writer amil niazi on experiencing summer like a kid & our founder's mini milan city guide
monthly recs #28
Each month we ask a writer to speak on what’s on their mind and their tabs for our monthly recommendations. This July’s guest curator, Amil Niazi, is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and The Guardian. She has a monthly column in NY Magazine’s The Cut called “The Hard Part.”
I love the summer. Every single hazy, sun-drunk afternoon I’ve spent living aimlessly is embedded deep within my DNA, a pulsing, popsicle-hued part of who I am, forever. From June to September, my worries are limited to which pool my kids and I will sidle up to or which park’s lawn will leave its grassy imprint on the backs of our knees. I love absorbing every last ray of light during these long, lazy days, storing it up like winter reserves, something to satiate me when the soft air turns bitter.
Now that I’m mostly unemployed — I mean, freelance — I can experience summer again the way I used to, as a child, watching it unfurl before me like a tender mystery, yet to be solved. Most of my summers as an adult have been the exact opposite — the only thing separating these months from the rest of the year was the chilling air con and the cruel reminder when passing a window that life was happening out there, not in here.
With my five-year-old son out of school for the next two months, I get to spend afternoons watching him catch bugs, sharing laughs as our chlorine-scented limbs splay out across whatever surface will have us. Parenting gave me back the seasons of my youth, the aimlessness I didn’t realize I craved, after decades of rigid routines.
Kids have an incredible way of reorienting your perspective — mine feels permanently shifted, in the best way. When you see kids like mine out in the world this summer, extend some grace to them and their parents, and allow your perspective to be changed too. As I wrote recently in my column for The The Cut, “If we can’t be hospitable to the young, who will we make accommodations for? Who do we give permission to be a part of the world? The list, seemingly, is ever-shrinking.”
amil niazi’s
1. This story about reborn doll collectors and the ethics and drama circulating within their community floored me. It’s a perfect, dark summer read.
2. This is the dress I want to wear all summer.
3. Nothing says smooth-brain summer to me like Frog and Toad memes with an anti-capitalist bent that harken back to the romantic age.
4. This is a haunting story about domestic violence, the murder of a young woman named Ashley Wadsworth and how many systems are still in place to protect abusers.
more from us
5. If your summer has been on the restless side, we collected a batch of short, moving books under 200 pages to help reignite the “very literary summer” you promised yourself without having to face a daunting tome.
6. The Alma bath towel from Autumn Sonata is primed for the shower or the beach, but wherever you take it, its complex, classic patterns will add a touch of aesthetic harmony to your wet-haired endeavors.
7. The Bear’s second season is one of the most heartwarming shows on air right now, in the words of our founder, “every episode felt like a hug somehow.” A fascinating lens on the restaurant industry post-COVID.
8. If you found inspiration in our recent profile of nurse Maria Gonzalez, this article in Lux Magazine investigates the struggle of healthcare practitioners to reckon with abortion laws and their own moral prerogatives.
9. Dear Friend Books is hosting weekly Wednesday movie nights in Bed-Stuy, curated by community members: catch Hollywood Shuffle and An Education up next!
10. Consider starting an herb garden before summer’s end (here’s an easy guide) — if you need motivation, listen to Haley Heynderickx’s aptly named album and gaze at some herb-studded tomatoes before picking up your shovel.#recs “I love love love Veronica Kohl -- she has two locations she practices out of -- one in Greenpoint, one closer to Williamsburg.”
