This week, Bim Adewunmi interviewed a couple that is abstaining from sex until marriage. Read that and other essays from Literary Hub, Catapult, and more.
"The Five Stages of Ghosting Grief" — The New York Times
Getting ghosted hurts, and it can send you down a spiral of self-doubt. In an all too relatable piece for The New York Times, Rachel Fields documents the five painful stages of getting ghosted. "I put my phone facedown with the ringer off. Now I couldn’t see if he texted, and I could start living my life. I was single, empowered and ready for anything," she writes. "No, that wouldn’t work. If the ringer was off and the phone was facedown, I wouldn’t know if he did text. The best solution was to keep the phone faceup, ringer off, so I could see the phone light up if he texted — but not be bothered by the ringer." To comfort you the next time you're ignored by a prospective significant other, read Field's essay at The New York Times.
brianrea.com / Via nytimes.com
"Students Have a Legal Right to Safe Spaces" — BuzzFeed Ideas
The student protests at Mizzou, Yale, and elsewhere are fights for economic equity — because a campus that only pays lip service to diversity means unequal access and undue work for students of color. For BuzzFeed Ideas, David Palumbo-Liu breaks down what's at stake for students of color in economic terms. Black athletes, for example, "put their bodies on the line for their schools’ popular and lucrative athletic departments." Inside classrooms, students of colors are asked to be unpaid instructors on their race and identity. Read Palumbo-Liu's essay at BuzzFeed Ideas.
Michael B. Thomas / Getty Images
"80 Books No Woman Should Read" — Literary Hub
You may have stumbled upon Esquire's list of 80 books for men at some point or another. In a Literary Hub essay, Rebecca Solnit proposes a lovely alternative list: "80 Books No Woman Should Read," denouncing anything by Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemingway, among many others. "I just think some books are instructions on why women are dirt or hardly exist at all except as accessories or are inherently evil and empty," she writes. "Or they’re instructions in the version of masculinity that means being unkind and unaware, that set of values that expands out into violence at home, in war, and by economic means." Read it at Literary Hub.
AMC / Via lithub.com
"My White Neighbor Thought I Was Breaking Into My Own Apartment. Nineteen Cops Showed up." — The Washington Post
Something insane happened to Fay Wells in her own home. Last month, after she'd locked herself out of her own apartment and after a visit from a locksmith, Wells opened the door to 19 police officers. One of her neighbors had reported a burglary at her apartment. "I had never looked down the barrel of a gun or at the face of a man with a loaded weapon pointed at me," she writes in a Washington Post essay recounting the terrifying experience. "In his eyes, I saw fear and anger. I had no idea what was happening, but I saw how it would end: I would be dead in the stairwell outside my apartment, because something about me frightened this man with a gun." Read it at The Washington Post.
Kyle Monk for The Washington Post / Via washingtonpost.com
