Genre: Essays

Over morning coffee, I read Science Daily, scanning the titles as if they were Tinder profiles. What do I desire today, I ask, because my appetite for the world is an erotic force that can be kindled by a …

Hold 

 . . . the ditto ditto fills the archives of a past that is not yet past. The holds multiply. And so does resistance to them, the survivance of them: the brittle gnawed life we live, / I …

My mother is Susan Power. And I am Susan Power. People call us “Big Susie and Little Susie,” all in one breath as if we are a single creature with two heads and four hands. Mama sews us dresses out …

I want to start by saying that I am in love with someone who has a chronic illness.

I want to start by saying that I research fecal transplants, pituitary gland tumors, Lyme disease, ME/CFS, antibiotics, immune boosters, immunosuppressants, anti-fungal …

There has always been, in Lucille Clifton’s work, an abiding elegiac quality; she had many losses after all: her mother at a young age, then her husband, her father, two of her own children. Amid all her poems contending with …

When I was nine or ten years old, my grandmother gave me a book full of so many random, interesting facts and tidbits of science and history I sometimes think it’s the secret source of all my adult obsessions. It …

The Queen Esther Theory of Gardening

“If they live, they live; if they die, they die!” my mom declared when passersby admired her extensive hostas. I rolled my eyes. Inside our duplex, narrow paths snaked through piles of teetering …

It was a shock to hear of Franklin Odo’s death in September 2022. I’d not known he’d been ill with cancer, so, when the news reached me in Oregon, where I teach, it was sudden. He was kupuna to me, …

Reflections on the anniversary of the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

When we were kids, my American-born siblings and I didn’t know the truth behind my father’s citizenship. He kept his immigration history an ironclad secret. We accused him …