I remember how the book talked about the pressure to please and be perfect that every woman falls into and then projects onto her daughter. Nothing is ever good enough. No woman can ever outrun...

I spent a lot of time vacillating between wanting to be seen as attractive, being terrified by too much attention, and wanting to succeed and fit in without anyone’s noticing me.

It wasn’t some Puritan thing. Straight-edge was asking adherents to take control of their lives, not to be blind consumers, and not to be tricked into thinking that drinking and drugs were cool since in...

Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn’t interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that...

That stage in life when older people assume that just because you’ve graduated college you know who you are, or what you’re doing, and in fact most people don’t.