Lifestyle
Reflections on James Baldwin's magnificent life from those who knew him
American writer James Baldwin photographed on January 20, 1986.
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James Baldwin was born 100 years ago, on Aug. 2, 1924, in Harlem Hospital. He wrote in 1955, “I love America more than any other country in this world and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” Baldwin died on Dec. 1 at the age of 63 at his home in the south of France. NPR asked four people for their reflections on the writer.
Eleanor Traylor, scholar: “There was splendor before me.”
Eleanor Traylor takes a break in the comfort of her three-story brownstone in Washington, D.C. She is a literary critic, a scholar and retired chair of English at Howard University. She has written before about Baldwin in academic journals. Her home reflects a lifetime of collecting books, art and friends. Traylor will contribute to a new book about Baldwin due later this year.
I hope that since I met him, I’ve been like him, in any way that I could be, you know, small or large.
She first met the him in the late 1970s. Traylor was visiting his sisters, Paula and Gloria, at 137 W. 71st St. on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in an apartment building Baldwin bought for his family.
Dr. Eleanor Traylor at her home in Washington, D.C. Traylor is a retired professor at Howard University and was friends with literary giants including James Baldwin.
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“There was a knock at the door.”
Traylor answered and found herself face to face with James Baldwin.
“There was splendor before me,” she says. “You know, James Baldwin was not very tall, but he was tremendous looking,” she laughs.
“There was this gleaming white shirt, these eyes, who could rescue you, but who could rain and sunshine at the same time. This wonderful smile. And I just burst into tears. I just sobbed.“
Baldwin did not miss a beat, she says. “He took me up in his arms and he said to me, chuckling, ‘Now what have I done to deserve all this?’ Just magnificent,” Traylor says.
James Baldwin was not very tall, but he was tremendous looking.
Their friendship only grew from there. They would catch up at house parties and other gatherings where Baldwin showed up on his commutes from France.
Traylor retells Baldwin’s story about how his first novel got its title. Trekking the Swiss Alps, where he finished the manuscript, Baldwin took a death-defying leap above a gorge, a shortcut home before complete nightfall. She says he jumped and made it across, trembling. He said a sound came to him. And the sound was that song, “Go Tell It on the Mountain.“
Dr. Eleanor Traylor at her home in Washington, D.C. Traylor is a retired professor at Howart University and was friends with literary giants including James Baldwin.
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Baldwin’s family calls her Aunt Eleanor. They trusted her to arrange the funeral at Cathedral Church of the St. John the Divine in New York City. The two-hour homegoing opened with African drummers and ended with James Baldwin singing the gospel hymn “Precious Lord.”
Today, she still misses her friend. Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison all spoke at his funeral.
“Toni Morrison talked of him as the language that we inherited,” she says. “James Baldwin was the mentor of my generation.”
Baldwin was an inspiration to Morrison and many other writers, Traylor says. “His influence is incalculable.”
Eleanor Traylor wrote in PEN America that Baldwin’s message throughout his books is that the only safety is to dare to love. “He didn’t talk of a utopia, a perfect world,” she tells NPR. “He just said, if you love, you will create the kind of world you wish to live in.”
Cicely Tyson, James Baldwin, guest and singer Harry Belafonte attend To Be Young, Gifted And Black Gala on January 2, 1969 at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City.
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Ron Galella/Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
“He was the kind of person you wanted to emulate,” she says on a rainy afternoon. “I always had him in my mind, in my soul. I hope that since I met him, I’ve been like him, in any way that I could be, you know, small or large.”
Traylor’s eyes well up.
“I’m talking about whatever you hold to be delicious, whatever you hold to be precious,” she says. “There is such a thing as courage. There is such a thing as lovability. There is such a thing as honesty. There is such a thing as genius. All those things are for me,” she pauses, then whispers, ”James Baldwin.”
Richard Goldstein, journalist: “Go where your blood beats.
Richard Goldstein recalls the situation, more than 40 years ago, when James Baldwin did a rare kind of interview with The Village Voice.
“I had heard that he was coming to New York to see his brother.” Goldstein says.” I thought, ‘He’s never actually addressed the question of sexuality, as far as I knew, even though he was a pioneering, openly gay writer.’”
Richard Goldstein appears in a portrait taken in his home on January 31, 2017 in New York City.
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Goldstein is a former Village Voice executive editor. “I was putting together the annual queer life issue of the paper, which I edited for about 25 years.”
“Baldwin was an immensely prophetic figure, always, in the lives of queer people,” Goldstein says.
He called himself a witness to the gay community, not a member.
Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room was controversial and influential with its publication in the 1950s. “If I hadn’t written that book,” he told Goldstein, “I would have probably had to stop writing altogether.” For Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room was an exploration of what happens when you fail to love someone.
The AIDS crisis and the 15th anniversary of the Stonewall gay rights uprising were the backdrop for their conversations. They talked over several afternoons in Greenwich Village, at some places Baldwin had frequented during his youth.
“One of his favorites was the Café Riviera, which is almost across the street from the Stonewall (Inn).”
James Baldwin was openly homosexual, but also very private about it. Baldwin did not refer to himself as gay. “He came up before there was a strong sense of that community,” Goldstein says.
Identity for Baldwin was complicated. “It was both public and that it was political and private, and that it was personal. This was an era when feminists were also discovering that the personal is political. And I think he was aware of all of that.”
James Baldwin smiles while addressing the crowd from the speaker’s platform, after participating in the march from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights, Alabama, March 1965.
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“He called himself a witness to the gay community, not a member, but a witness. And I think that distinction really describes his position.”
Baldwin’s interview led the June 26, 1984, issue, “The Future of Gay Life.” Goldstein asked his advice to someone coming out. Baldwin didn’t know the term, but once Goldstein explained, he thought one day it would be unnecessary.
“Oh, I am working toward a New Jerusalem, “ Baldwin told Goldstein. “I won’t live to see it, but I do believe in it. I think we’re going to be better than we are.”
“Best advice I ever got,” Baldwin continued, ”was an old friend of mine, a Black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all. That’s the only advice you can give anybody. And it’s not advice, it’s an observation.”
Goldstein says the two men shared their anxieties about the world, discussing sin, anger and rage.
“To me, that was the most memorable part of the interview,” Goldstein says. “Hearing him relate his own life to my own anxieties.”
American author and playwright James Baldwin as he sits backstage at the American National Theater and Academy Playhouse in New York, New York, April 1964. He was there to attend the opening of his play ‘Blues for Mr Charlie.’
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Robert Elfstrom/Archive Photos/Villon Films/Gety Images
“He really influenced my gay politics. And one of the things that really was kind of a revelation to me was when I asked why it is that white gay men are so enraged and that Black gay men, in my experience, didn’t have quite the same degree of rage. And he answered that it’s because Black people, from the moment of their birth, are in danger, whereas white people, especially white males, grew up thinking that they were safe. And then, when they came out, they were deprived of that safety.”
Goldstein considers his interview with Baldwin the most meaningful of his career, and he says it guided his later thinking and writing as an activist for a certain kind of gay politics.
“I began to think, what would Baldwin say about this? What contradictions can I find in this book that he would have found?”
Suzan-Lori Parks, writer: “… To walk in his company”
Suzan-Lori Parks is the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama for her play Topdog-Underdog. She was a fourth-grader, singing songs and playing with words who announced one day to her parents, “I want to be a writer.”
“They gave me The Fire Next Time for Valentine’s Day,” she says, cracking up. “I’m sure it was their way of saying, You know, ‘So you want to be a writer? So, here’s a writer we admire quite a bit. You got to step up. Here you go.’ ”
Suzan-Lori Parks attends 76th Annual Tony Awards – Arrivals on June 11, 2023 at United Palace Theater in New York City.
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Baldwin’s 1963 book bears witness to how racism ravaged America. It was a lot for an 11-year-old Black girl living in rural Vermont in 1973. More than his words, Baldwin’s face on the dust jacket was a potent message for her at the time.
“And I would look at it often,” she says. “You know, his beautiful eyes, his gaze, how handsome he was. And I thought, OK, this is what a writer looks like.”
For me, to see them interact with the great writer, to see them hang out with Mr. Baldwin gave me such joy.
A decade later, Parks was selected to take a creative writing class with Baldwin.
“Mr. Baldwin was in the room. I should have been cooler or more chill, but I was just thrilled that I had an opportunity. And so I was very performative in my delivery of my stories.”
She says she was very over the top in her readings.
“At the end of the semester, he said, “Miss Parks? Have you ever considered writing for the theater?’ in that beautiful voice he had.”
Parks feared her fiction disappointed Baldwin.
She knew and loved Greek plays, Shakespeare, Edward Albee. Ntokzake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy and Amiri Baraka were great writers, she says, but back then, she didn’t think of herself as a theater kid.
James Baldwin in Paris on April 27, 1972.
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“I got over it quick,” she laughs. Parks began writing her first play on the bus back to her dorm. That same semester, Baldwin invited each student separately for dinner, a meal he would prepare. When it was her turn, she brought her parents.
“And the three of us had dinner with Mr. Baldwin. For me, to see them interact with the great writer, to see them hang out with Mr. Baldwin gave me such joy. I can still see it in my mind’s eye.”
She still calls him Mr. Baldwin, and points to her upbringing. Her mom is from Texas, and her dad was a career Army officer. “It’s a respectful thing, and it’s a sign of love. It’s a gentle bow of the head.”
“Every day, I really work to walk in his company,” Parks says. “And in gratitude for the ways he demonstrated how an artist can show up for the world.”
Karim Karefa-Smart, nephew : “… Continue to read your Baldwin.”
Karim Karefa-Smart says James Baldwin has always been a presence and a special part of the family, a public figure who lived in the south of France.
“We have a saying, ‘Uncle Jimmy is ours, but he also belongs to the world.’ ”
“Before everything, he was Uncle Jimmy.”
Karim Karefa-Smart poses for a portrait in Meridian Hill Park in Washington, D.C. on July 31, 2024.
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Karefa-Smart grew up with siblings, cousins, his Aunt Paula and grandmother Emma Berdis Jones in the four-story apartment building that his Uncle Jimmy bought with profits from his books during the 1960s. Reportedly, Baldwin’s family helped support him in Paris when he struggled to become a writer.
“We owned the building, so we weren’t paying rent to anybody. And we didn’t have to worry about getting put out,” Karefa-Smart says. “And then we had tenants. God bless them, because they had to live through a lot of very noisy and raucous family celebrations.”
I remember him speaking to you directly. You knew that he loved you.
Baldwin was often around at the holidays, which was a special time because of his grandmother’s birthday. Uncle Jimmy’s mom’s birthday fell on Christmas Day.
The nieces and nephews were “very much the apples of his eye,” Karefa-Smart says. His Uncle Jimmy did not have children of his own and loved seeing his nieces and nephews whenever he came to town. “I remember him speaking to you directly. You knew that he loved you, you know, and that was very, very important.”
His mother, Gloria Karefa-Smart, handles matters for the Baldwin estate, ensuring his books remain published worldwide, She used to manage their apartment house on West 71 Street, which they no longer own. He lives in Washington, D.C., where his work involves music concerts and other events.
James Baldwin signing books in a crowded book store, 1980. (Photo by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images)
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Karefa-Smart will be 50 next year. He still talks about Baldwin’s books with his cousins and siblings.
“Sometimes, I read his work and I find that I have to put it down. Every other word is a bomb — and a sentence, it’s like a booming cannon. It resonates with you,” he says. “I believe a lot of people who read his work have the same exact reaction.”
He’s currently reading Baldwin’s 1985 book, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, which considers the Atlanta child murders. “But he also uses it as an examination of how America treats its children and how people are treated in society,” he says. “And it’s just one of those books where you just have to read it more than once.”
On the 100-year anniversary of his uncle’s birth, Karefa-Smart offers a suggestion. “I would just say to people to continue to read your Baldwin. Connect with his work and the work of other notable authors who, you know, want a change in the world that is better for our children and our children’s children.”
“If you have, you know, oxygen in your lungs, and you’re above ground and you’re moving? You have an opportunity to make a difference, a positive difference and have a positive impact, you know, in someone’s life.”
American author James Baldwin at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts in 1985.
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You want to see some real fashion ingenuity? Watch the N.F.L. draft.
I’m not saying it’s all good, but where else are you going to see someone in a double-breasted suit made by a company better known for making yoga pants? Or an Abercrombie & Fitch suit jacket so short that it exposes the belt loops on the pants beneath?
On the whole, the style on display at the N.F.L. draft last night was very overeager senior formal: a lot of suits in colors beyond basic blue. The quarterback Ty Simpson wore a custom suit by the athleisure label Alo, which, I have to say, looked better than I would have envisioned had you said the words “Alo Yoga suit” to me.
I thought it might have been from Suitsupply, but the conspicuous “Alo” pin on his right lapel put that idea to rest. Simpson, smartly, unfastened that beacon before appearing onstage as the 13th pick to the Los Angeles Rams. He had, perhaps, satisfied his contractual obligations by that point.
Earlier in the evening, as the wide receiver Carnell Tate threw up his arms in exaltation after being picked fourth by the Tennessee Titans, his cropped Abercrombie & Fitch jacket revealed a swatch of rib cage. He looked like a mâitre d’ who had just hit the Mega Millions.
During the N.B.A.’s extended fashion awakening, its draft has become a sandbox for luxury brands to cozy up to would-be endorsers. The Frenchman Victor Wembanyama broke a kind of cashmere ceiling when he wore Louis Vuitton to go first overall in the 2023 N.B.A. draft.
The N.F.L. draft has none of that. The brands you see are often not brands at all, but custom tailors that reach the league’s neophytes through a whisper network among players. The draft is also a platform to raise the curtain on longer-term brand deals that better suit these rookies. We may, for instance, never see Simpson in a suit again. Nearly every photo from his time at Alabama shows him in a T-shirt or hoodie. It makes sense for him to sign with Alo.
Football is the most mainstream of American cultural entities. And it’s one that still hasn’t, in spite of the league’s best efforts, taken off overseas. Few players, save some quarterbacks and a tight end who happens to be engaged to a pop star, feel bigger than the game itself. If you’re a new-to-the-league linebacker, you’ll most likely never harness the star power to grab the attention of Armani, but you might have just the right pull for Abercrombie.
The N.F.L. draft is therefore one of the few red carpets where the brands worn by the athletes may also be worn by those watching at home. How many people watching the Oscars will ever own clothes from Louis Vuitton or Chanel? People may comment online about Lady Gaga wearing Matières Fécales to the Grammys, but how many of those fans and viewers could afford to buy clothes from it?
The Japanese designers changing fashion
Yesterday, I published a deep dive into how a newish crop of Japanese designers are soaking up all the attention in men’s fashion right now. This was a piece I was writing in my head long before I sat down and finally started typing. I remember sitting at a fashion show in Paris over a year ago — I believe it was Dior — and being asked by my seatmate if I’d made it over to a showroom in the Marais to check out A.Presse. That Tokyo-based brand is now part of a vanguard of Japanese labels that, on many days, seems to be all anyone in fashion wants to talk about. I spent months talking with designers, store owners and big-time shoppers to make sense of why these brands have kicked up so much buzz and, more than that, what makes their clothes so great. You can read the story here.
Other things worth knowing about:
Thirty years ago, comedian and actor Tig Notaro didn’t have a clear direction in life, so she followed some childhood friends who wanted to get into entertainment to Los Angeles. Secretly wanting to do stand-up, Notaro decided to try her luck at various outlets in town, which became the start of her successful career.
“I stayed on my friends’ couch near the Hollywood Improv on Melrose, and a couple months later, got my own studio apartment in the Miracle Mile area,” Notaro says. “I love all the options for everything in L.A. — the entertainment, the restaurants. I like to stay active. So many people love the hiking options in Los Angeles, and I’m one of them.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Notaro appears in Season 3 of Apple TV’s “The Morning Show” and is a series regular on Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” as she was on “Star Trek: Discovery.” She’s also a touring stand-up comic and hosts “Handsome,” a comedy podcast, with Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin. The trio will be taping a live show May 4 at the Wiltern with the cast of Netflix’s “The Hunting Wives.” The live shows include interviews, but also “incorporate some ridiculous things,” she says. For example, upon hearing that some of the hosts always wanted to learn to tap dance, Notaro “hired a tap instructor to come to our live show in Austin and teach us how to tap dance in front of the audience.”
Notaro lives near Hollywood with her wife, actor Stephanie Allynne, their 9-year-old fraternal twin boys, Max and Finn, and three cats, Fluff, Linus and Skip. When she’s not touring, her ideal Sundays include sampling vegan restaurants, wandering through bookstores or museums, and doing something physically active with the family.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
6 a.m.: Up with the kids
Because we have active children, we still wake up at 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, but there’s not as much of a rush to get going. Stephanie and I will often have coffee and chat in the living room together. I love that part of the day. Stephanie may cook breakfast, but Max and Finn are pretty self-sufficient and can make certain little meals for themselves. Max is really starting to take an interest in cooking, so he’d make breakfast for himself. Our family is vegan, but he eats eggs, so he makes himself an egg sandwich with avocado a lot of times.
9 a.m.: Daily morning walk
After breakfast, we usually have a morning walk around our neighborhood. That’s a daily thing I like to do, regardless of what’s going on. Now that I’m not touring as much, tennis is back on the schedule. So I’d go to Plummer Park in West Hollywood and play for a while, then join the family for lunch.
11:30 a.m.: Hike with a side of chickpea sandwich
I love Trails, a cafe in Griffith Park, where you can eat outdoors. It serves simple food, and has good vegan options. I usually get their chickpea salad sandwich. The food there is great. Afterward, we’d visit Griffith Observatory, where there’s lots to see. There are lots of great trails in the park, so we’d go for an hour hike before leaving.
3 p.m.: Browse the shelves for rock biographies
Bookstores are fun, so we’d head downtown for the Last Bookstore, which is in a historic building with lots of vintage books. I really love all things plant-based, and I’m a very big music fanatic. So I love to look for vegan books, nutrition books, rock biographies and autobiographies. It’s just fun to browse around the stacks.
If we didn’t go to the bookstore, we’d probably go to LACMA. Our sons are huge fans of art and want to go for each new exhibit. They love Hockney, Basquiat and Picasso, to name a few.
4 p.m.: Cuddle with cuties at a cat cafe
We’d then make a quick stop at [Crumbs & Whiskers], a kitten and cat cafe on Melrose for coffee, snacks and to pet the cats. It’s best to make reservations in advance. There’s cats all around the place that need to be adopted. You can visit and pet them, or find a new roommate. I’d love to take some home, but we already have three.
5:30 p.m. Italian or sushi, but make it vegan
We’re an early dinner family. One restaurant we like is Pura Vita in West Hollywood. It’s the greatest vegan Italian food, and for non-vegans, nobody ever knows the difference. It’s the first 100% plant-based Italian restaurant in the United States. They make an incredible kale salad and I love the San Gennaro pizza. It’s got cashew mozzarella, tomato sauce, Italian sausage crumble and more.
Then there’s Planta in Marina del Rey. It’s right on the harbor and you can sit outside and look at the boats coming in and out. They have sushi, salads and other plant-based entrees. They’ve got a really great spicy tuna roll that’s made out of watermelon. They are magicians.
Or there’s Crossroads Kitchen in West Hollywood. They play the best classic rock, and the atmosphere is upscale, fine dining. The appetizers that we always get are called Moroccan Cigars, which are vegan meat substitutes fried in a rolled batter. I really like the grilled lion’s mane steak, their mushroom steak with truffle potatoes, or the scallopini Milanese, that has a chicken or tofu option. I get the chicken with arugula on top. I always love to have a decaf espresso with dessert, which is either a brownie sundae or banana pudding.
7:30 p.m.: Comfort watch or word games
After dinner, the kids often like to watch an episode of “Friends,” a show that all ages enjoy, sports or “The Simpsons.” Or we’d play a game where each of us will add a word to a sentence and create a weird or funny long sentence until one of our sons says period. Then they’ll try and remember the whole sentence and repeat it back.
9:30 p.m.: Bubble bath then bed
The boys usually go to bed at 8:30 p.m. and bedtime for us is 9:30 p.m. Stephanie and I would read or chat. I like to take a bubble bath, if people must know. The best Sundays for me mean finding a good balance of relaxing and being active. I feel very lucky that my family and I can do those things together.
When Marian Sherry Lurio and Jonathan Buffington Nguyen met at a mutual friend’s wedding at Higgins Lake, Mich., in July 2022, both felt an immediate chemistry. As the evening progressed, they sat on the shore of the lake in Adirondack chairs under the stars, where they had their first kiss before joining others for a midnight plunge.
The two learned that the following weekend Ms. Lurio planned to attend a wedding in Philadelphia, where Mr. Nguyen lives, and before they had even exchanged numbers, they already had a first date on the books.
“I have a vivid memory of after we first met,” Mr. Nguyen said, “just feeling like I really better not screw this up.”
Before long, they were commuting between Philadelphia and New York City, where Ms. Lurio lives, spending weekends and the odd remote work days in one another’s apartments in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Within the first six months of dating, Mr. Nguyen joined Ms. Lurio’s family for Thanksgiving in Villanova, Pa., and, the following month, she met his family in Beavercreek, Ohio, at a surprise birthday party for Mr. Nguyen’s mother.
Ms. Lurio, 32, who grew up in Merion Station outside Philadelphia, works in investor relations administration at Flexpoint Ford, a private equity firm. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology.
Mr. Nguyen, also 32, was born in Knoxville, Tenn., and raised in Beavercreek, Ohio, from the age of 7. He graduated from Haverford College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and is now a director at Doyle Real Estate Advisors in Philadelphia.
Their long-distance relationship continued for the next few years. There were dates in Manhattan, vacations and beach trips to the Jersey Shore. They attended sporting events and discovered their shared appreciation of the 2003 film, “Love Actually.”
One evening, Mr. Nguyen recalled looking around Ms. Lurio’s small New York studio — strewed with clothes and the takeout meal they had ordered — and feeling “so comfortable and safe.” “I knew that this was something different than just sort of a fling,” he said.
It was an open question when they would move in together. In 2024, Ms. Lurio began the process of moving into Mr. Nguyen’s home in Philadelphia — even bringing her cat, Scott — but her plans changed midway when an opportunity arose to expand her role with her current employer.
Mr. Nguyen was on board with her decision. “It almost feels like stolen valor to call it ‘long distance,’ because it’s so easy from Philadelphia to New York,” Mr. Nguyen said. “The joke is, it’s easier to get to Philly from New York than to get to some parts of Brooklyn from Manhattan, right?”
In January 2025, Mr. Nguyen visited Ms. Lurio in New York with more up his sleeve than spending the weekend. Together they had discussed marriage and bespoke rings, but when Mr. Nguyen left Ms. Lurio and an unfinished cheese plate at the bar of the Chelsea Hotel that Friday evening, she had no idea what was coming next.
“I remember texting Jonathan,” Ms. Lurio said, bewildered: “‘You didn’t go toward the bathroom!’” When a Lobby Bar server came and asked her to come outside, Ms. Lurio still didn’t realize what was happening until she was standing in the hallway, where Mr. Nguyen stood recreating a key moment from the film “Love Actually,” in which one character silently professes his love for another in writing by flashing a series of cue cards. There, in the storied Chelsea Hotel hallway still festooned with Christmas decorations, Mr. Nguyen shared his last card that said, “Will you marry me?”
They wed on April 11 in front of 200 guests at the Pump House, a covered space on the banks of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Mr. Nguyen’s sister, the Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, who is ordained through the Unitarian Universalist Association, officiated.
Although formal attire was suggested, Ms. Lurio said that the ceremony was “pretty casual.” She and Jonathan got ready together, and their families served as their wedding parties.
“I said I wanted a five-minute wedding,” Ms. Lurio recalled, though the ceremony ended up lasting a little longer than that. During the ceremony, Ms. Nguyen read a homily and jokingly added that guests should not ask the bride and groom about their living arrangements, which will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
While watching Ms. Lurio walk down the aisle, flanked by her parents, Mr. Nguyen said he remembered feeling at once grounded in the moment and also a sense of dazed joy: “Like, is this real? I felt very lucky in that moment — and also just excited for the party to start!”
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