Privately made records enjoy a cult following among collectors, but few are as legendary as Donnie and Joe Emerson’s 1979 LP Dreamin’ Wild.
2019
Posted inEditor's Pick
Song Flute
When relationships grow tired or toxic, some people write songs about the people they leave behind, the way John Coltrane did for his first wife Naima Grubbs. For others, like this essay’s author, there are too many things that can’t be spoken about, so they talk mostly about music.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How a Stroke Turned a 63-Year-Old Into a Rap Legend
For stroke survivor Sherman Hershfield, rapping and rhyming kept his seizures under control.
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
There Was Nothing We Could Have Done, Because We’re Racist and You’re Black
“The prevalent perception of black women as unruly bodies and incompetent caretakers overrules even the most dominant stereotype about us—namely, that we are superhuman.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How a Career Criminal Broke the Convict Code and Saved Himself
In USP Florence, the most violent prison in the U.S. federal prison system, rats don’t live long and they don’t die peacefully. But Wayne Byerly talked, and lived — and found redemption.
Posted inArts & Culture, Culture, Highlight, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
Musicians Come Clean on How They Live, Create, and Thrive While Sober
Chris Heath at GQ interviews nine sober musicians on thriving creatively.
Posted inBooks, Commentary
This Month In Books: ‘How Thick Was the Cane?’ and Other Questions About Things
This month’s books newsletter is all about things. As in stuff, objects. Because, as Heike Geissler says, “It’s because of all the things that are here… that you’re here in the first place.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Commentary, Culture, Current Events, Story
Theatre of Wokeness
Are we having a surface-level reckoning?
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story, Writing
Sam Lipsyte on ‘Mental Archery,’ the Quest for Certainty, and Where All the Money Went
“It’s difficult to say what you really think. You’re too aware of the traps, the dead ends, the cul-de-sacs of utterance: all the ways we let cliché steer us in a certain direction, force us to say not quite what we mean…”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Essays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Of Blackness and ‘Beauty’
At an art exhibit exploring black models through Western art, Morgan Jerkins finds historical evidence of the white supremacist definitions of beauty Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom identifies in ‘Thick: and Other Essays.’