Hard to love: essays and confessions

Description

A sharp and entertaining essay collection about the importance of multiple forms of love and friendship in a world designed for couples, from a laser-precise new voice. Sometimes it seems like there are two American creeds, self-reliance and marriage, and neither of them is mine. I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers. Briallen Hopper's Hard to Love honors the categories of loves and relationships beyond marriage, the ones that are often treated as invisible or seen as secondary-friendships, kinship with adult siblings, care teams that form in times of illness, or various alternative family formations. She also values difficult and amorphous loves like loving a challenging job or inanimate objects that can't love you back. She draws from personal experience, sharing stories about her loving but combative family, the fiercely independent Emerson scholar who pushed her away, and the friends who have become her invented or found family; pop culture touchstones like the Women's March, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and the timeless series Cheers; and the work of writers like Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O'Connor, and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick like you've never seen it!). Hard to Love pays homage and attention to unlikely friends and lovers both real and fictional. It is a series of love letters to the meaningful, if underappreciated, forms of intimacy and community that are tricky, tangled, and tough, but ultimately sustaining.;Intro; Half Title; Dedication; Title Page; Contents; Epigraphs; Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence; How to Be Single; On Spinsters; Pandora in Blue Jeans; We Have Always Lived in the Vortex; Dear Octopus; Remembering How It Felt to Burn; Coming Home to the Best Years of Our Lives; Acquainted with Grief; Hoarding; Dear Flannery; Tending My Oven; Young Adult Cancer Story; Everything You've Got; Coasting; On Sisters; The Stars; The Foundling Museum; Waveforms and the Women's March; Moby-Dick; Girls of a Golden Age; Acknowledgments; A Note on the Author; Copyright Intro Half Title Dedication Title Page Contents Epigraphs Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence How to Be Single On Spinsters Pandora in Blue Jeans We Have Always Lived in the Vortex Dear Octopus Remembering How It Felt to Burn Coming Home to the Best Years of Our Lives Acquainted with Grief Hoarding Dear Flannery Tending My Oven Young Adult Cancer Story Everything You've Got Coasting On Sisters The Stars The Foundling Museum Waveforms and the Women's March Moby-Dick Girls of a Golden Age Acknowledgments A Note on the Author Copyright