massage parlours in Atlanta, Georgia left eight people dead, including six Asian women. At the time this was published, only the names of those killed in the first attack have been released. They include Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Ashley
Content warning: suicidal ideation To the outside world, I lived a perfect life. My toy company, Melissa & Doug, which I founded in 1988 alongside my husband, Doug Bernstein, had grown from a tiny operation run out of Doug’s parents’ garage into a half-billion dollar business. Doug and I had been married for over thirty
When my marriage ended more than a decade ago, all parties assumed my ex and I would adopt the standard-issue divorce package: The kids would stay with me to provide the stability of a primary home, while he got weekend visits and I received child support. That was what the attorneys laid out as the
By winter, “the Millinocket wedding” had basically become shorthand for a “coronavirus superspreader event.” Stories about COVID-19 that ran in local papers were sometimes accompanied by a photo of the Big Moose Inn Cabins & Campground for no other reason than that everyone associated the one with the other. Keirnan Monaghan and Theo Vamvounakis The
My apartment building in Washington Heights, Nuevayol, has not had gas during this entire pandemic, and it looks like this will last for another long stretch of months. This means: no oven and no stove. The hotplate given to us by management is crappy by dormroom standards—the HI-MED-LOW markings scratched off within a day so…
Last June, as my Mother walked out of Lincoln Hospital, where she’s the head OB-GYN nurse, four white trucks lined the Bronx facility’s facade. She asked a coworker standing at the street corner, “Are those them? Are those the trailers?” The woman turned and nodded. “Yeah, those are like the mortuaries now.” They were refrigerated
The first pronghorns appear in the meadow in June—three adults and two twig-legged newborn fawns, all of them the same tawny gold as the wild grasses they lounge in and graze, with crisp white patches on their cheeks, throats, chests, and bellies. They’re watching me with their binocular vision, ready to run at the slightest