My Christmas Seasons in Ghana and the United States
Each year, as the Christmas season approaches, I find myself instinctively measuring the present against a backdrop of my Ghanaian childhood.
Society & Culture
How Black Migration in St. Louis Sparked Generation Nope
What was once America’s fourth-largest city remains an enigma consistently met with collective ambivalence. There is a dark side to the city, especially when it comes to racial disparities. Historically, decades of oppression have left a bad taste in the mouths of many Black St. Louisans.
Five Reasons Black St. Louisans Are Migrating from St. Louis
The mass exodus of Black St. Louisans in recent years continues to raise eyebrows and stir concerns that question where longtime residents are going, but mostly, why they are leaving.
How a Sufi Shrine Outperforms Western Medicine
If someone suffers from hallucinations, paranoia, depression, or intense anxiety in, say, northern India, what can they do? They can visit a Sufi shrine.
Letter to a Young Leftist
You wanted to cut through all the tired old institutionalized ideals and raise up various identity groups’ struggles for justice, raise them so high they could not be ignored. But the ideas that shaped your impatience are grim.
What Made Americans So Lonely
If you are alone, you have to reach out again and again to fill your life with meaningful connections. It is all terribly hard work. But it is nowhere near as hard as the alternative.
White Lies Seem Civilized—But They Drive Us Apart
Research now shows that sustaining even a tiny white lie requires quite a bit of bandwidth, and people falter if they are tired or multitasking. Intuiting this, and lazy by nature, I vowed in my teens that I would find gentle ways to tell the truth.
Can Gratitude Save Us?
Appreciation warms us. It is a gentle form of enthusiasm, which in the original Greek meant to be inspired by—even possessed by—a god. To have the divine inside you, glowing through the folds of viscera.
Jerry Seinfeld Hates Everything, but He Is Good at It
Seinfeld said when his sitcom “bombed” originally, appearing in a bad slot midweek after Unsolved Mysteries, St. Louis was the one market that kept it alive long enough to become a huge success.
Take a Hike
Hiking feels as sacred as church, carrying me into a pristine wilderness. But it also requires me to do what I am terrible at: pay attention to the physical, sensory, concrete world around me.