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You Can Never Escape the Jersey Shore
I was watching Jersey Shore with a friend when a man came to my door trying to deliver foreclosure papers. “No,” I said, “I don’t want them.” He gave them to me anyway, because it was his job and said,...
View ArticleWatching Roots in the Age of Trump
Press play. A Black man dressed in a black bowler hat, long-sleeve buttoned shirt, gold waistcoat, and forest-green wool scarf, worn in a bourgeois once-around, sits in a green wagon, gripping the...
View ArticleHimpathy for a Horse
You feel a lot of guilt because you were the only father figure she ever had and when she came to you for help… you had sex with her and then when she was sober you took her on a monthlong bender and...
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On Seeing Myself: Representation and Ryan O’Connell’s Special
Navigating my workplace with a disability looks like this: A coworker introduces himself by asking if I’m injured. I explain that I just came out walking funny, but not to worry because I’m here...
View ArticleA Gripping, Limited Call to Arms: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments
For years, Margaret Atwood resisted the notion of writing a sequel to her feminist classic The Handmaid’s Tale. She first began considering the possibility after 9/11, when, as Atwood told The Current,...
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Racism Is a Reboot: Binging Battlestar Galactica at the End of a World
I knew Boomer before I knew Boomer, if you know what I mean. I’m talking about the character played by Korean Canadian actress Grace Park on the critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica reboot of the...
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Black Kids in Space: Afrofuturism and Mainstream Comedy
In February of 2018, Nikki Giovanni came to the University of Houston to read a few poems from her newly released collection, A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears & Laughter, and to answer some...
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True Detective and a Greyhound: On Imagination and Survival
During the thirty days when I am sickest, meditating makes me wonder why thinking is ever on the agenda. I’m trying to imagine the effort it would take to cultivate a truly thoughtless existence, when...
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Amy Solomon
Years before Amy Solomon became a producer on Silicon Valley and Barry, she discovered a book called Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women. Published in 1976, it featured many of her comedy...
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The Aesthetics of Safety
In graduate school, I wake up in the morning and lie in bed for another two hours. I get up, feeling the dirty, spongy carpet between my toes as I turn the channel to House Hunters where a suburban mom...
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