Pain is indeed inherited, but treating it as an affliction need not be handed down from generation to generation.
2017
Posted inEditor's Pick
How to Sell a Country: The Booming Business of Nation Branding
What do you know about Minsk, the capital of Belarus? Or the nation of Georgia? If you know anything, it’s either a oversimplification like ‘danger’ or ‘forested’ or an enticing tagline about wine and prosperity. An entire niche industry helps create identities, sometimes to attract tourists, sometimes, as with Libya, to scrub its image clean.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Johnstown Never Believed Trump Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway.
A year after they elected Trump, residents of a town in western Pennsylvania say they continue to support the President even though he hasn’t made good on all his big promises.
Posted inArts & Culture, Current Events, Quotes
In the Wake of Weinstein and #MeToo, Why Does R. Kelly Still Have an Audience?
Women of color who have been singled out by sexual predators deserve our collective fury too.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Anatomy of a Surrogacy
They wanted a baby, she wanted to carry it for them—for a fee. It’s a common transaction but illegal in Canada, and the system here leaves both parties vulnerable.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
Parsing Her Identity With A Long-Lost Folder, Plus the Internet
A.M. Homes wrestles with her ambivalence toward learning more about her birth parents and the circumstances of her adoption.
Posted inArts & Culture, Business & Tech, Nonfiction, Quotes, Travel
The Business of Building a Country’s Brand
A whole sector of the marketing industry shapes stories about nations and cities to shape our opinions about place.
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Happens If China Makes First Contact?
The Atlantic‘s Ross Andersen travels to China to visit the world’s largest radio dish built for seeking out extraterrestrial intelligence. On the trip he meets Liu Cixin, China’s preeminent science-fiction writer, for a wide-ranging discussion about the risks of making contact.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Kelela is Ready For You Now
On the eve of her debut album’s launch, experimental R&B vocalist Kelela talks to the Fader about meeting the challenges of working as a black woman artist in the largely white male-dominated recording industry with self-acceptance.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The File: Lost Then Found
A personal essay in which A.M. Homes — who ten years ago published The Mistress’s Daughter, a memoir about meeting her birth parents — reports on the experience of recently being given her long lost adoption file, and the effects of the information on her understanding of her origins.