“It took more than a decade for me to realize that I never really wanted to become a pilot so much as I wanted to become like my dad, to achieve what others deemed impossible.”
Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Cheri has been an editor at Longreads since 2014.
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘I’ve Lost Everything to the Beast’
“Formed in Los Angeles by refugees fleeing US-backed violence in El Salvador, MS-13 has wreaked havoc in Central America.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Battle for Zimbabwe’s Land Never Ended
“We all still have scars of having land taken from us in the past.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The End of the Road
“Living in a van represented a new, glamorous ideal, unburdened from homeownership and a steady job — unmoored, even, from the physical world itself. If owning a home was no longer possible, there was endless space on Instagram.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How to Map Nothing
“What if we took each sourdough selfie, each Zoom class, each Peloton ride, each Netflix binge and mapped the ecology of resources and services that have made it possible for some of us? And at the same time impossible for others?” On pandemic maps and the Great Pause.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Hathi
“Millions suffered through terror and upheaval in the turbulent years following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One of them was a baby elephant from India.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Searching for My Grandmother in The Heart Mountain Sentinel
Miyako Pleines explores the life of her grandmother within the pages of the Heart Mountain Sentinel, the newspaper of an internment camp for Japanese Americans.
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘Look After My Babies’: In Ethiopia, a Tigray Family’s Quest
War broke out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region at the worst possible time for Abraha Kinfe Gebremariam and his family: his wife was giving birth to twins amid a massacre.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Girl in the Kent State Photo
“The Kent State Pietà, as it’s sometimes called, is one of those rare photos that fundamentally changed the way we see ourselves and the world around us.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Rubber Industry’s Toxic Legacy in Akron
“The jobs that a whole generation of Akronites held are mostly gone, but the health effects of the toxins they worked around every day still linger.”