Longreads Best of 2019: Arts and Culture By Longreads Commentary We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in arts and culture.
The Story of Salvador’s Banda Didá By Tari Ngangura Feature In a country with violent history and violent politics, Brazil’s first all-female, Afro-Brazilian percussion group drums and dances and changes lives.
All Hail the Rat King By Adrian Daub Feature From Martin Luther to The Nutcracker, Germany’s original national nightmare was a tangled knot of writhing rats.
In Praise of Del Amitri’s Album Waking Hours By Longreads Feature Some albums make it hard to separate the music from the experience of listening to it.
Bully for You By Soraya Roberts Feature Women with power have the capacity to silence women with less — and they wield it. Why can’t they see that?
Thou Shalt Not Mess With a Mom in a “Mamacita Needs a Margarita” Sweater By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight “This mom runs on caffeine, wine, and Amazon Prime” is a funny t-shirt slogan, but there is a serious social phenomenon behind it.
How Jazz Pianist Erroll Garner Fought for His Rights By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight When Columbia Records breached one of their big star’s contracts back in the 1950s, he sued and won.
Let Me Show You the World By Iman Sultan Feature Almost everything you think you know about Aladdin is wrong.
Willie Nelson’s 50-year Love Affair with Trigger, His Faithful Guitar By Krista Stevens Highlight “A guitar sounds better as it gets older, just like a Stradivarius does.”
Under the Influence: Watch(wo)men By Soraya Roberts Feature We watch the (women) influencers watching the (heavily female) influencing industry, but the men aren’t entirely in the dark.
How Mister Rogers Found Inspiration in the Everyday By Krista Stevens Highlight ‘“I think that how we were first loved — or not — has a great deal to do with what we create and how,” Fred once told me.’
Stumbling Into Joy By Kate Hopper Feature The electric bass chose her, but it took 44 years to heed the call.
Every One of Us Is Other: Looking Back on Representation in “Heavenly Creatures” 25 Years Later By Alex Difrancesco Feature Alex DiFrancesco reflects on Peter Jackson’s nuanced approach to representation in the critically acclaimed film.
Under the Influence: Deeper Than Beauty By Soraya Roberts Feature Influencers who break type, like Mina Gerges or Jakiya Brown, have more than just an image. They have a story — and a plan.
A Town Split By a Play About the 1980s AIDS Epidemic By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Sometimes art can challenge viewers enough to change them. Sometimes art just makes the narrow-minded angry.
Why Lhasa de Sela Matters By Longreads Feature Raised in a school bus by itinerant hippie parents, with one foot in Mexico and one in the US, the singer blossomed into her true multicultural self in bilingual Montreal.
Under the Influence: White Lies By Soraya Roberts Feature When you read “influencer,” do you think “white woman”? That’s not a surprise: the stereotypes originally established offline are reaffirmed on social media by the same systems.
As Impossible and Imperfect as Translation By Krista Stevens Highlight “But poetry…has helped me to find new meaning within and across linguistic boundaries.”
Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes: On Novelist Nettie Jones and the Madness of ‘Fish Tales’ By Michael Gonzales Feature Edited by Toni Morrison, the 1983 novel ‘Fish Tales’ by Nettie Jones was supposed to set the literary world on fire. It didn’t.
Frenzied Woman By Longreads Feature Cinelle Barnes considers how the chaos and discipline of dance kept the disparate parts of her being stitched together.
The Corpse Rider By Colin Dickey Feature “I could see the ghosts,” recalled Lafcadio Hearn about his early childhood. Late in life, he became a celebrated chronicler of Japan’s folk tales: stories of strange demons and lingering visitations.
Records on Bone By Longreads Feature One young Ukrainian-American struggles to piece together a clear portrait of her parents’ difficult Soviet past, once they quit erasing, and began embracing, their legacy.
A Fresh Look at The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1998 Album Adore By Longreads Feature Loved and loathed in equal measure, one thing critics can’t take from this influential 90s band is their willingness to evolve musically.
Happiness is Fleeting By Longreads Feature Good grief, adolescence is difficult. Luckily Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell found solidarity and guidance from The Peanuts Gang.
End of Discussion By Soraya Roberts Feature There’s no such thing as a 140-character exegesis: the (non)-discourse around “Joker” is the latest to prove that social media is designed for emotion, not dialogue.
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Orchids By Katy Kelleher Feature Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and sometimes it’s a powerful vehicle for giving free rein to our worst colonialist and misogynist impulses.
When the Dishes Are Done, I Wonder About Progress By Sarah Rose Haas Feature In “Coventry,” Rachel Cusk draws a connection between politeness and narrative death, rudeness and tragedy, storytelling and war.
Why Karen Carpenter Matters By Longreads Feature For one brown, queer Filipino-American, Karen Carpenters’ music anchored her to her musical family’s past while helping chart her path in their adopted Southern California.
Grow Up By Soraya Roberts Feature Being an adult at the end of the world means listening to children tell the truths grown-ups refuse to actually hear.
