My first rich boy pulled down my underpants. My last rich boy pulled down my tights. My first rich boy — I had fixed my eyes on his face long enough to know — was beautiful, with dark gray eyes and long golden-brown hair across his forehead. I don’t know what he grew up to be. My last rich boy was blond. He grew up to be the president of the United States. The first rich boy’s name was James. He was raped by his grandfather. He was raped by his uncles. He was beaten by his father. My mother told me the stories much later. When James was 6, he was taken away from his father and given to a...…My first rich boy pulled down my underpants. My last rich boy pulled down my tights. My first rich boy — I had fixed my eyes on his face long enough to know — was beautiful, with dark gray eyes and long golden-brown hair across his forehead. I don’t know what he grew up to be. My last rich boy was blond. He grew up to be the president of the United States. The first rich boy’s name was James. He was raped by his grandfather. He was raped by his uncles. He was beaten by his father. My mother told me the stories much later. When James was 6, he was taken away from his father and given to a...WW…

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.I.I did plenty of things I knew I shouldn’t have done in that red-brick colonial in suburban Georgia: smeared grime from the unfinished half of the basement on the walls of the finished half; spilled ruby red sweet-and-sour sauce on the pearly carpet. During a sleepover, a friend even knocked a hole in the sheetrock as we rode sleeping bags down the basement stairs like sleds. It could’ve been any of those things or none of them that precipitated the beating I received from my father one night near Christmas, when I was 8 years...…Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.I.I did plenty of things I knew I shouldn’t have done in that red-brick colonial in suburban Georgia: smeared grime from the unfinished half of the basement on the walls of the finished half; spilled ruby red sweet-and-sour sauce on the pearly carpet. During a sleepover, a friend even knocked a hole in the sheetrock as we rode sleeping bags down the basement stairs like sleds. It could’ve been any of those things or none of them that precipitated the beating I received from my father one night near Christmas, when I was 8 years...WW…

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.This article was featured in , New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. to get it nightly.My mother’s ex-husband, Jim (who, until I turned 8, I’d thought was my uncle), had Google alerts set for me. Every time my name appeared in the news — if you can call gossip websites “news” — he was notified immediately via email. Jim was well meaning but an alarmist; he wished to maintain a relationship with me, and these alerts provided him with perfect opportunities to reach out.I was walking through Tompkins Square Park with a friend...…Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.This article was featured in , New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. to get it nightly.My mother’s ex-husband, Jim (who, until I turned 8, I’d thought was my uncle), had Google alerts set for me. Every time my name appeared in the news — if you can call gossip websites “news” — he was notified immediately via email. Jim was well meaning but an alarmist; he wished to maintain a relationship with me, and these alerts provided him with perfect opportunities to reach out.I was walking through Tompkins Square Park with a friend...WW…

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.Yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood up and gave recently heard on the House floor, calling out not just Florida representative Ted Yoho for having called her “disgusting,” “out of your freaking mind,” and a “fucking bitch” on the steps of the Capitol in front of reporters on Tuesday, but also elucidating how that kind of language is normalized and deployed against all kinds of women, on all kinds of days.It was a remarkable piece of oratory, clear and thoughtful about some of the knottiest dynamics of gendered power...…Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.Yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood up and gave recently heard on the House floor, calling out not just Florida representative Ted Yoho for having called her “disgusting,” “out of your freaking mind,” and a “fucking bitch” on the steps of the Capitol in front of reporters on Tuesday, but also elucidating how that kind of language is normalized and deployed against all kinds of women, on all kinds of days.It was a remarkable piece of oratory, clear and thoughtful about some of the knottiest dynamics of gendered power...WW…

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.I know the day we started feeling sick — at least two of us in our Brooklyn apartment — because that Saturday our 2-year-old son ran around outside. Walking past the farmers’ market at Fort Greene Park, I sent my friends photos of the clusters of people hanging out. “Can you believe this,” I texted, “the photos don’t do it justice.”My husband Patrick woke up that morning annoyed, his whole body hurting. I took our toddler out of the house so he could sleep, or try to — we also have a 4-month-old baby. I did feel a little off, but...…Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.I know the day we started feeling sick — at least two of us in our Brooklyn apartment — because that Saturday our 2-year-old son ran around outside. Walking past the farmers’ market at Fort Greene Park, I sent my friends photos of the clusters of people hanging out. “Can you believe this,” I texted, “the photos don’t do it justice.”My husband Patrick woke up that morning annoyed, his whole body hurting. I took our toddler out of the house so he could sleep, or try to — we also have a 4-month-old baby. I did feel a little off, but...WW…

When the Democratic National Committee released its schedule for its big socially distanced convention this week, we learned that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, inarguably among the party’s most dynamic figures, would have just sixty seconds to address the nation. Ocasio-Cortez responded by tweeting out a poem by Benjamin E. Mays, the same that late Rep. Elijah Cummings had read in his to the House of Representatives in 1996:I only have a minute. Sixty seconds in it. Forced upon me, I did not choose it, But I know that I must use it. Give account if I abuse it. Suffer, if I lose...…When the Democratic National Committee released its schedule for its big socially distanced convention this week, we learned that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, inarguably among the party’s most dynamic figures, would have just sixty seconds to address the nation. Ocasio-Cortez responded by tweeting out a poem by Benjamin E. Mays, the same that late Rep. Elijah Cummings had read in his to the House of Representatives in 1996:I only have a minute. Sixty seconds in it. Forced upon me, I did not choose it, But I know that I must use it. Give account if I abuse it. Suffer, if I lose...WW…

I’d never been on Executive Foxtrot One, the presidential aircraft used to transport members of the First Family, when I ascended its red-carpeted stairs and boarded the cabin last spring to travel to a Nashville children’s hospital with Melania Trump. But thankfully, I was seated near Kate Bennett, a frequent Foxtrot flier and correspondent for CNN. Bennett is maternal and glamorous and cool, and I relied on her, asking her how things worked here and why they work this way and collecting from her the kind of precious details you can only get when you are physically there all the time,...…I’d never been on Executive Foxtrot One, the presidential aircraft used to transport members of the First Family, when I ascended its red-carpeted stairs and boarded the cabin last spring to travel to a Nashville children’s hospital with Melania Trump. But thankfully, I was seated near Kate Bennett, a frequent Foxtrot flier and correspondent for CNN. Bennett is maternal and glamorous and cool, and I relied on her, asking her how things worked here and why they work this way and collecting from her the kind of precious details you can only get when you are physically there all the time,...WW…

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.If you’ve been paying careful attention, you’ll know that this year’s presidential election is — factually speaking — between two septuagenarian straight white men, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But one of those guys is working diligently to figure out how he can instead run against a Black woman.On Monday, Trump sent a claiming that Biden’s “handlers” and the “Fake News Media” were doing “everything possible” to get Biden, whom Trump has long tried to portray as physically and mentally infirm, “through the election. Then he will...…Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.If you’ve been paying careful attention, you’ll know that this year’s presidential election is — factually speaking — between two septuagenarian straight white men, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But one of those guys is working diligently to figure out how he can instead run against a Black woman.On Monday, Trump sent a claiming that Biden’s “handlers” and the “Fake News Media” were doing “everything possible” to get Biden, whom Trump has long tried to portray as physically and mentally infirm, “through the election. Then he will...WW…

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.This article was featured in , New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. to get it nightly.You walk beneath a white molded archway. You’ve entered a white room.A basketlike lamp hangs overhead; other lamps, globes of brass and glass, glow nearby. Before you is a couch, neatly tufted and boxy, padded with an assortment of pillows in muted geometric designs. Circles of faded terra-cotta and pale yellow; mint-green and mustard confetti; white, with black half-circles and two little dots — aha. Those are boobs. You look down. Upon...…Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.This article was featured in , New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. to get it nightly.You walk beneath a white molded archway. You’ve entered a white room.A basketlike lamp hangs overhead; other lamps, globes of brass and glass, glow nearby. Before you is a couch, neatly tufted and boxy, padded with an assortment of pillows in muted geometric designs. Circles of faded terra-cotta and pale yellow; mint-green and mustard confetti; white, with black half-circles and two little dots — aha. Those are boobs. You look down. Upon...WW…

Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.What you first need to understand is that I learned joie de vivre from The Nanny. Literally, as in the phrase: It sneaked into the to describe the stock-in-trade of the flashy girl from Flushing, as the Nanny was, and as Fran Drescher, its star and creator, was. Ann Hampton Callaway wrote that song for her and did its jazzy performance, a stepping-stone on the way to writing hits for Barbra Streisand, which, if you’re a Jewish girl from the boroughs, as Drescher is, is a little like saying Callaway wrote for some little yeshiva...…Please read our updated and , effective on December 19, 2019.What you first need to understand is that I learned joie de vivre from The Nanny. Literally, as in the phrase: It sneaked into the to describe the stock-in-trade of the flashy girl from Flushing, as the Nanny was, and as Fran Drescher, its star and creator, was. Ann Hampton Callaway wrote that song for her and did its jazzy performance, a stepping-stone on the way to writing hits for Barbra Streisand, which, if you’re a Jewish girl from the boroughs, as Drescher is, is a little like saying Callaway wrote for some little yeshiva...WW…