Sally Jenkins gives us a searing portrait of the life of the bull-riding cowboy J.B. Mauney—a life filled with pain after sustaining multiple horrific injuries flung from bulls. Breaking his neck in his last ride was career-ending, and in this piece, he reflects on a his different future.
Mauney, too, cuts a black outline. From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt. The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. It’s an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister. It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.
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In this deeply thoughtful essay for The Common Reader, Jeannette Cooperman considers silences both healing and harmful. This layered and nuanced piece will give you a much-needed pause; you may not think of the absence of sound quite the same again.
Most days, life’s demands come at me like flung Frisbees, but here, they cannot reach me. Here, I feel at home in a way I do not even feel at home, because here, all I need do is be. This is the silence I craved all along: not an absence of noise but a freedom from my tiny, petty self. As I move through the trees, I am listening, but not hard-focused for connotation or tone. In nature, I eavesdrop on what I once thought of as silence and realize it is only the gentle noise of a world going on without me. This world does not need me to hoist it on my shoulders, spin it dizzy, or yell instructions. I can let go.
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Pigeons. Rats. Opossums. Raccoons. Most people consider these critters as pests—they don’t belong in our homes and neighborhoods and should be exterminated instead. But there’s a group of people across New York City’s boroughs who rehabilitate these injured creatures, and their compassion makes you wonder: Why have humans become so disconnected from nature? Why do we despise these smaller living beings so much? Benji Jones spends time with some of the city’s amazing rehabbers, who are essentially volunteers and care for these creatures without pay.
You might be thinking: What are they thinking? People are commonly disgusted by the animals that have adapted to live alongside us — to eat our garbage, to sleep in our streets. We typically want them out of our homes, not in. Wild animals, no matter the species, can also be noisy, dirty, and sometimes diseased. (One of Martin’s pigeons pooped on her bed, and of course, I sat right in it.)
What’s even more puzzling is that most of these rehabbers work for free, often around the clock, to care for these animals until they’ve healed. They often spend what little money they have on feed, specialized equipment including syringes and IV bags, and medicine. One rehabber told me that she can’t afford to buy herself new clothes. “I’m so broke right now,” they said. “All of my money goes to the animals.”
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As COVID-19 swept across the world, a preacher in Kenya lured thousands of people into a remote forest, promising them safety and salvation. Then he told them to stop eating. In this feature*, Carey Baraka details the terrifying rise and fall of a cult:
On April 14th 2023—after weeks of bureaucratic delays—a group of police officers, pathologists, grave-diggers, human-rights activists, journalists and locals (including Mangi) descended on Shakahola forest. It had recently rained and the red soil was slippery, making the road impassable for their 4x4s. The group had to walk the last few kilometres in the heat, their eyes locked nervously on the ground. They were terrified of stepping on snakes, scorpions—or something more gruesome.
In the bushes, the group began finding bodies that had not yet been buried. Meanwhile, the five boys who had fled from the forest pointed out graves, now sprouting with vegetables. Many of them contained a number of corpses—one held 12. Some bodies had decayed so much that all that was left were bones.“When you saw a suspicious spot, you’d poke a long stick into the ground,” recalled Alex Kalama, a journalist who was present. “After two metres, a strong stench would waft up.”
A few people in the settlement were still alive. Some were inexplicably naked; others were lying on the ground or tied to trees with ropes. Many of these starving people refused the rescuers’ help, telling the group that they were on their way to heaven. Mangi remembered one woman asking him to leave her because she “wanted to meet Christ”. Mathias Shipeta, an employee of haki Africa, an ngo that promotes human rights, said that he started telling the victims he had been sent by Jesus to persuade them to accept his assistance.
Over the next two days, 67 adults and 27 children were taken back to town in ambulances, police vehicles, cars driven by journalists and aid workers, and the arms of rescuers. They were very weak—one woman died on Mangi’s back. Later he wondered whether the people in the forest had been “brainwashed” into killing themselves. Then he paused, his voice growing quiet. “But they were all very educated. You can’t say they don’t know the Bible. They had so many Bibles in their houses—and money.”
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Ramen that’s more than three times as expensive than it is at Target. Water prices that shot up 50 percent in a year. Peanut butter marked up 70 percent. These are just a few of the findings from a nine-month investigation of of prison commissaries. This project comes with a searchable database, so that you can get acquainted with the costs incarcerated individuals are forced to bear to access items they need:
The Appeal’s investigation reveals that incarcerated people in many states are charged significantly more for essential items than those outside prison even though they typically earn pennies an hour—or no wages at all. The Appeal found prison prices up to five times higher than in the community and markups as high as 600 percent. This financial burden, which can cost hundreds of dollars per month, is often passed onto prisoners’ loved ones.
In just one example, Indiana prisons charged about $33 for an 8-inch fan, even though a similar item sells online for about $23 at Lowe’s. Incarcerated people in the state, who are often confined to dangerously hot prisons in the summer, can earn as little as 30 cents an hour, meaning it could take more than 100 hours of work to afford the fan.
The Appeal’s investigation also shows that prisoners can be charged vastly different prices for similar religious items, depending on their faith, with wide variations across states. In Connecticut, the Bible sold for $4.55, but the only Quran available for sale, The Noble Quran, cost $25.99.
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For Politico, Jessica Bateman shines a light on the secret history of politically motivated adoptions after the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949. Thousands of Greek kids were adopted abroad in the 1950s and ’60s; some children, whose parents were rebel leftist fighters, were orphaned or abandoned, while others were taken from mothers who were coerced or manipulated. Children were adopted mostly by Americans—ideally well-off and conservative families—during a time when Cold War politics softened immigration laws. Today, most of these Greek adoptees don’t know the truth about their past or who their biological parents are.
From looking through the unpublished memoirs of Maria’s uncle, the Stanford professor, and comparing them to emails and interviews with her biological family in Greece, a different story emerged than the one Maria had been told. Maria’s mother was in her early 20s and became pregnant when she was raped by the owner of a farm she worked on. As an unwed mother she was shunned by her rural community and moved to the capital, Athens, where she took a job as a hospital cleaner. She placed Maria in an orphanage but visited her every single day. Crucially, she did not give permission for her to be adopted.
When Maria’s uncle came to browse the orphanage in 1953, he decided Maria looked like “one of the healthiest” children. The orphanage said he could take her as long as her mother agreed. He and a lawyer confronted her at her workplace and pressured her to sign the papers, telling her the child would have a better life in America than she could ever give it. In his memoir he describes tears rolling down the woman’s face.
The Orthodox Church in Greece was not happy that the family were Mormon, as Greek American parents were still prioritized at that time. But Maria’s uncle was friends with the U.S. ambassador, Cavendish W. Cannon, who knew the head of the Greek Orthodox Church personally, and intervened to complete the adoption.
“I’d been told my mother didn’t want me, but that wasn’t true,” says Maria. “None of it was true.” And there was more. Maria’s mother was still alive.
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When I introduce myself to a friend of a friend, I say, “I’m Montse [Mohnt-seh].” At the sight of his bewildered face, I try to help. “Or you can call me Mon-sea.” I’m accustomed to giving people in the United States options, to ensure they are comfortable.
“Wait, why do you have two names?” he asks.
Two names, two identities—this is what I’ve always known.
Though behind this name, there are more than two cultures. I grew up in a cultural stew with a Spanish-French mother, a Colombian-born American father, and an Argentine stepmother. Whether at my mother or father’s home, I was immersed in a blend of languages, accents, and traditions.
My parents briefly considered naming me Violette, a French name to match my mother’s first language, but instead I was named after a mountain—Montserrat—just outside Barcelona, Spain, where I spent my early childhood. After my French great-grandmother Andrée prematurely gave birth to my grandmother and her twin sister at six months, she went to the serrated mountains to pray to the Virgin of Montserrat, the patron saint of Catalonia, as her babies fought for their lives. The choir boys might have been singing. She must have lit a vela among hundreds of candles already lit, a peseta for a prayer. When her daughters recovered, she gave them twin middle names: Montserrat, after the Virgin who she believed had saved them.
Seven years later, during the Spanish Civil War, my great-grandmother, my grandmother Odette, and her twin sister Yvette fled to France. There, they would be separated. Odette, staying with the French side of the family, only spoke French, Spanish slowly slipping to become her secondary language. Yvette, living with the Spanish side of the family, spoke primarily Spanish. My late grandmother’s Spanish was forever French-accented. Her sister, now 95, still speaks her Spanish with a French accent. What does it feel like to speak your primary language in an accent from your secondary one? I would later find out.
At 5, I spoke all these languages fluently. Today, I only speak two of them, but understand all of them in some way, as they still live inside me.
Like my grandmother, I too was 7 when I left Spain for another country. As I settled into a new life in the US, I learned to change the pronunciation of my name to make it easier on my teachers and peers and to avoid embarrassing mispronunciations. Mon-sea. Telling my friends back in Spain about this, they think it’s cute: que mono! When I moved from Barcelona to Brattleboro, Vermont, with my parents, I started first grade with a thick Spanish accent. How adorable, people remarked to my father about my foreign accent. To assimilate, I worked to lose it as quickly as possible. Eventually, I’d swap accents like clothes—growing out of one and into another. Today, I speak Spanish with a slight slip of an American accent. It makes me feel like an outsider in my own family.
In Vermont, and later Boston, we celebrated all the Spanish holidays—holidays that held more familiarity to me than the American ones. On New Year’s Eve we stuffed peeled green grapes in our mouths to the crackling countdown on Radio Nacional de España in the background. Every January 6th we gathered around the table to cut the Roscón de Reyes, a brioche cake served on King’s Day in Spain, each hoping to find the fève hidden in our piece. We celebrated with golden crowns made from cardboard, flute glasses, and Cava nearby. We received gifts on our saint’s days, more so than on birthdays. At home, I was Spanish. At school, American. When mom got angry at us, the ultimate insult would be spewed: “Ay! That is so American!” But outside of the house, while in the presence of my peers, I wanted that to be true. Being so American would mean I would be allowed to wear shorts to school. I would not be asked “where are you from” regularly. I would blend in.
I am boarding the second leg of my flight from the US to Spain. With a hazy head from lack of sleep, I hear the flight attendant greet me as I step onto the plane. “Hola!” she says in a sing-songy voice, and I find myself slipping into the reality of my “other” self: more animated than I was a day ago, turning the excitement up a notch as if I were reuniting with a cherished friend I hadn’t seen in years. It is when I get to speak jugo de naranja por favor out loud, instead of just water please, which I said six hours ago. And also when the flight crew announces the safety instructions first in Spanish and then in English. In this space, I feel these two parts of me merging for a brief few hours. As I arrive at El Prat, Barcelona’s international airport with floor-to-wall windows that shimmer in the sun, I’ll hear my name and turn around for a moment, forgetting there are many Montses here. I’ll breathe in the language of my childhood being spoken all around me and exhale a sense of belonging.
Before I make my way to the welcome embrace of family, there is a long line through customs. It’s a familiar routine. I hand over my blue passport and the agent looks at my name and then at me: “Pero porque tienes un nombre Catalan?” he will ask, somewhat perplexed. I mention that I am half Spanish: “Soy media Española.” This is the short answer.
To speak my name out loud feels vastly different depending on where I’m standing. In the US, my insides splinter right before I open my mouth. Will the person laugh? Grossly mispronounce it? Misspell it? Insist that my name is not Spanish, it’s French? Or ask the most Frequently Asked Question of all: “But what is your first name?”
When I was a girl, my grandmother called me Aht because as I was learning to speak, even I couldn’t say the first part of my name. Now, when I introduce myself to someone, I notice how often I soften the edges of that last syllable, how I say my name as if it were a question. As if to say: Are you uncomfortable? Let me help.
At a café in Portland, Oregon, I wait to pick up my order. “Monster . . .” Pause. “RAT. ” I see him, the café owner among the chefs, but he doesn’t see me. He has mined and rearranged the letters in my name to find the ugliest words in English. When he hands me my bag and mispronounces my name again (not quite as exaggerated when he was doing it for an audience), I curtly correct him.
“Montse-rraht,” I say, with an emphasis on the rolling Rs.
“Oh, that’s beautiful.” His tune has changed, but I give him no grace—only a faint “thanks” tossed into the air. He has brought out a monster in me, I think.
Her first name is markedly American, whereas mine, Spanish. She grew up (mostly) in Spain, I grew up (mostly) in the US. We were a coin toss: hers fell one way, mine the other.
In my New England middle school, I fantasized about changing my name to Monica. Just three tiny letters changed and I would never again see the teacher’s finger linger on the class roster—that long pause after “Sarah” and before “Alex” would not be a familiar one. Besides, I have a childhood friend in Barcelona named Monica. Yes, Monica. A name that will make me belong in both places, I believed.
When I meet young children in the US with parents like mine, who gifted them names to match their origins, I wonder if they too recoil when hearing the class roll call. If, as adults, they will also feel misunderstood by their adopted country. “I love your name,” I make sure to tell them. I want them to feel special instead of unusual. To not take decades to (re)claim the beautiful complexity of their multiple identities. To believe their father when he says, like mine did, “Trust me, you’ll appreciate your name one day.”
In a Lyft in Los Angeles, my driver, originally from Mexico, tells me his daughter, too, is named Montserrat. I light up. “Really?!”
“Yes, but she hates her name and makes us call her by her middle name,” he says as I watch the cross sway from the rearview mirror. Please tell her, I say, that you met someone today named Montserrat, who also didn’t likehernamewhen she was a girl—but who now says it proudly.
In the US, when someone cares, when they actually want to know how to spell it, or where it comes from, or how to pronounce it, I will ease into the spelling, not exaggerate the rolling of my Rs. I will pinch my fingers together and conduct the letters of my name as if it were a score, or point them as if I were dipping a thin brush in vibrant color, painting on a canvas. I will take my time, because I no longer want to share a watered-down version of the name that runs through my lineage.
I walk into a café in Barrio Gótico and before I say a word, the hostess says, “Hello, what would you like?” in English decorated in a Spanish accent. She is used to seeing more tourists than locals through these doors. I wish to tell her: I know your language—it was once mine. I knew these streets before I knew any others. To convey something of this, I say instead, “Buenas! Un cortado por favor,” letting her know she doesn’t have to speak a foreign language with me.
Her shoulders loosen and a smile curls on her face. “Ah, claro!”
How did she know I don’t really belong here anymore? Is it my clothes or haircut? The way I walk? What tells her I am no longer a Spaniard? If my sister Claudia, who has stronger Spanish features, walked in, would the hostess have greeted her differently? If I never moved from Spain as a girl, would I still be perceived as American?
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There is a bakery in Deià, Mallorca, where I have been going since I was a little girl. Where the panadera will wrap my ensaïmadas in thin paper, passing them to me with hands dusted in powdered sugar. On a recent visit, I met a new panadera. I surmise we are around the same age. Every morning we exchange que tal estas and wish each other a good day after I put my euro on the counter. One of these mornings, I hear her speak in flawless English to a British customer. So, I hand over my own: “You speak perfect English!” She is American, she tells me. Her mother is Spanish, from Soller, it turns out, and her father is from California. Her first name is markedly American, whereas mine, Spanish. She grew up (mostly) in Spain, I grew up (mostly) in the US. We were a coin toss: hers fell one way, mine the other. What would my life have been if I hadn’t left Spain as a child? What would hers have been if she hadn’t left the US? Aside from not experiencing embarrassing roll calls at school, how else might our lives have unfolded? I want to ask her so many questions, but there is a long line wrapped around the store. It is tourist season.
Sometimes there is a fluidity between my languages that I cannot control. No matter where I am in the world, if I’m sleepy, I might catch myself saying, “Ouf, I’m cansadisima.” When I step on something slimy with bare feet, I’ll likely utter “ahh, que aaasco!” rather than “gross!” But also, in Spain—when we are long past sobremesa and the plates and wine glasses have been cleared—English will undoubtedly creep into a sentence in Spanish, too. Yes instead of si. Of course instead of claro.
What would it be to accept this blending of language as part of me, instead of fighting against it? Maybe I jumble these words because that’s what the brain does. Sort of like calling one child by another’s name by mistake. But I wonder: what if these words slip out unconsciously because they feel more authentic to me in Spanish than how they feel in English, or vice versa?
I learn from my father that our first language is stored in a different part of the brain. His first and only language until age 7 was Spanish. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, he lived in a casa in the barrio Chapinero with pet ocelots, deer, and his parents, both journalists. They were bilingual, but inside and outside the walls of his home, Spanish was all he heard.
In my mother’s upbringing, however, three languages were in rotation. To her mother she spoke Spanish, to her father French, and to her sister English. At the dinner table, when they were all together, they spoke French.
“What was your first language?” For many people, this is a question with a simple answer. But in my case, it’s not so clear. Unlike my father’s parents, mine did not worry about blending languages around me. I heard a trifecta of English, Spanish, and French at home, and Catalan at school. It was: Hi kiddo! Hola guapa. Look at the minou. Besos. Bisous. Kisses. Felicidades! Je t’aime chouchou. See you later.Adéu!
I have since lost most of my French and Catalan, and now as an adult, I make minor mistakes when speaking in Spanish. I often must search my mind, as if consulting a map for a neighborhood I used to live in, for the correct Spanish verb, or might be corrected when I say que tengasun buen noche by mistake instead of una buena noche. Once, after a cold, I lost my voice completely for six full days. Not even a whisper made its way out. I used exaggerated facial expressions and hand motions, gesturing toward salt shakers and doors to speak the language I felt but couldn’t voice. This is how it feels to sit around a family table where people are speaking French or Catalan. Like I’m holding a key that fits into a lock, but struggles to turn.
When my father’s parents left Colombia, they landed on the bustling streets of New York City, swapping el Chapinero for the Upper West Side. Not speaking a word of English, my father became mute for half a year. Among his most vivid memories is Antonio, a friend who was Italian and the only kid with whom he could communicate in school. They cobbled together a language between Italian and Spanish that became their own. When Antonio couldn’t go to my dad’s birthday party, my dad no longer wanted to celebrate. He preferred being alone instead of experiencing the discomfort of not having the words to communicate.
Today, my dad speaks perfect English and Spanish, along with Portuguese, but the way these languages live in him is not the same. He has always sensed that he expresses and carries himself differently depending on which language he speaks. Some years ago, when he was featured in a video for a nonprofit that promotes cross-cultural communication, that distinction became clear. They produced the video in both English and Spanish, and he tells me that when they filmed the English version, the producer told him to relax—to be less cerebral and to let things flow. There were a lot of retakes. But later, under the same pressure and bright lights, when it was time to do the Spanish version, the two people directing him were amazed at how much more natural and at ease he was. “The producer said I seemed like a different person,” he tells me. “Well, I guess I was.”
What does it feel like to speak your primary language in an accent from your secondary one? I would later find out.
We seek to become the truest version of ourselves, but what if there isn’t one true version, but multiple? Like father, like daughter, there are two versions of me. One stays up late and indulges in wine, daily meriendas, and cheese smothered across pan. She laughs loud and often and a vibrant energy accompanies her words. She is spontaneous and playful. But the other version is there, too. She covers her mouth when she laughs. She avoids large group gatherings, sticks to routines, and eats dinner at 6 p.m. She overthinks and worries over her words—and whether she misspeaks or is misunderstood.
I recently spent extended time in Spain and France. One day, I just noticed the duality. Noticed that I let my laughter echo, that I was more expressive with hand gestures when speaking, that I happily indulged in all the things I don’t often allow myself in the US. I was less anxious, and I sunk into a gentler part of myself. Does this happen because I’m assimilating to the part of my culture that lives an ocean’s length away? In the US, do I worry about laughing loudly lest I disturb someone? Why do I change my name to make others comfortable? Maybe I’m rejecting the culture that often rejects me, and the result is that I become a smaller version of myself.
I’m sitting at a traditional Spanish restaurant with my family in Sitges, a beach town just outside Barcelona. We begin with olivas and some pan con tomate––ripe tomatoes and olive oil drizzled atop thick crusted bread. I gaze to my left, my eyes settling on the pebble-lined shores of the Mediterranean. I begin to daydream, a favorite pastime, even when I’m in this place of my dreams. At the table, I hear the rapid sounds of the language I’d left behind, and my family momentarily forgets I am here, slipping from Castellano (Spanish) into Catalan. “Ay perdona, Montse!” In moments like these, I feel no kinship with that young girl who wanted to feel so American. What I don’t say aloud is how much I love hearing Catalan echo around me. That I understand nearly every word, even though I can no longer speak it. As I steep back into my blended world—not quite here, not quite there—I sit and revel in the ability to eavesdrop on all the conversations around me in Catalan, French, English, and Spanish. At 5, I spoke all these languages fluently. Today, I only speak two of them, but understand all of them in some way, as they still live inside me.
I am in Los Angeles, at the Spanish consulate. I am here to get my Spanish citizenship. I slide my papers over to the kind woman behind the glass that divides us. Montse, I hear, muffled, but she is not speaking to me. She turns to say something to the older woman next to her. A woman, I realize, who shares my name. She looks over my papers carefully, nodding her head as she goes along. Turns them over once, twice. Todo perfecto, she tells me through the tiny microphone on the other end of the glass. Now, she says, they will make me a Spanish birth certificate. As if I am being born again.
One balmy spring day, I am standing among the Montaña de Montserrat, where my great-grandmother stood all those years ago seeking a miracle. A miracle that delivered, and so the mountain became my namesake. There are few other places I feel more at peace than when I am held by these blushed mountains. El aire, las vistas, las sensaciones. The faint sound of Catalan and the choir boys singing in the distance. I look out at the wide expanse, enveloped by these mountains, and they feel like my mountains. They are part of me. I feel, at least for a moment, home.
Montserrat Andrée Carty is a writer, photographer, and the interviews editor for Hunger Mountain. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on her first book. Find her online atwww.montseandree.com.
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