I am kin to the disobedient woman precisely because I am not a woman, because no one is correctly a woman, because everyone fears being a woman, because the woman striving to be a paragon will die by a thousand dull cuts.

A grandfather is born in Jakarta. His mother is Chinese. His father is Belgian and Indonesian. His wife will be British, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Scandinavian. His daughters will be born in the Netherlands. His granddaughters, New York, Los Angeles. This grandfather gardens. I call him in the Dutch, Opa. When he is ten years old […]

Remember the melting world, burning into frog soup like a lullaby, so slowly we hardly know we are not just falling asleep.

When I woke in the recovery room after surgery, a nurse’s head hovered over mine. “It’s okay,” she said. “I had one too, and now I have three healthy kids.”
And just like that, I gained access to a world of miscarriages.

If upward progress is a romantic idea we try to build our lives around, then so too are falling, celerity, this wild and fickle freedom.

I clenched my teeth, seething at this age-old American innocence, the belief that at the end of the day, Americans meant well and, really, that ought to be enough. Enough to claim the perch of fame, the pedestal of saviors.