During a lecture last March [2011], I spoke fondly of a friend whom I had recently lost to cancer. Halfway through the anecdote, I suddenly recognized his wife, the mother of his two young children, in the audience, listening in rapt attention. She was far from home, a surprise visitor. I almost choked. And I suddenly began weighing my words with much greater care. Had I represented her husband well?

Some days I can’t remember: am I Abel or Cain?

City living involves carving out paths—the well-worn routes we travel each day. Whether on foot, behind the wheel, or in the seat of a city bus, we come to anticipate the landmarks of daily life. The construction on the house on the corner; the For Sale sign that becomes Sold; the usual panhandlers and Street…

The Pill’s fiftieth anniversary year is an odd occasion for me, the daughter of young parents who stoked their fiery love affair with accidental babies. Despite the pink plastic nautilus of Pills in our mom’s make-up tray, despite the condoms we found when we looted our dad’s sock drawer for impounded Nintendo controllers, my parents…

The most beautiful things in Ghana are green oranges: as pale and dimpled as hedge apples from an Osage Orange and oblong, as if shaped by hand. When I walk home in the evenings, I pass the girls selling green oranges at wooden tables along the road, each arranging twelve of her best on the…