Judith's Articles & Essays

Artist Statement:     I am a potter who makes cremation urns for dead people. On my wheel, I often think about birth, life, motherhood, ashes, and what becomes of so-called medical waste after an abortion? In my writing, I take a hard (but also funny) look at what women on Cape Cod did about unwanted pregnancies before Roe v. Wade. 

BIO: Judith Stiles writes for the Italian publication, Ytali.com about all things American. For ten years she wrote a weekly column for The Villager Newspaper in NYC for lousy pay and the love of writing. Her literary essays and short stories have appeared in Europa Quotidiano, ZibbyMag, Ex-Puritan, and the anthology Hemingway Shorts. “Pheromones and Fusion” was published in the New York Times.

Coming Soon ROOM MAGAZINE June 2025 issue 48.2.

Click Here to Read: Handful of Her Ashes for the Potter

Young girls all over the world have played with Barbie dolls for over sixty years, dipping into over 200 different Barbie personas, many touted as professional role models by their makers, the Mattel Toy Company.

Cat Burglar Barbie, Totally Hair Barbie, Cashier Barbie, Game Show Host Barbie, Pink Diamond Barbie, Noodle Bar Worker Barbie, United States Presidential Candidate Barbie, and the latest and greatest of 2022, Chief Sustainability Officer Barbie and Renewable Energy Engineer Barbie.

Click Here to Read: Totally Hair Barbie Meets Pissoff Patriarchy Barbie

When I was eye-level with the wine glasses at Thanksgiving dinner, I sat opposite Great Aunt Abigail Newcomb and her gigantic bosoms that were wrinkly and jiggled a lot when she laughed. I was a child with no bosoms of my own and I wondered why she wore a low-cut dress. Her wrinkly water balloon bosoms created havoc when she laughed right in front of everyone. The point of Thanksgiving dinner for Abigail and the grownups was to drink a lot of booze and enjoy life because winter on Cape Cod was coming. By December, the sea slapped the twisted peninsula with a blanket of grey sky and defeat. Wet wind. Crackers wilted. Sponges never dried. Envelopes sealed themselves when you weren’t looking. Lots of Thanksgiving food and booze was the last hurrah before the grey.

Click Here to Read: Great Aunt Abigail's Big Bosoms

My father-in-law is named John, and his father was John, and also my husband is John, and my son is John, so that’s quite a few Johns to contend with in one family.  So what do all the Johns of the world do in a situation like this?  They give out nicknames and we did too, so my father-in-law is Jack and my son was dubbed Johnny.  Problem solved, but that only worked for a while.

     At eighteen years old, my son Johnny declared that he no longer was Johnny and wanted to be called John, seeing how he was now able to vote and drink in bars.

     “Yeah, yeah, sure, we understand.  We’ll call you John from now on.”

     But we didn’t.

Click Here to Read: The John Problem

Click Here to Read: Pheromones and Fusion

In the hospital, I have a roommate who snores. The woman wheezes through her nose day and night. A candy striper pours golden apple juice into a cup for my roommate, but it just sits there on a tray. I’m so thirsty, not for apple juice or the liquid protein they force me to drink, I am thirsty for a whiskey sour. When I fantasize about biting into a whiskey-soaked maraschino cherry, I think about sin. I wonder if the busy nurses notice the sins on my face, hidden in every blister. When I press the call button with my good thumb, the nurses ignore me, and I know they do this on purpose because I’m a pest. I used to work as a nurse just like them in a clinic, and I made the pesty ones wait. Press, press, press the button. I have a simple request to refill my pain meds, but a whiskey sour would do. I’d make my own if I could.

Click Here to Read: Not Compost

Senior soccer fever began in 2002, when a group of grandmothers ages 40-82, were itchy to get on a field and kick the ball around, even though they had to play in skirts and dresses. At the time, it was a no-no for women, especially grandmothers, to play soccer, let alone wear shorts or regular kits on the pitch. 

Frail elderly women in South Africa started playing soccer as a joke. Now they are running and competing on the field, leaving cultural expectations in the dust. – Robyn Dixon, L. A. Times

Click Here to Read: Never Too Old For Calcio

Imagine a world where it’s trendy for teenage girls to harvest their ovarian eggs, fertilize them in a laboratory, and then grow their babies inside a faux womb on a date of their choosing. The faux womb resembles a plastic bag filled with amniotic fluid replete with tubes and wires for nourishment and temperature control. By the year 2084 (think George Orwell’s 1984), the sales pitch brochure at the gynecologist’s office might read:

Ladies, think of the convenience! Once your eggs are safely in the freezer, no more pregnancy scares, because with a little snip to your fallopian tubes, you can finally take total control of your fertility. When you want to have a baby, your egg can hook up with a sperm in a petri dish and then transfer to a faux womb. You won’t lose your figure during pregnancy, and better yet, no more angst about whether or not to have an abortion. Now you can rely on safe and effective voluntary sterilization like millions of savvy women.

Click Here to Read: Who is the Boss of Her Own Body?

When Jane Doe, a member of a private Facebook group, LESBIANS OVER 70, was suspended, (known as Facebook Jail), she was asked to check AGREE or DISAGREE if she violated FB community standards. She had messaged another member of the private group (approximately 500 members) using the phrase “dyke on a tractor”. She checked Disagree. Boom. NO discussion. She was prohibited from using FB without a trial, a jury, or a hearing to dispute the suspension. Yes, Jane Doe is not her real name because she finds today’s politically correct sensitive atmosphere truly exhausting, and she wishes to remain peacefully in her private members club. 

Click Here to Read: Dykes on Tractors

I fell in love in ninth-grade Latin class. More accurately, I fell in love with the back of his head as Mrs. Struve droned on, conjugating the verb to be.

Sum. Es, Est. I am. You are. He is.

If Mrs. Struve had said to me, “Judy, eris uxor, you will be his wife someday,” I would have laughed and said, “Not possible.”

I studied the nape of his neck where it rose out of his starched oxford shirt, smooth skin that led up to fine barber bristles of chestnut hair. I had the urge to gently pet his hair in Latin class but, of course, I did not.

Click Here to Read: My Latin Teach Should Have Warned Me

In the sleepy beach resort town of Orleans in North America, Jamaican guest worker Lee was arrested for allegedly pulling a gun on his ex-wife during an argument. Bing-bang-boom, the cops came, and off he went to jail with little discussion even though no gun was ever found. That’s how they do things on Cape Cod where he lives with expired H2-B guest worker papers, which means he is deemed an illegal immigrant.  Some pundits say his arrest and jail time stinks of systemic racism, but is this also about the deepening class divide in the USA?

Click Here to Read: Jamaican Guest Workers or Camouflaged Indentured Servants?

Blacklisted? Ostracized? Fired from your job? Do these words smell like the work of Joseph McCarthy and the House On Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1953? Or does it have a whiff of cancel culture seventy years later in 2023?

Click Here to Read: Cancel Culture Resuscitates Blacklisting of High Noon

If you are finally traveling after COVID, but suddenly find yourself homesick for Italy, land your plane pronto in Boston and head over toIAMBOOKSfor a good dose of all things Italian. You’ll find a dazzling cornucopia of books, magazines, games (Briscola and Scopa), and tasty treats (Cioccolato Di Modica) in the flavors of Italy.

Click Here to Read: IAMBOOKS. A Cultural Hub in Boston for Anyone Smitten With Italy

“You’re Fired!” Why the surprise that golden-haired reality TV host, aka mogul Donald Trump, is leading the Republican Party pack? Isn’t that American culture that spawned him? Hey, he even has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! Let’s face it, when Ronald Reagan lost the Iowa caucuses years ago, most Americans were watching boring TV shows rather than paying attention to the news coverage of the primaries.

Click Here to Read: "The Donald." Fenomenologia del trumpismo

Click Here to Read More Articles by Judith Stiles