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Radcliffe Magazine
Fall 2020

An illustration of the year 2020 in which each number includes scenes of working from home, a family around a table, a public protest, and a VOTE sign. These are surrounded by car parts, a headstone, a cat, a vigil, food items, stars and planets hnaging from above, and a raging fire.

Illustration by Calvin Laituri

Welcome to the fall issue of Radcliffe Magazine—21 essays by contributors ranging from Pulitzer Prize–winning authors and journalists to artists, scholars, students, scientists, and supporters of the Institute. In the age of COVID-19, George Floyd, and another outbreak of devastating wildfires, as a polarized nation closes in on Election Day, we wanted to explore the chaos, unrest, and loss of 2020 in deeply personal terms. A digital format was a must, allowing us to keep pace with the times, but there were no strict requirements in our requests to the current and former fellows, students, and alumnae who make up our list of contributors. Tell us what you learned, we asked. What’s changed? What’s next? Their essay-length answers—ranging in topic from grief, politics, and race to engine repair, neutron stars, and family—amount to a varied expression of Radcliffe Engaged and an affirmation of the Institute’s commitment to cross-disciplinary inquiry.

The essayists featured in this special issue of Radcliffe Magazine provided contributions without remuneration. In gratitude and as a means of responding to food insecurity in our community, the Radcliffe Institute is making a donation to the Greater Boston Food Bank, the largest hunger-relief organization in New England and one of the largest food banks in the country. The nonprofit Feeding America projects that one in eight people in Eastern Massachusetts will experience food insecurity in 2020 as a result of COVID-19.

Finally, our work on this issue was interrupted by sorrow over the death of Pat Harrison, who served 18 years as editor of Radcliffe Magazine before retiring from the Institute in 2018. We dedicate the fall issue to her memory.

Read about Our Contributors

[Tomiko Brown-Nagin. Photo by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer]

Letter from Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin

These are extraordinary times.

Read the Statement from the Dean

Warpland Revival

“I hold space for my deeply felt and necessary grieving, but I will not let it consume my work and my joy.”

Illustration of putting a mask on one's face

Old Masks, New Face

“Maybe what’s happening is that after all these years my real face is finally emerging.”

Angst, Flour, Order

“It’s lonely to be isolated, but it’s lonelier when human interaction is right there, just across the street.”

Illustration by Brian Hoffman

Hacksaw Therapy

“If I am feeling tolerant of the disorder that surrounds me, I sit at my desk and write. If not, I start fixing stuff.”

Illustration of brown house with names of police brutality victims

Still Less Than Equal

Crystal Z Campbell

“I’m writing on the day that justice was not served for Breonna Taylor.”

READ ESSAYS BY Diane McWhorter | Laurence Ralph | Gish Jen | Kavita Kacholia Mishra | Lizabeth Cohen | Ben Miller

So Much Drama

Photo of a young demonstrator at a protest in response to police killing of George Floyd.

No Surrender

Illustration of a classroom, one person seated and one person petting a cat

Untamed Hearts

Illustration of people in 5 different pods with lines connecting them to each other

You, Me, and Everyone Else

Living History

Accompanied by Horn

The Letting Go

“My stasis wasn’t amnesiac—I still felt the overwhelming melancholy of the world—but rather a kind of surrender.”

Time Is of the Essence

Linda Greenhouse

“All of us will emerge from this period having pushed some kind of personal reset button, from the superficial to the profound.”

We Could Have Been Friends

Ivelisse Estrada

“One of the things that makes me feel most alive—winning over a new friend—has been taken away.”

Vetiver

“Do not think of the abyss, I say to myself, like St. Augustine before the city of god.”

View of Earth from NASA. North America and South America is shown highlighting the stars in each continent

The Light of Earthly Collisions

“The vastness of the cosmos, for all its grandeur and beauty, cannot help us find a solution to our earthly woes.”

READ ESSAYS BY Suzanne Mettler | Miriam Pawel | Jonathan Guyer | Ruben Reyes Jr. | Nina McConigley

Illustration by Edmon de Haro

Where Next, America?

Freshly Picked Hope

Slow-Simmering Solace

A Human Heart in Conflict with Itself

Juniper trees in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Mother of Invention