American - Author | -
Blackness, any sort of difference, is not a burden. Relegating blackness or other sorts of difference to serious books that explicitly engage with issues creates a context in which it can seem like one.
Rumaan Alam
SeriousBurdenDifferenceEngage
When you are young, it's deeply annoying to be told that certain things are a condition of your youth. There's almost always some condescension in the proposition that your reality, your hopes, your frustrations, are just a condition of your age, that what feels unique to you is a very common thing after all.
AgeYouthRealityYouUniqueYoung
That a friendship ends doesn't mean it was weak from the outset; that it ends says nothing about its importance.
FriendshipNothingMeanWeakSays
I didn't know, at 22, that everything that happens to you, the good stuff as well as the less-good stuff, accrues and becomes your life.
LifeGoodYouKnowEverythingWell
I didn't know, at 22, that regret is useless. If I could go back and change something - give myself some big break, pass along some secret information, reassure myself that most things would, in fact, work out - I don't think I would.
WorkChangeMyselfRegretThinkGo
I know I've had a charmed experience of being a parent, with healthy kids, a helpful partner, access to good day care, and great public schools.
GoodGreatExperienceDayGood Day
Parenting advice is mostly useless because every family is uniquely its own; artistic advice is mostly useless because every artist works in their own way. Thus, figuring out how to balance the two has an intense specificity.
FamilyParentingBalanceAdviceWay
Kids are the ultimate trump card: a way to get out of co-op board meetings or lunch with a friend you don't want to see or your brother-in-law's set at a comedy club. It's fair to use your kids as an excuse to sidestep what you don't want to do; it's less fair to blame them for not being able to achieve what you do want to do.
FriendLunchBlameMeetingsComedy
Before the arrival of my first son, I gave up on the moribund business of magazine publishing, where I had long dreamed of a career, and went to work in advertising. That I could be paid great money to write was incredibly hard to believe.
WorkBusinessSonGreatMoneyLong
Writing takes gall. I like to think that's true even for writers with several books under their belt, writers who have been doing it for years. It takes something - guts, gumption, self-delusion - to ask for a reader's time when we all know there's nothing new under the sun; that it's all been said, or written, before.
TimeSunWritingThinkDoingKnow
I always like it when writers posit writing as an act of empathy. It's such a grand turn of phrase, such a noble ideal; empathy is so worth aiming for in life that the same must hold true in art. But personally, I can't think too deeply about that when I'm working, or I'd never get anything down on the page.
LifeArtEmpathyWritingThinkDown
If writing really is empathy, then understanding your place in society might actually help you achieve it.
EmpathyWritingSocietyHelpYou
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