Tag Archives: Rain Taxi Rewind 2016

Post Post-Racial

It was an incorrect idea when first posited and looks absurd in this moment, given the events of this year: we were never living in a post-racial America. The entire concept was meant as misdirection, put forth by those in this country who would choose to halt progress by announcing that there was no more […]

YA and the Genre Question

Not a single book market has had as much success while also having to justify its own existence as frequently as Young Adult literature. The questions, even and perhaps especially in the face of commercial hits, go as follows: why write books for a specifically teenage group? Their English classes feature “adult” books; it’s not […]

China

There are a lot of countries we’re being asked to think about this summer, countries that become conceptualized in terms of the distilled stances each presidential candidate takes toward them. Thinking of the world map purely in terms of sound bites related to an election is obviously reductive and shallow, but that can be hard […]

Hero Complex

There was a time when the superhero story felt grandiose: some otherwise-normal human with an extraordinary power we’d never yet imagined, grappling with the implications of this power while also stopping some form of Evil just in the nick of time. This time, I think, has passed. We can imagine all the “powers,” and we’ve […]

The Fever Dream

There is not a single person who thinks this is working—“this” being the whole experiment, the American Concept, the abstract set of ideals that when put into practice end up looking far different than anyone imagined. When it comes the United States, who’s happy, right now? The answer is close to no one, and the […]

Watched and Watching

You are being watched. As recently as a few years ago, sentiment like this would sound like the cliché of someone suffering from paranoia. As of now, though, it’s frankly reasonable to point out that unless you really are hiding in isolation, someone is “looking” at you. Now that nearly all facets of our lives […]

ISLAM

Islam is a religion of peace. You’ve heard this idea before, and you’ve probably heard it said exactly like that. The reason these words are so familiar in the cultural conversation is because they so often need repeating in the face of bigotry; too often, Islam finds itself in the crosshairs of xenophobic scapegoating. More […]

“Like Sweden”

Scandinavia isn’t that big. Its defining feature might be that it’s a Separate Entity, in terms of its geography, culture, and presence on the global political stage. They speak their own languages, three of the four countries have their own currency, and they’re not even that popular of tourist destinations, when compared to locales throughout […]

Body of Knowledge

There is nothing you know as much about as your own body. To say you “know about it” is actually too much distance between you and it; we are our bodies, no matter how separate or at odds with them we sometimes feel. It’s interesting, then, how the body remains one of the great puzzles […]

Old Faith in a New Time

It is a strange time to be Catholic, like it always is, in that one is both centuries old and modern at once. This feeling seems amplified in light of the current election cycle, in which every value we hold has become something to fight for or lose. Existing in modern America as a Catholic […]