JD Vance & How America Uses the Poor for Gain

Candidate Trump has selected Vance to signal that the era of the old guard conservative is over, there is only the Republican party that’s fully behind Project 2025, with little need to share power. Trump’s selection of Vance is meant to shore up support among the white working class, while ignoring candidates who might represent people of color. The hope here is that (just like the statistics indicate) white men and women are largely responsible for a Trump presidency, and whites remain his core constituency.

Wall Street Journal political correspondent Molly Ball says that “By picking Vance, Trump is showing that he’s doubling down on this MAGA agenda. It’s a full-throated, populist national conservative ticket.”

My husband had to learn sex again, and I had to become one tenacious bitch
by Sonya Lea
July 19th, 2015 | Salon

"I show him simple things—kissing, touching, the mechanics of moving the body. Flirting will come much later, when he has grown a sense of self-awareness. I demonstrate affection: compliments, rapport, embraces, caresses, calls, catcalls, the French kiss. Every suggestion, forgotten. Every action, forgotten. In order to adopt the behavior, he must be reminded. Not dozens of times. Thousands of times."

Lea was also published in Salon in February 2014. 

Creation Story
by Sonya Lea
Spring 2007 | The Southern Review

"I'm making this up. I live in this life, and at the same time I assign meaning to it. I could say that’s the way it has always been, and then I would have to be sure who I am now, who I was then, and then I’d have to be sure of what happened, in what order things occurred, and then I’d have to be sure my perception was accurate, and then, because I’m unsure (I think) or want to be somewhat sure (perhaps), I’d have to check it with someone else, to verify (maybe)."

The Southern Review is one of the nation’s premier literary journals.

Ten Best Meals of My Life (Thus Far)
by Sonya Lea
Fall 2012 | Cold Mountain Review

"1.  Four years old. Oak trees, corn fields, white clapboard house... Grandaddy's broad laughter, my little body lifted from the wooden churner, the salty ice scraped away, the lid slid from the steel canister, the dasher raised for my tongue. Ambrosial, icy, crystalline, snow-colored, custardy. Being the first. Sweet reverie."

Cold Mountain Review is a bi-annual literary journal. 

Daisy Duke and the Manosphere
by Sonya Lea
May 4th, 2015 | The Rumpus

"I’ve wondered if the most effective political act is to have your own orgasm. My grandmothers, with their bodies tied to marriage, property, and child-making, had neither the freedom to choose, nor the sovereignty to act upon their erotic imaginings. In their generation, and in my mother’s, the threat of being a ‘slut’ kept most women compliant."

Rumpus original art by Claire Stringer. 

The Give-Away: On Memory, Marriage, and Making Things Right
by Sonya Lea
April 14, 2015 | The Butter

"This is a story that was cobbled together over years of doctors, depositions, medications, musings, and therapies." 

The Butter is an essay series edited by Roxane Gay.

Honky Tonk Girl
by Sonya Lea
October 5, 2017 | Atticus Review

“Those days at Del’s, I sang her lines loud and proud, as if jook and outlaw and lost love simmered in my little girl bones.”

Shattered
By Sonya Lea
May 1, 2015 | Guernica

"Every day I expect to wake up and discover that the morphine has worn off, and that Richard is back to the man he was before the surgery. Instead, quiet."

Guernica is an online magazine of art & politics. 
Artwork by Nicole Eisenman. 

My Husband Forgot Our 24 Years of Marriage
by Sonya Lea
July 11th, 2015 | Good Housekeeping

"'Do you remember the day she was born?' I ask, happily recalling the view of the mountains as I panted to slow down the too-fast delivery of our second child. I share our common tale, as if he'll smile, join in with his own anecdote... Nothing. 'The day our son was born?' 'The day we got married?' I can barely breathe. It hasn't occurred to me, even with a diagnosis of permanent disability from a neuropsychologist, that every memory might remain wiped clean."

Excerpted from Wondering Who You Are. 

First Bath
by Sonya Lea
September 17th, 2012 | Brevity

"His is a body without strength, without vigor, without lust, without intention, without history. A body taken apart and reassembled, a body that has not settled into the space of gravity, a body that knows nothing about its own scars, crevices, grumbles."

Artwork by Gabrielle Katina.

How my husband forgot sex
by Sonya Lea
February 12th, 2014 | Salon

"When we were younger, he was the one who taught me to explore. Then he had cancer surgery—and came out a virgin."

From Lea's book Wondering Who You Are.