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Michelle Tea

Michelle Tea is the author of more than a dozen works of poetry, fiction, and memoir, including the essay collection Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions and Criticisms, winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is the founder and creator of Drag Queen Story Hour and many other literary interventions.

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Reaper Madness

Fall 2019 | Essays

When your four-year-old begins talking incessantly about death, there are a few tactics for dealing with it. One is curiosity. Why do you want to die? Why do you hope you die today? Why do you love to die? Why do you want to kill yourself? The four-year-old doesn’t know what death is, not really, and so he cannot truly answer the question.