"Time and Distance Overcome"
in NPR Books
March 2009
"Of what use is such an invention?" the New York World asked shortly after Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated his telephone in 1876. The world was not waiting for the telephone.
"No Man's Land" in The Believer
February 2008
One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear is promoted by the government as a kind of policy. Fear is accepted, even among the best-educated people in this country, even among the professors with whom I work, as a kind of intelligence. And inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for—a violence.
"Relations" in Identity Theory
March 2008
In New York City, in the Spring of 1999, a story hit the newspapers of a Long Island woman who had given birth to twins—one white and one black. The woman and her husband were white and the black baby was not theirs, at least not biologically. The embryo that became that baby had been accidentally implanted in the woman's uterus with the embryo of her biological son, but it belonged to a black couple who were clients at the same fertility clinic, and they wanted their son back.
"These Nerves" in La Petite Zine
June 2003
I explored my own medieval tunnels. The walls were twenty feet thick and they did not feel secure. Since she was 31, G.L. has reported being unable to feel below the level of her nose. I had the “siege experience.” I saw spots and thought I would faint or vomit. I thought, more than once, “Nothing happens here except for carpet.”