I lost my mother after Mother’s Day. Five years later, she talked to me
On impulse, I silently said, “Mom?” And she responded.
personal essay
The Latest
-
First Person -
News This is what democracy looks like
When 17 students and teachers were gunned down in a school in Parkland, Fla., two years ago, it felt as if it had happened in our backyard. Our kids were only 6 and 7 at the time, but we quickly gave up on hiding what had happened: Parkland is like Greater Boca; there were kids…
-
Food A Woman’s Place Is Not In The Kitchen — Until It Is
I was around 10 when I fell in love with cooking. I liked the way ingredients could be shaped and assembled by my small hands and transformed into something delicious — a quick and satisfying victory. But more than anything, I loved watching family members devour my food, what my then-pre-adolescent brain couldn’t have understood…
-
Life Why The Women’s Confessional Essay Is Here To Stay
Recently, there’s been a lot of debate about the value of the personal essay – especially the women’s personal essay – a genre which has taken over online media publications with vigor in the last decade. Jia Tolentino, in her New Yorker essay in May, “The Personal Essay Boom Is Over”, wrote about the increasing…
-
Life Taking It Personally: A Feminist Defense Of The First-Person Essay
Read Jia Tolentino’s May 18 anti-personal essay personal essay “The Personal Essay Boom Is Over” on The New Yorker’s website, then Google: Vivian Gornick, Roxane Gay, David Sedaris, Daphne Merkin, Leslie Jamison, Zadie Smith, Mary Karr, Gary Shteyngart, Jhumpa Lahiri, Elif Batuman or Joan Didion. Guess what you’ll find? Great recent personal essays, many in…
-
Life The Tricky Feminist Politics Of Personal Writing
Did Trump change everything? Like personal catastrophes, the election of Donald Trump and seems as if it ought to have inspired a kind of general reprioritization among his opponents. Forget all the nonsense you used to fuss about! With all that’s happening (and it’s a lot!), the time has come – or seems as if…
-
Food How I Hosted Shabbat in a Soup Kitchen
This is the first in a series of essays submitted by our readers about their personal Shabbat experiences. Shabbat — the gatherings, the traditions and rituals, the food — is observed in such a wide variety of ways and we’re interested to read your recollections and stories. They might be about a particularly delicious dinner…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Your complete guide to Trump’s Jewish advisers and pro-Israel cabinet
- 2
Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
- 3
Fast Forward Trump AG nominee Matt Gaetz has left a trail of antisemitic comments
- 4
Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jessica Tisch, Jewish public servant, appointed as commissioner of NYPD
-
Fast Forward ‘A sense of wariness’ for many Jews when they see keffiyehs in public
-
Opinion A ceasefire may be imminent in Israel’s war in Lebanon — why not Gaza?
-
Fast Forward Man who attempted terror attack on Jewish New Yorkers in 2022 sentenced to 10 years in prison
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
