Margaret Morganroth Gullette is the author, most recently, of American Eldercide: How it Happened, How to Prevent It (2024), which has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Her earlier book, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (2017), won both the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars and the APA’s Florence Denmark Award for Contributions to Women and Aging. Gullette’s previous books—Agewise (2011) and Declining to Decline (1997)—also won awards. Her essays are often cited as “notable” in Best American Essays. She is a Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University.
On the Unsung Pleasures of Very Long Friendships March 7, 2025 - I made my first real friend when I was 11 and she was 12. Marsha moved in on the block. Soon after, her mother saw my mother in the backyard and said she had a daughter about my age. My…
Everyone in a Nursing Home Deserves a Single Room May 19, 2023 - This hard-hitting essay was first published on March 15, 2023, in the Boston Globe. It’s re-posted here with the author’s permission. This concerns all of us. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many residents of nursing facilities died…
More Risk? More life? More Responsibility January 25, 2022 - Joy! Our first live theater event in almost two years, last week. With the booster and masked, my husband and I delightedly saw a one-woman show set in the 1960s, Queens Girl in the World, in which Jasmine Rush skillfully…
Why Biden Won: The Missing Reason February 19, 2021 - The 2020 presidential election took place at arguably the most anxious time in the nation’s history, at least as threatening as the Civil War, the flu epidemic of 1918–1919, or the distant world wars.
How Old Would You Want to Be in Heaven? January 8, 2021 - Many religious faiths propose different versions of heaven as a location: there are walled gardens with streams, flowers, pleasing scents, pretty angels, rapturous music or delicious, accessible food.
Being Old Is Not a Death Sentence, Even Now October 20, 2020 - Contrary to popular opinion, no one living in a nursing home needs to die of COVID-19.
My Father’s Frugal Habits Make Sense Now July 24, 2020 - My father had plenty of habits that irritated my mother. But nothing irritated her more than “Marty being cheap.”
Ageism and Tragedy in a Time of Triage May 13, 2020 - Triage means exclusion from treatment. In parts of the United States, triage may become grievously necessary, as pandemic peaks overwhelm resources. 
The ‘Generational Wars’ Contrived to Disguise the Failure of the American Dream March 13, 2020 - In a nation grappling with growing inequality, stagnating social mobility, crushing personal debt and crumbling job security, efforts to set America’s generations against one another persist. 
Grandparenting in Venice January 17, 2020 - Venice at the opening of the Biennial international art fair is crowded, gaudy, expensive, magical and, it turned out, very grandchild-friendly. We were there partly to babysit, to help out our daughter-in-law, Yto Barrada (who was invited to exhibit at…
Ramping Up: The Problem That Went Deeper Than We Knew March 18, 2019 - Last year, it finally became obvious that we needed ramps at our summer cabin on Sawdy Pond. The architectural part was straightforward, but it turned out we needed self-examination and conviction to solve a deeper problem. The acres we own…
The Workplace Needs #MeTooAgainstAgeism June 7, 2018 - The #MeToo movement is mainly about work situations, and so it should be. Being treated like a skirt—or a headless skirt, depending upon the level of vileness—by a male boss or peer can ruin a workplace...even a life.
Ageist Trolls on Social Media and in the New Yorker Too October 4, 2017 - The Internet is notorious for commenters who feel grossly entitled to dismiss vulnerable others. This past summer, Harvard University hit hard against racist and sexist speech on Facebook, rescinding admissions to some potential first-year students.
The Violence of Ageism May 12, 2017 - As the entire world now knows, Dr. David Dao is the passenger who was dragged off a United Airlines flight on April 9th (2017) by Chicago police, who broke his nose, gave him a concussion and smashed two of his teeth.
Oh, America! How Obamacare Finished Off Breaking Bad June 10, 2016 - Any just society must reduce the despair occasioned by dire medical conditions. This was one lesson, oddly, that could be drawn from the TV series, Breaking Bad.
Caitlyn Jenner: The Messages in the Image June 22, 2015 - What the commentators fail to say about Caitlyn Jenner is that when she came out as a woman publicly in Vanity Fair recently, she did not come out as an older woman. It’s hard to say whether Caitlyn Jenner or photographer Annie…
Chastizing the Old Dolls March 16, 2015 - Poor Roz Chast unburdened herself of her dislike of her mother and her pity for her father by describing their slow decline and dying, and doing it in the most public possible way, in a graphic narrative called Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir (2014).
The Love of Her Life September 30, 2014 - 1 I guard my dear mother’s privacy as if she were still alive, but I have decided to rescue this particular part of her story from her secret archives because there are so few narratives about romance in late life.…
Fifty Years of Shopping with My Mother May 19, 2014 - Not just in childhood, but deep into my middle years, my mother and I shopped together. I got most of my clothes on those expeditions, and she paid for a great many of them.
The Art of Dressing, According to the Woman Who Wasn’t Born Yesterday February 9, 2014 - When I was young, I used to be so anxious about what to wear that, in the morning or before a party, my room would be strewn with discarded outfits. The mess outside exposed the mess inside—how inadequate I felt,…
