Kamala Khan, Mary Oliver, and True Detective
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, and Literary Hub. Each essay in this newsletter has been selected by the editors at the above publications as the best of the week, delivered to you all in one place.
Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel, and Me
by Gabrielle Bellot (art by Sujin Jo for Marvel Comics)
When I was a teenager, I imagined leaping across the tops of speeding train cars, trading kicks and flips with villains who had abducted my loved ones, my outfit billowing behind me. I imagined chase scenes across the tops of moonlit castles, through the dank lamplit halls of Vernian submarines, through the Caribbean mountains across from my home that cut the night sky like the spine of some leviathan’s fossils, through stairways carved from stars.
Girls on the Playground
by Ruth Madievsky
The handyman was a tall, thin man probably in his mid-to-late thirties. When I picture him, he’s always wearing a baseball cap. I remember his face from the perspective of someone several feet shorter, looking up. Vera had described him as a man who treated girls like they were older than their age. I liked that. From the time I was five, I’d been playing games like Doctor as an excuse to get naked and fool around with my friends. It was exciting and felt good, and—I understood intrinsically—something to keep secret.
Death Takes the Lagoon
by Ariel Saramandi
‘We should have gone swimming around Pointe d’Esny more often,’ I tell Antoine, as the news of the spill comes in. ‘We should have gone every weekend. We should have taken more pictures.’ As I speak I realise that I am already memorialising the place. Was the sea dead? Can a sea die? No one sleeps on the night of the spill. We examine aerial photos of the pitiful rubber booms placed by the government. They look like a child’s drawing of a bird, two curves containing almost nothing of the oil. Flecks of rubber in the sea that didn’t even surround the ship, that weren’t even correctly placed. We are incensed. Enraged kitesurfers and grieving fishermen describe how authorities hadn’t taken their knowledge of the sea’s currents into consideration. ‘They wouldn’t listen to us,’ these men repeat.
When Death Comes: An Oncology Nurse Finds Solace in Mary Oliver
by Nina Solis
L taught me about the transformative gifts we receive through acceptance. Just like Mary Oliver so often encouraged, L didn’t try to push the truth away—instead, she welcomed it, looked at it with curiosity and patience, and honored what she truly needed in those final moments. She helped me realize that despite all the fear I’d held surrounding the end of a life, it’s possible to make peace with the inevitable unknown.
True Detective and a Greyhound: On Imagination and Survival
by Kate Branca
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 I notice the greyhound laying on her bed, eyes open, staring directly at the living room wall. She’ll lay like this for hours, effortlessly, sighing at odd intervals. Envy doesn’t quite describe it.
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