Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences By Mark Armstrong Commentary “We are in a sort of remediation industrial complex.”
‘They Were Growing Seedlings…Which Would Sprout To Become Supreme Court Justices’ By Hope Reese Feature Ruth Marcus discusses the Federalist Society’s 30-year Justice-grooming project, the botched investigations, and everything else that brought us “too big to fail” Brett Kavanaugh.
The Longreads 2019 Holiday Gift Book Guide By Dana Snitzky Commentary Let Longreads help you with your holiday shopping! We’ve made a catalog of books we featured in 2019 that we think would make great gifts for everyone on your list.
Checking in on the Masculinity Crisis By Kelli María Korducki Feature If masculinity really is in crisis — and that’s a big if — we should at least be able to agree that it’s not women’s responsibility to fix it.
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?
A Beautiful, Rugged Place: Erosion of the Body By Longreads Feature The life-long writer, teacher, and activist believed she could save a piece of land or a species, but after her brother took his life, she questioned her optimism and how to grieve for him and the planet.
It Was Putin, on British Soil, Using his Poison Factory By Krista Stevens Highlight Trying to keep a mouthy Russian oligarch safe from Vladimir Putin is harder than it looks. Especially when the oligarch has a penchant for publicly poking the bear.
‘By Choice, and Not By Choice…Time Is Going To Change You.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Nina MacLaughlin discusses her retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “[In] my very vague high school memories…there was no discussion of the fact that this book is just rape after rape after rape.”
This Month In Books: The Book Is an Escape Tool By Dana Snitzky Commentary Sometimes telling a story is the only way to escape it.
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.
‘I’m a Big Fan of Writing To Find Out What You Don’t Know.’ By Adam Morgan Feature Mark Haber discusses “Reinhardt’s Garden” and its protagonist’s quest for a true understanding of melancholy: “not a feeling but a mood, not a color but a shade, not depression but not happiness either…”
Kissed a Girl By Longreads Feature Vickie Vértiz maneuvers her way around teenage love, friend envy, and being outed by her Mexican mother.
‘I Was Trapped Forever In This Present Tense’: Carmen Maria Machado on Surviving Abuse By Hope Reese Feature “She was always afraid of my voice. That was the defining factor of our relationship — fear of what I would say and write and do. She’s afraid of … the narrative that I possess.”
Walking Across California By Longreads Feature To understand what the Golden State is compared to what it was, one solitary hiker follows the trail of the first overland Spanish expedition into California 250 years later.
Lindy West is Preaching to the Choir By Sara Fredman Feature Sara Fredman talks to author Lindy West on women and likability, the evolution of pop culture, and navigating conversations in a complex, messy world.
Carrying Histories of Protest By Longreads Feature Jaquira Díaz witnesses her father’s rebellious fight for a better life, and her homeland’s fight for its place in the world.
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.
A Green New Jail By Will Meyer Feature What does environmental justice look like in a landscape overrun by prisons? Where the incarcerated suffer from unusually polluted surroundings, and prisons are a toxin in their own right?
‘I Was Being Used in Slivers and Slices’: On Feminism at Odds With Evangelical Faith By Jane Ratcliffe Feature “I wasn’t unified in my being. I wasn’t able to bring my whole self to the table,” says Cameron Dezen Hammon about her life as a worship leader for an evangelical megachurch.
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.
‘I Was Interested in the People Who Are Stuck With These Memories.’ By Victoria Namkung Feature Steph Cha discusses her new novel “Your House Will Pay,” the LA Riots, the Korean American Angeleno community, her 3,600 Yelp reviews, and pushing back against gatekeepers in publishing.
Surviving the Shattering of My Mind and My Marriage By Longreads Feature Andrea J. Buchanan contemplates the way illness and pain can freeze a sufferer in time, as if encased in glass.
This Month In Books: ‘One Degree Is About the Uncanny’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is suspended in a state of anticipation.
Same Sh*itty Media Men, Different Day By Sari Botton Highlight Rebecca Traister asks how NBC can possibly change its misogynist culture if it keeps the same bad actors at the top.
‘Writing This Book Was a Weird Séance ’: An Interview With Deborah Levy By Tobias Carroll Feature “If you have the depth, the surface can be as light as it’s possible to make it…I don’t mind that ‘Swimming Home’ is sometimes described as a ‘beach read’ — actually that’s a triumph.”
‘I Went Quiet…and That Allowed Me To Understand’: The Life of a Molecatcher By Tobias Carroll Feature Marc Hamer discusses life, death, and the lost art of catching a mole.
Bikini Kill — and My Bunkmates — Taught Me How to Unleash My Anger By Longreads Feature While away at summer camp, Melissa Febos discovers the power of her generation’s rage and feminism.
