“My barber made $28Gs on Robinhood,” my brother’s best friend texted me early Thursday morning. A minute later, I received another ping but this time from my brother. “Reddit took down Wall Street. David versus Goliath,” his text read. I was half asleep and trying to make sense of the various messages and phone calls […]
Zhandarka Kurti
Growing old in “post-recession” America
Like so many other children of aging parents, I will at some point assume the responsibility of looking after my mom. Her Social Security benefits are insufficient for her to live on and she relies on assistance from my brother and me to scrape by. Thinking about my mom’s precarious position fills me with dread. […]
Loss Prevention
Grey and cloudy days like today make the Bronx look uglier. The streets are strewn with garbage, the sidewalks smeared with dog shit, and some old lady is likely to poke you with her umbrella. Nonetheless my mom has asked me to walk over to the local Western Beef to exchange into paper a heavy […]
Purging with Marie Kondo: The Lack of Joy in Middle-Class American Households
I am captivated by America’s fascination with Marie Kondo. Named Time’s most influential person, Kondo is a 34-year old Japanese millennial (or xennial is it?) and professional home organizer whose books have sold millions of copies. Over the past few years, her company has transformed into a global communications platform spreading the gospel of tidying up […]
Escaping into Music and Fashion Part II: Alexander McQueen
From High School Drop Out to World-Renowned Fashionista As a closeted goth (which wasn’t exactly cool in Bronx public schools in the late 90s) who scribbled dark and depressing poetry on the margins of her notebooks, I found a kindred spirit in Lee Alexander McQueen. I saw “Savage Beauty” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art […]
#NYCStripperStrike: Race, Class and Women’s Work
“Honey, I guess you can sum up this business in one sentence,” stripper Bobbie Bruce told reporter Jack Griffin at Minsky’s Rialto Theater, a hub of early-1950s Chicago burlesque. “You grab as much sex as the law is allowing at the time, and throw it across the footlights as hard as you can.”1 In the […]