‘The View From Here’ Essay on Women Are Boring

My essay ‘The View from Here: Fighting Disillusionment as an American Expatriate‘ is featured on Women Are Boring, a wonderful platform for women in all fields of academia—definitely check out some of the other essays and interviews!

I was wearing an Esmeralda crewneck sweatshirt the first time I heard someone say the President should be ashamed of himself. I was either reading or spinning around in circles, and I liked Esmeralda best because she looked most like me. There were at least three adults, perched like gargoyles on the couch edge and they, along with a sizeable portion of America, were all at once captivated and scandalized; the 42nd President of the United States had brought shame upon all our kettle black homes. I had yet to understand the difference between peaches and impeachment, and in twenty years time I would be an expatriate.

I was an expat before America changed hands, before Bernie Sanders was officially out of the running, before Hillary Clinton was deemed a ‘nasty woman.’ America felt to me considerably far away during my Master’s program in England where I was writing a short story collection and finalizing PhD applications, still trying to decide if it was weird to put milk in my tea. In the postgraduate pub or university café, I was often asked how I was allowing this to happen—‘this’ being the rise of Donald Trump—and I responded, with my significantly less charming accent, that I held much less clout than they assumed. And yet, it was unnerving how guilty I felt, how relieved, to be so far away from America. I busied myself with PhD applications asking that I demonstrate my intentions: my plan to contribute something new and significant to academia and why. This portion of the applications felt timely; in my case wanting to contribute something significant meant being present, from afar, in the matters of America. While the critical and creative aspects of my proposed novel materialized, I returned again and again to that awareness of guilty-relief, which did not add to my work as much as it hindered it.

Your Free Speech Does Not Eclipse Mine: The Problem of Harassment as an Accepted Form of Expression—via HuffPost Women

A few years ago, after a charming fellow messaged me about slapping my face with his penis, I deleted my Twitter account and made my other social media accounts private. Instagram was the first to go following an eloquent quip involving the commenter’s penis and my eye socket—on a photo of me holding a kitten. At the time, I assumed the comment was aimed at me; in retrospect, it is very possible it had nothing to do with me. In which case, I hope that kitten is somewhere safe.

You can find my recent essay on feminism, social media harassment, and free speech on The Huffington Post.