Unzipped

In Issue 4 of “Unzipped”, David Gerson and Stephen McMaster explore the vulnerability of becoming men, in particular, of living openly as gay men in the south. These two collections introduce you to the awkward innocence of first love, the awkward cruelty of last loves, the beauty of love between friends, and complicated familial relationships. Turning these pages could bring you tears of laughter or tears of sorrow, but it won't leave you bored for a moment.

“There's No Accounting for the Strangeness of Things” tells the story of a young woman, driven by the siren song of wretched excess, who must take the world apart before she is able to put it back together again. Fortunately, the journey lands in a discovery of what it means to find home, to feel the love of the child.

“Vanishing Shoals” is a micro-memoir written during a year-long cancer journey, but it is not a cancer memoir because life is not made of a singular event. With alternating timelines, Sita explores formative experiences in an ashram, her parents' battles with addiction and mental illness, and the contrast between spiritual involvement and parental neglect. In the present, it starts with a rare cancer diagnosis and becomes a reconnection to spirituality, radical acceptance, and unconditional familial nurturing. Sita's book asks the question, how do we move beyond a history we'd rather hide? And how do we learn to appreciate experiences of the past as part of being a whole and flawed human?