Essays
Personal and cultural essays, publishing news, and notes from the writing life.
Massiel Desireé writes personal and cultural essays about the things we inherit, the things we choose, and the messy territory in between. Her work moves through love, grief, desire, family, identity, womanhood, relationships, Dominican and diasporic life, writing, memory, and the complicated work of becoming more fully ourselves.
Blending memoir, observation, humor, cultural criticism, and the occasional beautifully unhinged journal entry, her essays are interested in what happens beneath the obvious story: the patterns we repeat, the narratives we inherit, the people we cannot quite forget, and the experiences that change the way we understand ourselves.
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FEATURED ESSAY
The Questions That Keep Me Up at Night
August 17, 2026
An introduction to the questions at the center of Massiel Desireé’s essays—love, Dominican culture, ambition, identity, and the courage it takes to examine the lives we inherit and the ones we choose.
“Love, culture, ambition, and the lives we are brave enough to question.”