
Contents
Snow, Rain, Heat, Pandemic, Gloom of Night
Get access-
Published:March 2023
Cite
Extract
The post office doesn’t have clocks.
Waiting in line, I can feel everyone’s tension and anger stewing, leaking out of their pores like gasoline. The air fills with the soup of impatience.
There are five people ahead of me. I take it all in: the tapping of a high-heeled shoe, the exaggerated checking of a watch, the shifting of packages from one arm to the other. The line moves and a woman steps up to the counter with her face mask on wrong. It flops down below her nose like loose pantyhose. She keeps touching her mask. Not to adjust it to the correct position, just to touch it. Then she slams her pocketbook down on the counter like she’s crushing a cockroach and shouts at the clerk: “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting in this fucking line?”
In the anxiety swamp of 2020, in the roiling heat of July, a white woman in a California post office was recorded screaming “Can you just do your job? It’s simple” at an Asian American employee, calling them a “chink” multiple times. Realizing she’s being recorded by other customers, she says “chink” again—directly at the phone screen recording her. When she says this word in the video, I am transported back to grade school and the corner of a stuffy Jersey classroom where I’m standing with my back against a wall, the pushpins from posters that read “You Matter!” and “Division as Sharing!” digging into my back. A white boy is singing “ching-chong-ching-chong” and pulling at the corners of his eyes. Years later, as a twenty-something, I will run into him when I’m checking out from Lowe’s. Years later, he will scan my light fixtures and look up at me, the bags under his blue eyes like crescent moons: “Hey, you look familiar. Did we go to school together?” The light fixtures will clang together, percussive brass jewels, in my shopping bag.
Sign in
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Purchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing informationMonth: | Total Views: |
---|---|
August 2024 | 2 |
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.