During this holiday week, The Common is presenting highlights from the past year. Today’s highlights come from “Essays.”
James Boo takes us on a visit to the Park Slope Coop, while Deborah Thompson trades one piece of history for another in a thrift store.
Photo from Flickr Creative Commons
COURTNEY KERSTEN
You thought to yourself, This is the way to avoid poverty in California while getting a PhD—just get a roommate you can share 250 square feet with: a lover. But as you watched him walk away, you realized you never cracked the system. You’re still in it. You always were.
KELLY MCMASTERS
Interior of a silver Volvo wagon, back door pockets stuffed with Candy Ring wrappers, pencils, and rocks; I am looking in the rear-view mirror or over my right shoulder into the backseat.
ALA FOX
It is Ramadan in Saint-Denis, the banlieue north of Paris. It is almost 21:00h on a June Sunday, and the sun hangs a hazy orange in the sky. The elevator in Amir’s building is broken so we climb the six stories, past the floors of muffled French Arabic and children’s screams.
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