Not Yet

“I have six months to live, maybe less. Jack Miller needs to be punished. He has been a very bad man.”

Once Out of Nature: Life Beyond the Gender Binary

To truly include transgender people within Abrahamic religious traditions, we have to shatter the idol of the gender binary and face the truth that trans people embody—the truth that the gender binary represents neither the nature of nature, nor the nature of humanity, nor the nature of God.

Resisting Post-Oppression Narratives

Class exploitation and racial discrimination has diminished in popularity as an explanation for our society’s continuing social inequalities. In its stead, a “post-oppression” ideology and rhetoric has developed, which leaves “distortions” (such as race-based disparities) to the market alone to resolve.

Misty

A teacher is not one person. A teacher is the many voices he speaks and the quicksilver changes among them: the things he says to administrators and the things he says to parents; the things he says to ninth graders and the very different things he says to juniors; the farce and praise and kowtowing and congratulation, all those necessary notes across the register of human speech. We are whatever we are saying.

A Historical Haiku on Human Conflict

Kirk J. Schneider has written a synopsis of human history that he calls a “historical haiku.” He explains how polarized thinking, rather than observing each other and our world in all its complexities through a lens of mystery and awe, is the root cause of why human beings continue to kill each other. He offers us examples of how fear and the absence of curiosity and awe have made us unable to rise above hatred.

Immigration Stories That Will Belong to America

The thirteen stories in Lam’s most recent collection, Birds of Paradise Lost, are populated by refugees of the Vietnam War who came to the Bay Area, as well as their children and friends—but each story is a world unto itself. Lam’s characters are haunted by what they have lost, transfixed by embers that still cloud the air with smoke. What Lam explores is the question of whether they can conquer the ghosts, or at least learn to live with them peacefully.