“I couldn’t shake that crystalline, hyperaware feeling one gets on important occasions—on birthdays, for instance, or on losing one’s virginity. My father is dead, I said to myself, my father is dead. Again and again I said it, and still I failed to grasp what it meant.”
michelleweber
Posted inArts & Culture, Essays & Criticism, Highlight, Quotes
This Is the Excellent Foppery of the World
Mercury’s in retrograde, so it’s a great day to read this post.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Warren Jeffs’ Polygamist Cult Once Controlled This Town. Now It’s Launching a Democracy From Scratch
Disputed propane tanks, magic rocks, Christmas carols, and a former-fundamentalist, female mayor: things are changing in Hildale, Utah, home of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Posted inCurrent Events, Highlight, Quotes
The Family Is Political
U.S. immigration law has a history of excluding “undesirables” from citizenship through policy. It’s doing it now with LGBTQ families, in spite of marriage equality.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Reefer Madness 2.0: What Marijuana Science Says, and Doesn’t Say
Fear-mongering through data (or a lack thereof): on Alex Berenson, Malcolm Gladwell, and “what happens when tidy narratives outrun the science.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Frosted Glass
“Eloisa acted like she knew more than her mother, even though she’d been handed everything in life. Even though she’d never had to scrounge and save and claw her way through these Broken English streets to finally arrive in Miami’s suburbs. Eloisa didn’t have to force her mouth into unnatural shapes to curve around impossible […]
Posted inArts & Culture, Highlight, Quotes
This Post Was Originally 200 Words Longer But They Weren’t Sparking Joy
“Instead of homes, we live in commodities.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Mary Oliver: Listening to the World
In the wake of her death, revisit this classic 2015 interview with poet Mary Oliver. “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination.”
Posted inAdmin
We’re Updating Our Privacy Policy
Longreads is owned by Automattic, the company that makes WordPress.com — which is what powers Longreads. As of February 1, 2019, Longreads will also be covered by the same Privacy Policy Automattic uses, one designed to maximize transparency and data privacy. We’re retiring the separate Privacy Policy for Longreads to keep things straightforward across all […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Into a Crueler America: Two Border Crossings, Thirty Years Apart
A chance run in with a recently-released detainee drives home that the border Reyna Grande crossed into the U.S. with her family 30 years ago doesn’t lead to the same place as the border crossed today.