Political pregnancy, cadavers, and breakups
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Longreads, Tin House, Granta, and Guernica. Each essay in this newsletter has been selected by the editors at the above publications as the best of the week, delivered to you all in one place. It may be the start of a new work week, but at least we have this great new writing to get us through it.
What I Learned About Life at a Company That Deals in Dead Bodies
by Sabra Boyd (art by Vicky Leta)
“Coffee grounds. To stave off the scent of death,” I added, unsure whether this sounded too melodramatic. He nodded. I carried my lunch back to my desk. I usually ate at my desk or skipped it altogether and went for a walk. In spite of the coffee potpourri’s best efforts, the lunchroom smelled strongly of death because it was located next to the area where the cadavers were stored.
A Political Pregnancy
by Jennifer Case
When I say, “I’m not excited for this child,” he says, “I’ll be excited for both of us,” and something inside of me shrivels and cracks, because what does that mean for him to be excited enough for both of us? For me to become the body carrying a child others want?
Breaking Up with Your Best American Girl
by Lio Min
The worst breakups are the ones you try to stave off as long as you can. Passionate breakups—between lovers, friends, family—taste like blood, metal, and smoke, a flaming sword cleaving what used to be a shared beating heart, or raw meat going into a garbage disposal. Quiet breakups are trickier: One day you’re walking next to someone, talking about something a friend of a friend wrote or an intriguing snack you saw at the corner market, and you realize you’re the only one talking because your conversation partner has become translucent, their spirit somewhere else and their body slowly but surely retreating to join it.
Kidzania
by Katy Whitehead
Then, in mid-July, I receive a call from my sister. We’ve planned a visit for later that month. I am taking my niece to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My niece Laney is six, the age where she’s just starting to look to adults to figure out who she might be. We’ve previously bonded over a love of chocolate, and on one recent phone call, she admitted, cautiously, ‘I actually like books even more than I like chocolate.’ I told a half-truth: ‘Me too!’
Remembering the Things That Remain
by Amos Barshad
One day Kwiatkwoski sends me another email, this one about the thousands of shoes he’d found in the woods outside of Stutthof, a Nazi concentration camp near Gdansk. This had happened in 2015. In the years since, Kwiatkowski explains, he and his Trupa Trupa bandmate Rafał Wojczal had pushed the Stutthof Museum to take proper ownership of these shoes.
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