Letters to ROOM: Jenny Shepherd

Responses

I love this name, the space it brings with it. It feels ready for me to fill it with whatever I need to. Sometimes, that’s all we need—a space, and time to fill that space and maybe just the silence that comes within and is held there. It feels nourishing and it also enlivens those moments when a creeping dissatisfaction occurs as to how one is doing in this heavy, wide, and unruly war-torn world that we belong in. Memories also slide out when we are in this place of reverie.

Reader Response: David Lotto

Responses

As Thrul suggests, the end of history thesis fits well with the rise of the biological deterministic model for understanding mental distress. The widespread adoption of this paradigm in the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic communities has much to do with the current devalued status of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. […]

Photo by Luke Braswell | Collage by Mafe Izaguirre

THE FEMINIST FUTURE IS NONBINARY by Catherine Baker-Pitts

Essays

I’m taken aback when Gloria Steinem, the “face of feminism,” announces on the Today show that she’s had “a little fat removed from above my eyes so I didn’t look like Mao Zedong.” Steinem is referring to the puffy-faced Chinese revolutionary who died in 1976, around the time when her model-thin figure was featured on a Manhattan billboard, erected by antagonists intent on reducing Steinem to her body.

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Letters to Room: Stefanie Hofer

Responses

It has been over a year that I had sent you my piece “Playing with Guns” after attending a church Halloween Festival for children that had many games centered around toy guns. I am happy to report that Blacksburg Christian Fellowship has made changes to its Halloween celebration.

Photo: Markus Schreiber, AP. © 2017 The Associated Press.

THE BRAND by Jeri Isaacson

Essays

The day in April that Ivanka Trump appeared on the dais with Angela Merkel at the Women’s Summit in Berlin, I was in my office. I was listening to a vibrant and astute young woman in her twenties as she confessed, a little sheepishly, that her new shirt had “trendy” sleeves…