7 Essays To Read This Week: Black Joy, God, And When You "Literally Can't Even"

Alex Andreou's mother has Alzheimer's disease, which has robbed her of many memories of her son. On his 44th birthday, Andreou chose to celebrate with his mother by helping her remember his childhood and their time together. He wrote about the experience in a moving essay for BuzzFeed Ideas' Carers Issue. Read the piece at BuzzFeed Ideas.

Mariame Kaba dreads summer. She explains why in a piece for The New Inquiry. Simply put, "It’s the season of hyper-surveillance and even more aggressive policing of young people of color in my neighborhood." In her essay, she touches on the recent McKinney pool party chaos, the Baltimore riots, and past police aggressions. Read it at The New Inquiry.

Growing up, Sarah Hagi rejected feminism because it didn't seem like something that included girls like her — black and Muslim. "Within mainstream feminism, the only time we seem to get attention is through the most extreme and rare stories ... honour killings, forced marriages, etc.," she writes in an essay for Hazlitt. "These things do happen, of course, but their pervasiveness in the discourse shows me we’ve been dehumanized; pawns in a political debate more than anything else." Read her piece at Hazlitt.

When you're an atheist, talking about God with your kid can be tricky. Prompted by her 9-year-old daughter's questions about God, Kate Cohen wrote about this conundrum, her own views on religion, and parenting. "The few books that offer advice to atheist parents counsel us not to be definitive. They tell us to let children decide for themselves what they do or do not believe," she writes. Read it at BuzzFeed Ideas.

When Nicolas Niarchos arrived at Summer Jam 2015, he'd expected to watch Kendrick Lamar perform. What he didn't anticipate was getting maced by the police, who'd arrived in riot gear. He wrote about his firsthand experience with police brutality for The New Yorker. Read it here.

Amanda Hess wrote about the phenomenon that is "I can't even" slang, and what teens really mean. "Teenagers may not be able to drive or vote or stay out past curfew or use the bathroom during school hours without permission, but they can talk," Hess writes. "Their speech is the site of rebellion, and their slang provides shelter from adult scrutiny." Read her piece at The New York Times Magazine.

Racism runs deep. That much is evident in what happened to one black family, arrested for cheering at a high school graduation. Stacey Patton wrote a scathing condemnation of this recent event, touching on America's educational inequality and how little things have changed. Read it at Dame Magazine.