About the Magazine:
Grey is a fashion magazine published biannually as an oversized hardcover, printed in Italy.
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Miss Rosen’s Contribution:
Miss Rosen wrote “Better Living Through Destiny,” a personal essay published in Issue VIII.
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Excerpt From “Better Living Through Destiny”:
Mr. Brown has this magical habit of leaving me undone, of unweaving my tapestry and leading me back to the beginning of it all.
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We start then in April 2009, Brooklyn, inside a gallery with two-story walls made of glass that recalls nothing so much as a fishtank. The aquarium looks out on the Manhattan Bridge as trains traverse its length, on the East River, on the cobblestone-lined streets that lead to the waterfront. Inside, Mr. Brown and I sit on a turquoise tweed sofa. We haven’t seen each other in over a year. Mr. Brown has just returned from his escape, a six-month jaunt down to Puerto Rico where he was planning to retire at the tender age of thirty until all the money faded away. Now he’s back in New York and, to my eyes, he is dark and lovely, like a Christmas goose. He has come to see me so that he can lay claim to a couple copies of the magazine where he has four pages and a pullout poster of Malcolm (because he’s that white boy on his Black Nationalist). And me, the editor-in-chief, I choose not to read the pages he has written because I don’t want reality to spoil my illusion of him.
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—Miss Rosen
Brooklyn, 2013