Waterbabies by Heather Diamond
When he arrives, I am holding the paper bag (because the woman is always holding the bag) they gave each of us in the recovery room where one brash young woman ...
Category: Girls & Women
10 Minute Read/Girls & Women/Institutions/Justice/LGBTQ/Literature/Memoir/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Sexism/Society
Three Women Walk into a Bar By Annie Krabbenschmidt
As a gay woman, I have acquired a quick bar banter that cuts men loose before they can get my name. In response to their drunken prattling, I cut to the chase. ...
10 Minute Read/Girls & Women/Grief/Health/Loss/Memoir/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/Rape Culture/#SAAM/trauma/2018 #MeToo Selected Shortlist Essay
Smeared by Rachel Carson
"Did you know some hospitals have an entire department dedicated to rape victims?"
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Girls & Women/Loss/Memoir/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/Rape Culture/The Life/trauma/2018 #MeToo Selected Shortlist Essay
Blowjobs by F. M. Walsh
We avoid their touch by pissing our pants on purpose. Boys don’t want to fondle girls who piss their pants. Fucking babies. We hide. We find a way out of the wo...
7 Minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/Girls & Women/Literature/Loss/MeToo/nonfiction/Rape Culture/2018 #MeToo Selected Shortlist Essay
Relax by Katharine Bost
I want to shout that I had only had one beer. I want to jump back in the cab and pray that the driver takes me home even though I don’t have any cash for him. B...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/nonfiction/PTSD/Secrets/The Life/trauma
They Don’t Live in Dallas by Anna Mullins
Sometimes you lie so much you begin to believe what you say. Sometimes you don’t even have to say the lies out loud to believe them.
10 Minute Read/Aging/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Identity/Literature/Love/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction
It’s Not Much of a World Without Unicorns by Jillian McKelvey
I think these people mean to say, that my mother with Alzheimer’s, behaves differently from the mother I knew without Alzheimer’s.
1 minute Read/ACEs/Featured/Girls & Women/Haibun/Literature/Loss/Memory/nonfiction/On Memory/Secrets
Back to Jackfork Quarry by Stacy Pendergrast
This is the place I remember—with its pine branches, hung like lace canopies. There is the rock slab where they took turns, each first pounding his chest, then ...
1 minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Featured/Flash/Girls & Women/Grief/Literature/Loss/Love/nonfiction
Spare by Maame Blue
It wouldn’t be the last time I tried to cure a broken heart with recklessness.
For Nugget By Ashley Swanson
I never knew you. The books still talked about you in terms of food: This week your baby is the size of a poppy seed. This week your baby is the size of a plum....
5 Minute Read/Girls & Women/Literature/#MeToo/nonfiction/On Memory/#SAAM/Society/2018 #MeToo Selected Shortlist Essay
Avocado by Sophie Trevitt
I am eight. I am eight, and I am an avocado in a flock of magpies and I want to be a magpie so badly that it makes my fingers curl. I want to know what it feels...
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/10 Minute Read/Adversity/Girls & Women/Identity/LGBTQ/#MeToo/Mental Health/Rape Culture/Religion/#SAAM/Society
Discovering Electricity by Abby Cummings
I’d be lying if I said my interest in forensic psychology wasn’t partially fueled by a need to prove I no longer feared men like him, at least in the beginning,...
#MeToo: Over It by Shannon LeBlanc
My friend, however, already had a concrete notion what the pronoun "it" did. Rather than calling the rape—the one I had experienced months earlier—by its name, ...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Girls & Women/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Memory/#MeToo/On Memory/Rape Culture/Survival
The Fade By Sara J. Sutler-Cohen
But I only knew the mechanics of sex, not its consequences. Who does at thirteen?
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/10 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Girls & Women/Loss/#MeToo/MeToo/Rape Culture/#SAAM/Survival
Seeing Red by Shannon Tsonis
It’s got to be near three in the morning and my head still stirs with all the alcohol I had helped myself to. The alcohol I didn’t buy but paid for. Dearly.
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/10 Minute Read/ACEs/childhood sexual abuse/Girls & Women/Loss/#MeToo/MeToo/On Memory/Rape Culture/#SAAM/Survival
#MeToo: The Child is Beautiful by Jade Gleason
TRIGGER WARNING: This #MeToo essay contains references to child sex trafficking and its effects on the writer. You will cry and, bit by bit, it will break your ...
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/15 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Girls & Women/Memoir/#MeToo/MeToo/On Memory/Rape Culture/#SAAM
Before #MeToo by C. Flanagan Flynn
Soon enough it’s clear he’s hellbent on spreading the rumor he fucked you—or is it fact? You’re a 13-year-old freshman who drank a pint of Southern Comfort, bla...
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/5 Minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/childhood sexual abuse/Girls & Women/Memoir/#MeToo/MeToo/On Memory/Rape Culture/#SAAM
#MeToo: Birthday Cake by Tori Weston
My mom tells me that I can choose who can come to my party. I can choose who can have cake. Tomorrow when I turn thirteen I will tell her that he can’t come to ...
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/20 Minute Read/Girls & Women/#MeToo/MeToo/On Memory/Rape Culture/#SAAM/Survival/The 2018 Memoir Magazine #MeToo Edition
#MeToo: I Never Said No by Mary Beth O’Connor
I felt terror but not complete surprise. For a long while, part of me had expected to die like this. I recollected the stories my great-grandmother read from th...
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/5 Minute Read/ACEs/childhood sexual abuse/Girls & Women/Memoir/#MeToo/On Memory/The 2018 Memoir Magazine #MeToo Edition
#MeToo: Hold Your Breath And Count To Ten by Andrea Gallagher
He was a lurker, an expert lurker, my grandfather. He lurked in the dark, and during the day he lurked in empty corners. My earliest memory is of him, sitting o...