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Rachel Toliver
Rachel Toliver

423 Followers

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Mar 24, 2020

Questions for Now

To whom do I sing happy birthday, as I’m washing my hands? To whom do I pray, as I’m washing my hands, and at all other times? Remember the old worries? How they’re piled like stones, how they’ve become an altar? How the altar is way out there, on the…

2 min read

2 min read


Mar 21, 2020

I Check the News for a Minute that Is Not a Minute, My Bed Unmade, My Cat Unfed, My Raisin Bran Becoming Soggy in the Bowl.

In the laptop a field, in the field all these pixels. On the track-pad an inching of fingers. What to check, check everything. Check, but only for a minute. Checking is a kind of duty, knowing what needs known. But where’s the edges of this field. Where’s the tab where…

1 min read

1 min read


Jan 15, 2020

October

We rode our bikes out to the farm stand — a farm stand with ice cream, with an ice cream window, and we got the peanut butter, and we got the double chocolate. The teen in his apron, his scoops copious, grandiose. He was dedicated, adept with gesture. Elbow deep…

2 min read

2 min read


Aug 27, 2018

The Lives Erased by Gentrification

When I moved to Franklinton, I told myself I wasn’t displacing anyone — Here’s a sentence for you: “They’re building the luxury apartments, called River & Rich, on a former public housing site.” It reads like an excerpt of a novel — one that’s not especially good, but very moral and sincere. …

Cities

13 min read

The Lives Erased by Gentrification
The Lives Erased by Gentrification
Cities

13 min read


Aug 3, 2018

Dispatch From the Death Zone

Economic segregation in America’s heartland — It’s Friday and I’m at the bar, feeling festive because my husband and I just closed on a house. I’d thought our house was on Siebert Street, in the Southside neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. But now I know it’s in the death zone. At least this is what the acquaintance…

Racism

12 min read

Dispatch From the Death Zone
Dispatch From the Death Zone
Racism

12 min read


Nov 17, 2016

About the Flag

The bus is slow, rerouted, going down the wrong street. This would’ve been annoying, before. It’s Friday; the space that would’ve once contained my annoyance about stuff like buses is inhabited with something that feels like a heavy wet cloth placed on my face. I can’t seem to get annoyed…

Donald Trump

6 min read

Donald Trump

6 min read


Oct 8, 2016

Certain Areas, Certain Bodies: Donald Trump and the Rhetoric of Intimidation

“You’ve got to go out, and you’ve got to get your friends, and you’ve got to get everybody you know, and you gotta watch the polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas.” – Donald Trump, Manheim PA rally I type the phrase certain areas into…

Racism

6 min read

Racism

6 min read


Aug 4, 2016

Empathy Is A Luxury Item

On the second Wednesday it’s halfway decent Kung Pao Chicken at the cafeteria’s Global Café. Then, at 8:00, it’s time for the Politics Panel. This writers’ conference is almost over, a bodiless end-of-camp feeling. Just when we’ve learned the most direct path from the auditorium to the dorms; just when…

2016 Election

8 min read

2016 Election

8 min read


Jul 8, 2016

On Whiteness, James Baldwin, and Trying to Heed

[White people] are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. — James Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook” When I was a girl, I had a bedspread that was ruffled and yellow like a southern belle’s…

BlackLivesMatter

6 min read

BlackLivesMatter

6 min read


Jul 5, 2016

On Telling the Internet that I Prefer Not Talking to Strange Men

Some thoughts, in no particular order. 1. To the people who say they’re sorry to hear that I live in a sketchy neighborhood: America is a sketchy neighborhood. The key-card dorms of Ivy League colleges are a sketchy neighborhood. Suburban pools beaming out other-planetary light are a sketchy neighborhood. Leather-bolstered…

Nonfiction

6 min read

Nonfiction

6 min read

Rachel Toliver

Rachel Toliver

423 Followers

Thinking about cities, cats, public and domestic spaces. New Republic/ Brevity/ TriQuarterly/ American Literary Review. https://www.racheltoliver.com

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