Forthcoming: “‘Double-Sided Sleights of Hand’: Race in the Mirror”
This essay, to be published in a volume titled The Languages of Discrimination and Racism in Twentieth-Century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan 2021), looks to two mid-century films—Vittorio De Sica’s Miracolo a Milano and Dino Risi’s Il sorpasso—and Achille Campanile’s 1927 novel Ma che cosa è quest’amore? for asides, jokes, and whispers that racialize while subtly acknowledging the self-alienating folly of racial constructs. Though this isn’t a personal essay, it is the culmination of my experience of racialized living in Italy. The title and framework are inspired by Tisa Bryant’s fantastic Unexplained Presence (Leon Works 2007). I’m pretty thrilled about this one. In addition to testing out a kind of subversively imaginative scholarship, it captures something that I hope is both generous and authentic about my way of thinking and my experience of race in Italy.
“‘Double-Sided Sleights of Hand’: Race in the Mirror,” forthcoming in The Languages of Discrimination and Racism in Twentieth-Century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan 2021).
“2354 Maclay”
This is an essay about a photograph—the people pictured as well as the space they occupy, a space I knew as a child. As I wrote, I found myself barreling back and forth between the child I was when I knew that space and those people and the person I now am. I tried to make the language a sound and zippy vehicle for so much movement.
People Holding, by the way, is a fantastic journal featuring fiction and nonfiction writing on images of people holding anything. In this image, my grandmother holds the shoulder of a man named “Judge.”
“2354 Maclay,” People Holding, November 2020
“Snæfellsjökull”
“Snæfellsjökull,” is my contribution to “In the Land of Fire and Ice,” a collaborative essay written by attendees at the NonfictioNOW conference held in Iceland in the summer of 2017. It briefly describes an uncanny experience on Iceland’s Snæfellsjökull glacier.
“Snæfellsjökull,” Punctuate, October 2017
“An Atom’s Width of Knowing”
Argument and other thesis-driven writing has been a mainstay of undergraduate education in writing for, well, a long time. And I can’t help but wonder whether such training has over time damaged our abilities to closely observe and analyze. So my approach to teaching writing in undergraduate settings, an approach narrated in “Atom’s Width of Knowing,” is different: I train students to manage uncertainty and other forms of not-knowing in their writing. I think it’s better—for truth, for civic life—if we teach them to be curious observers of their worlds rather than strident claim-makers.
“An Atom’s Width of Knowing,” Writing on the Edge, Spring 2017
“Usciolu”
“Usciolu,” an essay about my first go at trekking Corsica’s GR20, gave expression to something I’d felt for a long time but hadn’t before put into words: feeling entirely out of place in Europe while at home in its most remote natural settings. The essay was awarded a nonfiction prize by Flway and garnered an honorable mention in Best American Essays 2016.
“Usciolu,” Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, February 2015
“With Their Heads in Their Hands”
An essay about the San Miniato al Monte basilica, cephalophores, and feeling lost in Florence.
“With Their Heads in Their Hands,” Guernica, May 2010
“Seeing in Stereo”
About a trompe l’œil exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi.
“Seeing in Stereo,” Guernica, December 2009
Tom Friedman, Untitled (big/small figure), 2004, styrofoam and paint.
“The Infinite in the Infinitesimal”
It’s the very, very little things.
“The Infinite in the Infinitesimal,” Guernica, July 2009
“In Praise of Failure”
My playful stab at a translation of the introduction to Pierre Bayard’s Comment améliorer les œuvres ratées? (How to Improve Failed Works). The translation enjoyed a tiny little write-up here. The piece was revived a little when the Brooklyn Public Library hosted the multi-genre creative residency I was a part of in 2020 and borrowed the translation’s title for the residency program title.
Bayard and I eventually became friends—he is a really lovely person. He gave his blessing for my translation of others of his books and I in fact translated all of Et si les œuvres changeaient d’auteur? (And If Works Changed Authorship?). But then we seem to have had a falling out—I don’t know—and the translated book lives in my laptop. Maybe somebody else has translated it. I hope a translation is out there.
“In Praise of Failure,” Guernica, May 2009
“Calypso Awakenings”
A pirate festival, dancing alone to calypso, and a few other things.
“Calypso Awakenings,” Guernica, March 2009
“Twin Peeks”
Seeing and being alone, sort of, at Otis Pike High Dunes Wilderness.
“Twin Peeks,” Guernica, February 2009
Blog Posts for Guernica
Attempts to Control Time, February 2011
Where There’s Smoke, December 2010
Teardrops in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, October 2010
Roll Deep: An Interview with Luc Sante, August 2008
When Rasmussen Was King, September 2007
“Wide Awake”: I Go to Sleep, June 2007
Why Does Violent, Misogynist, Greed-Promoting Music Have to Sound So Good?, May 2007
Five Catholic Supreme Court Justices: Should We Be Scared?, May 2007
Dear Diary, I Didn’t Finish a Book Today, April 2007
Just Looking, April 2007
Black Like That Guy Over There, April 2007
Bim and Bam
. . . a blog I maintained for a little while a long time ago.
