Sopan Deb is a playwright, author and writer for The New York Times, where his topics have included sports and culture. He is the author of the novel Keya Das’s Second Act, and the memoir, Missed Translations: Meeting The Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me. Before joining the Times, Deb covered Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as a campaign embed for…
When you work for the cat sanctuary, you have everything you need. You may not be able to afford the organic yogurt with its own sidecar of muesli topping. You should lay down any lust for handbags with proud monograms. But you will have a seat on the speed dial of a man whose email address begins with “108shamans.” When…
From my reception desk in the lobby, I watched my boss hang a poster, featuring a team of superheroes familiar from comic books and franchise films. “Heroes Work Here,” the poster declared. The heroes here looked nothing like the ones on the poster. Instead of athletic bodies able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, most employees were women…
Our first date was going pretty well, I thought. Learning to make guacamole in a cooking class. “Oh no, I’m getting teary onion eyes,” Brooke giggled. She wiped at her cheeks with her forearms, but they were all skin and elbows, with nothing fleshy to apply. I was supposed to be learning how to fondle a ripe avocado, but I…
Ode to the Phlebotomist at 2135 Holbrook Road praise that when I rise by myself in an empty elevator in secret I always turn my back to the doors praise a tiny defiance that can be as silly and stupid as this empty waiting room waking itself up at 7:45AM and wiping the dust out of its eyes as I…
It wasn’t that I was bad at teaching. All the qualities that had made me a terrible student in high school made me a great teacher now. I moved fast, I made a lot of jokes, and it was okay if I went off topic. (The only useful thing I learned in my teacher credential program was how to get…
Ubutata Kutatishyanya The duties of a father and child must be reciprocal Bemba proverb. I am learning about forgiveness through a recollection of vertigo after my father. A Sunday before school, I am eleven, and the most important worry is how I will render myself to my friends in light of another loss for which they’ll punish me with…
Tell your dog, I bite. Tell your Jesus I too have a blood-wet diaper and a tendency to fall in love with stray women at art galleries. I got a hair net for my halo. A bag for my jokes. A side kick who smirks and slaps himself in time to a vicious disco beat our punk drummer makes. Tell…
Sestina After DSM-5 Criteria for Gender Dysphoria It all starts with desire. A burgeoning conviction. Taking what is typical and splitting it in two, lapping up what drips between the experienced and the marked. At birth we come out marked. Screaming with a desire to connect, we emerge between the cause and the conviction. Each breath informs the two and…
We are the California kingsnakes of the Canary Islands. Perhaps you’ve heard the troubling reports. We proliferate out of control, our habitat is expanding, our “densities are through the roof.” The EU has banned our further import. But how did we end up here, unwitting invaders on a volcanic rock in the Atlantic, so far from the San Diego pet…