weekly conversations on the world of telling true stories, by Proximity
I read “A Working Class Death” for the first time in a coffee shop. I took deep measured breaths to prevent myself from crying in public. My father was in a hospital that morning, many states away. Doctors were removing cancer discovered in his prostate and this was my first brush with a parent’s mortality….
In the introduction to Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves (Penguin Random House 2018), editor Gloria Edim explains, “Reading highlights the intersection of narrative and self-image to create compelling explorations of identity.” Edim tests this theory by asking twenty-one black women writers when they first saw themselves in literature. Much like the women…
As we step into the new year, we’d like to not only alert you to Proximity‘s next issue, themed The Body, due out in January—within which you’ll find our essay prize finalists, judged by Hanif Abdurraqib—but to also remind everyone of our top reads throughout 2018 and the writers who brought them to us. “A…
I am trying to create an outline for a workshop called “Nothing To Write About: Finding Inspiration in Writer’s Block” when my husband enters the room holding our 13-month-old toddler. His feet wiggle as he calls out to me in a quasi-operatic gargle that I understand to mean he wants to breastfeed. I take him…
One night a few years ago, I was tidying up my kitchen in Seattle when a text from a New York City zip code lit up my phone’s screen. My friend and co-editor, Kelly McMasters, was at a bar and, accounting for the time difference, it was late. “I just met someone,” she said. I…
I run. Miles and miles and miles stretch out in front of me like the unraveling of a life. I run. Through woods and parks, along beaches, paths, and asphalt. At first I couldn’t do it alone. Running was too many miles and all that quiet. I enlisted my boyfriend’s help and we ran together….
EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay is forthcoming in Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge), an anthology edited by Grisel Y. Acosta, PhD. I don’t consider it an insult to be taken for a prostitute. They get up and go to work. That’s more than I can say for myself, some days. So this wasn’t the first time,…
Christopher Howell, a professor of poetry at Eastern Washington University, has written extensively about loss. His most recent book, Love’s Last Number, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2017. “Homecoming,” included below, is from his forthcoming collection, The Grief of a Happy Life. It originally appeared in Poetry International. I met Chris when I took his…
On October 14th, the Sunday edition of the New York Times ran two articles on dead women. One was a special section inserted into the paper and the other was the cover story of the Metropolitan section. Neither can accurately be described as an investigation. Heavier on narrative than reportage and filled with flowery language,…
It happens slowly, but if you’re lucky people will forget your dead name after a year or so. Or maybe forget isn’t the right word. I know they still remember, may even feel it pressing against their teeth before they bite it back. It’s nice, however, to pretend that your chosen name, the right name,…
