Sublime

She spoke like an American, with the same expectations of fairness, even fairness belated and begrudged, that she took into medical school all those years ago. And she spoke like a black woman, with all the pain that undercuts those exact feelings.

My mother found a fancy wristwatch catalog in the book swap at the dump. The front cover was crumpled, but she ironed it, as she ironed crumpled dollar bills. On the coffee table, next to a glass bowl from a garage sale, it looked like something a rich person would have. She set it just askew on the table, as if someone had been reading it and care

Workers in the gig economy were disproportionately poor.

“You get to a question of, is that what capitalism is supposed to do?” Schwartz asked. “There’s so many little ways that a company like this tells the next generation of entrepreneurs what success looks like.

—Charlotte Clingstone presented a kind of ideal. She was bohemian but accomplished. Worldly but rooted.