Karim Kazemi
Distress Signals
Karim Kazemi
In early December, I bought a tray of origami paper and a bottle of hypoallergenic zinc shampoo for a teenage girl I do not know personally. I had found my way to her holiday wish list through Transanta, a mutual-support platform that connects anonymous gift givers with transgender youth across the U.S. and Canada. The letters that accompany the wish lists often detail struggles to pay rent, medical bills, and...
No Returns | On Family Functions and Dysfunctions
Karim Kazemi
In December, The New Yorker asked, “How Did Polyamory Become So Popular?” in a piece that tracked the rise of the open relationship, from the obscure “province of utopian free-love communities” to its status as a mainstay of “Park Slope marriages and prestige television.” In January, New York magazine took on the same topic in a cover story, which explored the “increasingly mainstream world of ethical non-monogamy” and included “a...
