Marissa Landrigan, author of The Vegetarian’s Guide to Eating Meat, had been a vegetarian for seven years when she came to the slow realization that her choice to stop eating meat might actually be standing in the way of her ethics.| Vela
The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty parlor in her room at the hospital in Las Cruces, New Mexico. First, I settled her in a chair by the window where the light was good, and handed her a mirror so she could supervise my work. Then I arranged my tools. The Walmart barber’s kit came with scissors, electric clippers with attachments for varying lengths, a dozen cheap combs, and a nylon cape to...| Vela
When Sarah Ladipo Manyika reads lwaloud from her new novel—the exquisitely titled Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun—she becomes the characters whose words she gives life to: her posture shifts, the pace and timbre of her voice morph, her gestures become charged with the energy of an entity separate from her self.| Vela
This might come as a shock, but this Sunday is Mother’s Day. Yes. Perhaps you’ve seen things about it in the media. With that in mind, I’ve selected a few pieces on the subject, perhaps unconventional (in that they might make you deeply disturbed instead of brimming with sweet gratitude) but so well done and important.| Vela
Exactly one week before my first book came out, my daughter weaned and potty trained. She did this in a day. After months, maybe even a year, of my hand-wringing about a possible eternity of diapers, about when and how to perfectly ease her off the boob, she woke up one morning and became a kid.| Vela
Recently, I was in New York City to do some publicity, and I was staying in a Holiday Inn in the Gowanus Canal of Brooklyn where the elevator shook and moaned every time we went to our tenth floor room as though the shaft were too small and the elevator was just barely squeezing through. I was certain we were going to die every time we used it. I was there with my mother who was helping me take care of my ten-month-old baby. We flew in, did the galley party, flew out. We were baby-publicity-a...| Vela
