Aliza Hausman

I come up with excuses for the way I live my life. I power-walk so fast I plow down pedestrians—without remorse. I tell myself it's not my fault they can't keep up with foot traffic, not my fault they can't keep up with life. Life is moving fast and if yo...

It is a tradition in my family. The women have always been obsessed with hair. They learned this from their mothers, who learned it from their mothers and on it went—sometimes skipping a generation until someone was lucky enough to be born with "good hair...

I was sure that G‑d had given up on me, sure that I was being overlooked. The space between us seemed infinite and never-ending. But something stirred...

"You married a white boy!" a high school pal exclaims in an email after discovering my wedding photos online. I groan. Later, my grandmother peers into my husband's blue eyes while watching our wedding DVD and repeatedly asks me, "Why did he marry you?"

I slumped in a stool, grading papers with happy face stickers because it hurt to write, and wearing headphones because the noise of the classroom sent painful shivers through my body. "Miss, can we hug you?" Reggie asked trembling, pushing his dreadlocks ...

As my sisters, my boyfriend, my friends and my students rallied to help me cope with physical illness, my mind was being warped by something more insidious. Realizing that I would live the rest of my life as a disabled person, I started to wonder whether ...

Even among "my people" in the Dominican Republic, I am considered rather pale; but in a crowd of Ashkenazi Jews, people tend to see my measly tan as exotic. I only wish I could tell all the gawkers outright that, just two years ago, I was a non-practicing...