{"id":149652,"date":"2020-12-23T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-23T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=149652"},"modified":"2020-12-11T16:50:32","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T21:50:32","slug":"ladies-of-the-good-dead-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/12\/23\/ladies-of-the-good-dead-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ladies of the Good Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 4, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2020. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_145281\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/2003_16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-145281\" class=\"size-full wp-image-145281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/2003_16.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"565\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/2003_16.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/2003_16-300x170.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/2003_16-768x434.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-145281\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kerry James Marshall, 7am Sunday Morning, 2003 (Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Photo: Nathan Keay, \u00a9 MCA Chicago)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>My great aunt Cora Mae can\u2019t hear well. She is ninety-eight years old. When the global pandemic reached Michigan, the rehabilitation center where she was staying stopped accepting visitors. There were attempts at FaceTime, but her silence made it clear that for her, we had dwindled into pixelated ghosts. She contracted <small>COVID<\/small>-19 and has been moved again and again. When my mother calls to check on her every day, she makes sure to explain to hospital staff that my great aunt is almost deaf, that they have to shout in her left ear if they want to be heard.<\/p>\n<p>Cora Mae has a bawdy sense of humor. Most of the time when she speaks, it\u2019s to crack a joke that would make most people blush. She wears leopard print and prefers for her hair to be dyed bright red. I have tried to imagine her in the hospital, attempting to make sense of the suited, masked figures gesticulating at her. She doesn\u2019t know about the pandemic. She doesn\u2019t know why we\u2019ve stopped visiting. All she knows is that she has been kidnapped by what must appear to be astronauts.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/05\/22\/ladies-of-the-good-dead\/\">Read more &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are stories inside every black life lost to the virus in Wayne County.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2020"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ladies of the Good Dead by Aisha Sabatini Sloan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There are stories inside every black life lost 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