#452: The Shapes of Silence
Plus: Articles on haircuts and dogs, and a podcast on creepy AI
Hi there, loyal readers. I hope you’re getting some time to relax. Thank you for making Article Club a regular part of your reading routine.
Summer must be at full tilt, because I’m noticing that my selections lately have been on the shorter side and more lighthearted than usual. Will this trend continue for the long haul? We’ll have to see.
One trend that is definitely happening is that articles about relationships are rising to the top. Last week, we had two articles about marriage. This week, our lead article, “The Shapes of Silence,” is about the relationship between a woman and her father and the ways that family members communicate. It’s beautifully written, in letter form, and I’m hopeful that you’ll read it.
If you’re not interested in articles about daughter-father relationships, don’t worry. I’ve got three other pieces worthy of your attention. They are:
If you like one or more of the articles, go ahead, hit reply or email me. Or if you prefer, tell your friends and family to sign up for Article Club.
⭐️ There’s still time to join us for this month’s discussion of Southlake, by Mike Hixenbaugh and Antonia Hylton. We’re going to focus on Episodes 2 and 3 of the podcast series: “Just a Word” and “The Not-So-Silent Majority.”
If you’re an educator, a parent, or if you care about issues of race and racism in schools, I encourage you to participate.
Interested? We’re meeting on Zoom on Saturday, July 20, from 2:00 to 3:30 pm PT to discuss the podcast. If this will be your first time, I urge you to take the leap!
1️⃣ The Shapes of Silence
This is a beautiful letter by a daughter to her father. It’s about their relationship. Jennifer Thuy Vi Nguyen wants to come out to her dad. But she struggles with the words. So for a long time, she remains silent.
Ms. Nguyen notices that this tendency toward silence also describes her father, a refugee and a veteran of the South Vietnamese Air Force. She reflects on the reasons for his silence:
Không thể,” you said once. You can’t say because it’s too hurtful.
“I love you, I want you to know. But not too much,” you said a few times before.
In the letter, Ms. Nguyen considers how secrets can protect and harm us. She thinks back to her childhood, when love was not “proclamations of feelings for one another,” but rather “the ability to live through pain.” She concludes that Vietnamese history is “a long list of people trying to silence us.”
Still, Ms. Nguyen wants to connect more deeply with her father. She wonders if there are different types of silence — if silence has contours, has shapes. She writes:
You always taught me to trust actions, never words. What was more important than talking was our ability to hold secrets. From you, I learned the many shapes of silence — how it can be used violently or as a powerful form of restraint. Rarer was silence as the embodiment of peace, where two people can sit together without words, but in mutual understanding.
By Jennifer Thuy Vi Nguyen • Longreads • 20 min • Gift Link
2️⃣ The Kaleshion: What a Haircut Can Do to a Person
Something must be in the water, because all of a sudden, I’m featuring funny articles. Who knew this was possible? Last week, it was mewing; this week, it’s haircuts.
Ever since he was in preschool, Jared Walker has not enjoyed going to the barber. That’s because way back when, his dad always insisted on a “kaleshion” — not an actual hairstyle, Prof. Walker says, but rather a made-up word on the barber’s wall, beneath a photo of a bald head. Anything is better than bald — an Afro would do, or a Jheri curl, or a flattop, or wearing your hair an inch long all around. But over the years, no matter what he does (including years of cutting his own hair), Prof. Walker cannot manage to escape the gravitational inevitability of the kaleshion.
✚ This is an essay from How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, published in 2020. In the Black community, Prof. Walker writes, “anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline.”
By Jerald Walker • Creative Nonfiction • 8 mins • Gift Link
3️⃣ Not a Dog Person
For a newsletter that regularly features photographs of dogs, Article Club has mostly steered clear of selecting schmaltzy articles about our canine friends. But again, something has come over me, which means you get this heartwarming article about a woman who didn’t want a dog, got one anyway, and the unadulterated joy that follows.
You’ll meet Lincoln, a floppy-eared spaniel mix with deep brown eyes — rescued from long days languishing in a crate, a bark collar around his neck, and a big gash on his face, the result of a mean ranch dog. For Lincoln’s owner, Nina McConigley, things are going well. “Lincoln doesn’t work hard at anything besides chasing bunnies in our yard and barking at the doorbell,” she writes. But he has expanded my world. He’s taught me to see the land with joy and wild abandon, and he is goodness on a planet that seems increasingly bleak at times.”
By Nina McConigley • High Country News • 5 mins • Gift Link
4️⃣ Shell Game: Quality Assurance
It’s happening, even if we don’t want to admit it: Artificial Intelligence is taking over. Ever since last March, when we discussed “HUMAN_FALLBACK,” by Laura Preston, I’ve found myself more and more interested in pieces that explain the human impact that AI will cause (or, to be more accurate, is already causing).
Shell Game, a new six-part podcast “about things that are not what they seem,” is equal parts illuminating and creepy. In the first episode, journalist Evan Ratliff clones his voice, hooks it up to an AI chatbot, and unleashes it into the world. Its first job: to talk with customer service agents about problems with his credit card bill. Although not perfect, his voice agent doesn’t do poorly. But is this a good thing?
For Mr. Ratliff, cloning his own voice — which in later episodes will hoodwink his friends, family, even his therapist — is part exploration, part preservation. After all, he thinks, if we don’t replace ourselves, surely someone else will. He asks, “What should we expect from a future in which more and more of the people we encounter in the world aren’t real?”
By Evan Ratliff • Shell Game • 32 min • Apple Podcasts
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