Sharon Harrigan

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Modern Love

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My essay, A Single Mom Escapes the Friend Zone, One Non-Date at a Time, appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times on Sunday, August 21st. Follow the link here.

Some people have asked me for advice on writing a Modern Love essay. My best tip is to listen to Ann Hood’s podcast, How to Write a Kick-Ass Essay, and do what she says. She should know; she’s published more Modern Love essays (three) than anyone else. Follow the link here.

My other advice is common sense: Read the Modern Love guidelines. Follow the link here.

This part of the guidelines, in particular, helped me focus my piece: “Ideally, essays should spring from some central dilemma the writer has faced in his or her life.”

I’ve enjoyed all the letters from readers, sharing their stories, their enthusiasm, their recipes (and asking for my own). More than one person wanted to know how to make “chicken with crumbs,” so I’ll tell you a secret: It’s just chicken cutlets dipped in egg bread crumbs and baked in the oven. Enjoy . . .

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Stepfatherhood

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“Happy Stepfather’s Day!” said no one, ever. That’s an exaggeration—but not by much.

I haven’t been the world’s most grateful stepdaughter. Nor has my son been the most emotionally demonstrative stepson to my husband James.

But I hadn’t realized how maligned stepfathers were until I watched Boyhood with James last year. “What a shame the Evil Stepfather showed up again,” he said. “Whenever there’s a stepfather in the story, he’s always the bad guy.”

That couldn’t be true. Weren’t stepmothers the ones who were ugly and homicidal in practically every Disney movie and Grimm’s fairy tale?

I did a little research and discovered that, as usual, my husband was right. The Stepfather Villain was one of the most prevalent stereotypes around.

Does it matter? What harm do stereotypes do, besides dampening our aesthetic pleasure by denying us freshness and surprise? As author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says, “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Read my full essay, published in The Rumpus, here.

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Foie Gras, The Vegetable: On Food Transgressions

During my junior semester abroad, I worked as a companion for Anne-Marie, a famously reclusive French poet who died a couple years ago. She had a rule I knew well, though she never explained its origin: She didn’t allow herself to drink. Not one drop.

Except through me.

She often hosted dinner parties, microcosms of the French intelligentsia—at least I imagined them that way, at twenty. We would always prepare the same dishes: lamb chops with rosemary, radishes with crème fraîche and herbs, and stinky Muenster cheese. After the salad and after the coffee came vodka. She’d watch her guests, poets and artists (they might as well have been angels to me), shoot back a glass or two.

I wasn’t at the legal drinking age in America, but that didn’t stop her from filling my glass and practically tilting my head back and pouring it in, then watching my speech turn sloppier than my usual approximation of French.

I couldn’t refuse. I was like her Seeing Eye dog, allowing her to experience a world she didn’t access directly. Every day, I would step out and she would stay put, and I would bring the world back with me to her apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a near-suburb of Paris. Part of the world I could offer was the experience of what it felt like to be tipsy. Or at least what it looked and sounded like.

She was an agoraphobe, afraid to leave home (though occasionally able to, as long as she clung to my side); not drinking was the least of her restrictions. But it was one I could lift, for those few moments, as she watched me down her strong, bracing spirits.

Read my full essay, published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, here.

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Single Dads and Terrorists

Before the Boston Marathon bombers were identified, my friend Genevieve said a prayer: “Please don’t let them be Muslims.” She is married to a Muslim man from Morocco. When they lived in America shortly after the World Trade Center bombing in 2001, he was routinely pulled aside by security officers because he “looked like a terrorist.” Now they live in Paris, and they hope that the recent shootings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo won’t cause another wave of anti-Muslim hysteria.

I hope so, too. But I know how easy it is to imagine the worst in people, once the idea that they’re dangerous is planted in our heads. It can happen to any of us. It happened to me.

Read my full essay, published in The Nervous Breakdown, here