I’m thrilled to have a new essay in West Branch, one of my very favorite literary journals. “You Must Stumble” is part of my manuscript-in-progress, Exhibitions, a book of essays about my nomadic upbringing as the daughter of two American diplomats. Most of the pieces in Exhibitions examine works of art–paintings, art glass, photographs–as a way of examining the self, of exploring topics such as genocide, intergenerational transmission of trauma, and ethical problems of representation.

In “You Must Stumble,” I write about Gunter Demnig’s “decentralized monument,” the Stolpersteine project, in which the artist has embedded tens of thousands of memorial plaques known as “stumbling stones” in front of former homes (across Europe) of those killed by National Socialism. The piece took a great deal of research and time to write, and then even more time to revise. I’m really proud of this essay. And I’m so grateful that West Branch Wired decided to publish it. You can read the piece here.