The meaning of the Southern Festival of Books in a season of loss
We often conceive of loss only as a falling away, but it is also a binding. Think of the groups whose only purpose is to bring together people who have lost the same thing.
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What does it mean to go where you don’t belong?
We’re driving up to Marquette, a college town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the beginning of my freshman year, something no other Vargo has ever done in the history of the Vargos. As we drive, I grow more ashamed with each passing mile marker. My father is old and we are poor and I am 18, trying to reinvent myself in a place I’ve never known.
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When safety feels like suffocation
Maybe, like my mother, I am not as afraid of fear as I thought. Because, right now, every part of me wants a storm I can stand before.
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A civil war, a brush with death, and a really good tan
The brain is a funny thing. Well, my brain is. Hilarious, really. In my fear, my neurons forgot the commands for putting on flip-flops, but they could formulate the thought: I hope the newspaper will mention the lovely golden hue of my cadaver.
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I’d never seen a mosque in the South.
On Eid-ul-Azha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, I knew no one in Nashville. I decided to wear my white shalwar kameez to commemorate the festival. What else could be done?
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Mom and I had just gotten to the really good part
She was the person in the world who cared the most for me and the one person whose love would be unchanged by my mistakes. Her embrace was the warmth of acceptance, and without it, I feared I would break.
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