My daughter is the best thing to happen to me. Six years later, I’m convinced she’s the reason I went through all the rest: because I was always meant to be her mother. But our once-very open adoption has dwindled over the years, mostly because her other mama has pulled away from us. I think…
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When Senator Kamala Harris announced her presidential run on Martin Luther King Jr. Day—47 years to the week after Shirley Chisholm announced her historic run in 1972—I should have been thrilled. Harris is, after all, California’s first black woman and first Indian American to be elected to the Senate. Her decision to declare on a…
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When Maddy, a 39-year-old gallery founder living in Virginia, split from her husband, she imagined their parting would be placid. Aspirational even. Their home would be informally partitioned—she would live in one part, he in another, then there would be a common area in which their two children, along with their Boston terrier and standard…
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During the past few weeks, a particular news story has sent shockwaves through my personal social network: Keziah Daum, an American teenager, wore a traditional Chinese dress—known as either cheongsam or qipao, depending on whether you speak Cantonese or Mandarin—to her high school prom in Utah. The problem? Daum is not of Chinese descent. Having…
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