I'm a Winner!
Recipient of the 2023 Silvers Grant for Work in Progress
I am honored and humbled to be a recipient of the 2023 Silvers Grants for Work in Progress. For those who are not aware, The Robert B. Silvers Foundation was established by a founding editor of the New York Review of Books, with the aim of supporting writers in the fields of long-form literary, art criticism, intellectual essays, and social reportage. My proposed project, “Freedom to Choose,” is a social reportage of narrative nonfiction, that tells the stories of three women in three countries who have sought an abortion. Bringing their lives to the page in richly reported detail, the series of articles will give its subjects space to recount their struggles and strategies as they seek autonomy over their reproductive lives. The focus is on the United States, where I was born and raised; Haiti, where my parents were born and migrated as young adults; and Germany, where I have lived for the last six years. Though legal regimes around abortion and the general societal position of women in these three countries vary widely, in all cases women face legal or practical obstacles to the free exercise of their freedom to choose.
The funding will allow me to continue researching and writing about abortion access, as I have done in my upcoming co-edited anthology, After Sex (Silver Press, 2023). As many people know, reproductive freedom continues to be dear to my heart, and I want to narrate stories that move us enough to grant justice to all. More than anything, I am grateful for my friends, comrades, and interlocutors who put confidence in my prose.
Furthermore, I highly recommend that you engage with the works of the other winners. I have been in admiration of many of them and really look forward to seeing their projects come to fruition. As my friends always say, “Reading is fundamental.”
A Read
Recently, I re-read, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, a memoir where a Chinese American woman tells of her family’s myths and the childhood events that shaped her identity. This is a recording of me reading the first portion of the book. Although the narrator’s background is wildly different from mine, there are parallels between her family’s stories and those that I grew up hearing from my relatives. The text is gripping because it reveals generational rifts and the extent we try to reckon with our elders’ past.
With love,
Congratulations!