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Platinum: A Singer Visits a Women’s Prison

Thao Nguyen | Radio Silence | October 2014 | 6 minutes (1500 words) Read more…

Interview: Former ‘Matilda’ Star Mara Wilson on Leaving Hollywood and Becoming a Writer

Adele Oliveira | Longreads | Nov. 2014 | 15 minutes (3,798 words)

In 1994, when she was seven years old, Mara Wilson appeared on The Today Show with Katie Couric to promote a remake of Miracle on 34th Street, in which she starred.

Right away, it’s easy to see why Wilson, who’s also known for her work in Mrs. Doubtfire and Matilda, is a successful and endearing child actor. She wears a red-checked gingham shirt underneath a wooly red cardigan, and her feet stick straight off the armchair on which she sits, too short to reach the ground. Wilson is missing teeth, and despite lisping, her diction is perfect and she’s polite and sincere with Couric, who mispronounces Wilson’s first name. Couric asks Wilson if she’d like to be like Natalie Wood someday—Wood played Wilson’s role in the original 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street. Wood started acting as a child, and in Couric’s words, grew up to be “a very famous, well-known, talented actress.”

Wilson hesitates, and you can see her thinking as she wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I might not want to be an actress all of my life.” Wilson says she wants to be a “script writer” and that while she hasn’t yet written down any of her stories, “I have a lot of them in my head.”

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Illustration by: John Ritter

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.

Belle Boggs | The New New South | August 2013 | 62 minutes (15,377 words)

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We’re proud to present, for the first time online, “For the Public Good,” Belle Boggs‘s story for The New New South about the shocking history of forced sterilizations that occurred in the United States, and the story of victims in North Carolina, with original video by Olympia Stone.

As Boggs explained to us last year: 

“Last summer I met Willis Lynch, a man who was sterilized by the state of North Carolina more than 65 years earlier, when he was only 14 years old and living in an institution for delinquent children. Willis was one of 7,600 victims of North Carolina’s eugenics program, and one of the more outspoken and persistent advocates for compensation.

“At the time I was struggling with my own inability to conceive, and the debate within my state—how much is the ability to have children worth?—was something I thought about a lot. It’s hard to quantify, the value of people who don’t exist. It gets even more complicated when you factor in public discomfort over a shameful past, and a present-day political climate that marginalizes the poor.”

Thanks to Boggs and The New New South for sharing this story with the Longreads Community, and thanks to Longreads Members for your helping us bring these stories to you. Join us.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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Escape from Jonestown

Julia Scheeres | A Thousand Lives | 26 minutes (6,304 words)

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For our latest Longreads Exclusive, we’re proud to share Julia Scheeres’ adaptation of her book, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown, which tells the story of five people who lived in Jonestown at the time of the infamous massacre, which occurred 36 years ago, on Nov. 18, 1978.

This story also includes home movies—never before released publicly—from inside Jonestown. The footage, discovered after the massacre, includes tours of the compound by Jim Jones and interviews with many of those who lived and died there. You can view the entire series of clips at YouTube.com/Longreads. Read more…

The Rise and Fall of John DeLorean

Suzanne Snider | Tokion | June/July 2006 | 12 minutes (2,918 words)

This story by Suzanne Snider—which details the fantastical rise and fall of John DeLorean, a former titan of the American automotive industry—first appeared in the June/July 2006 issue of Tokion. Snider is the founder/director of Oral History Summer School, and she is currently completing a nonfiction book about rival communes on adjacent land. Our thanks to Snider for allowing us to feature it on Longreads.  Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

When Mitch McConnell Met Roger Ailes: An Early Lesson in Winning At All Costs

Photo by gageskidmore

Alec MacGillis | The Cynic | September 2014 | 13 minutes (3,241 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from The Cynic, a book by The New Republic writer Alec MacGillis about U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. Our thanks to MacGillis for sharing this with the Longreads community.

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#Nightshift: Minneapolis

Excerpts from an Instagram essay, by Jeff Sharlet. See part one.

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