Gina Barreca's Essays!

Now you can enjoy over 70 of Gina's essays here in the Reading Room, and we're adding more all the time! Her most recent essays - as well as some reader favorites - are featured just below. Use the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page to see her beloved Hartford Courant essays, her hilarious debates with Washington Post columnist, Gene Weingarten, and her other literary goings-on in "Gina on the Web!"

Featured Essays

Feisty and Strong, Princess Leia Once Inspired Girls; Clearly,
She Didn't Take After Mom

The one female character with a speaking part in the latest and last Star Wars film does exactly two important things: She gets pregnant and dies. That's it. I never thought I'd say this, but I really miss Carrie Fisher.

Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith (a title with the unhappy effect of making everyone who discusses the movie sound in desperate need of speech therapy) has the one female character say things such as "Hold me, Anakin. Hold me like you did on Naboo."

Rhesus Pieces:
The science behind why men are big apes

Even though they are its primary consumers, men believe that pornography is a terrible, awful, sad, sick problem facing America. This is the official position the enlightened male must take if he ever wants to have actual sex (with an actual woman) again.

Skin Deep

For most of my life I absolutely believed that if I had better skin, the whole world would be a wonderful place to be. Everything would be easier; this is what I figured at 16, then 19, then 22.

Strong, Cool Woman In A Pink Slip Bids An Abrupt Adieu

I’m writing this column, my last one for the Hartford Courant, while wearing a pink slip.

Which was given to me by The Courant.

I know that throughout the Courant changes are being made and pages rearranged. Tough budgetary decisions are being handed down. The part that makes me really uncomfortable, however, is the fact that I feel forced to use the passive voice even when describing the situation. What I know is that times are tough all over and that my column is one of the casualties.

The Loss of a Father

My father, born on Houston Street and now dying at the Cabrini Medical Center, is the consummate New Yorker: never in his life has he been patient. And I fear that patience is not something either of us will learn before he dies.

Hartford Courant
Essays

Washington Post
Essays