Prior to 2020, Sarah, a thoughtful young writer from Chicago, spoke daily with her close friends about everything from work and relationships to music and politics. After 2020, and the political upheaval that that year contained, that open range of conversation seemed to contract to the dimensions of a snow globe. Their formerly unguarded discussions became self-conscious and circled the same subjects: masking, anti-racism, gender, sexuality.
The change was not simply in what the group talked about, but in the militancy with which they talked about it. One friend derisively described her aging father as “ableist” because he felt sad about the physical limitations that came with growing old. Another recounted a fight with her mom because the daughter refused to come home for Thanksgiving as she considered it a settler-colonialist holiday.
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