Mathematics as a Cultural Force By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Amir Alexander on Euclidean geometry’s far-reaching effects.
To Love and Protect Each Other — From Bigotry By Jay Deitcher Feature After Jay Deitcher sits silent as his wife is verbally assaulted by his father’s racist friend, he grapples with the ways his family has been muted by trauma.
Climate Messaging: A Case for Negativity By Rebecca McCarthy Feature Nell Zink, Joy Williams, and a different kind of climate skepticism.
Shelved: The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s “Brain Opera” By Tom Maxwell Feature What happens when you’re not different just for the sake of being different.
‘People Can Become Houses’ By Danielle Jackson Feature In her debut memoir, Sarah Broom builds her “obsession” with her family home — destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina — into a story of how families decide who they are, how they got here, and how they reconstruct themselves over and over again.
Your Healing Crystals Are Part of the Capitalist Exploitation Machine By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Healing crystals move from poor villages to first world consumers along a trail of death, ecological destruction, and capitalistic concentration of wealth.
The Bread Thread By Emily Weitzman Feature Emily Weitzman condemns the persistence of slut shaming over different stages in her life, and combats it with humor and…bread.
Grandiose and Claustrophobic: ‘Prozac Nation’ Turns 25 By Anne Thériault Feature Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestseller is deeply rooted in a specific, Gen-X cultural moment. Can it still speak to us in 2019?
A Close Look at the Thing We Call ‘Celebrity’ By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Why do we care about famous people?
Where Am I? By Longreads Feature After a lifetime of alienation, one woman discovered how her spacial disorientation could be a gift that connected her to strangers and made her less alone.
How to Predict the Unpredictable By Katie Gutierrez Feature After the death of her dog, Katie Gutierrez grapples with the ripple effects of her decisions — and how to live with uncertainty as a mother.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Emily Giambalvo, Maureen Tkacik, Zuzana Justman, Jennifer Colville, and Roshani Chokshi.
How The Cult of Masculinity Can Poison Creative Writing Programs By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight There are numerous ways to tell stories. In her turn MFA program, one writer encountered a literary culture that espoused gendered aesthetics and fostered toxic masculinity.
The Art of Acceptance Speech Giving By Michael Musto Feature Michael Musto looks back at some of the best, worst, and weirdest instances of performers expressing gratitude as they received their shiny trophies.
Regarding the Interpretation of Others By Patrick Nathan Feature When attempting to write a review of the official Susan Sontag biography, our reviewer finds himself on shaky ground after learning new information about the author.
How Thailand’s Rich Escape Prosecution By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Thailand’s criminal justice system is plauged by an accepted double standard, where corruption prevails.
Keeping My Promise to Popo By Anne Liu Kellor Feature As Anne Liu Kellor says goodbye to her Chinese grandmother in the hospital, she taps into buried memories and family trauma.
Communiqué from an Exurban Satellite Clinic of a Cancer Pavilion Named after a Financier By Longreads Feature Anne Boyer encounters a familiar system — that grand and easy-to-mistake-for-everything system — at the cancer pavilion.
Tramp Like Us By Longreads Feature Can an American family learn to become outdoorsy in New Zealand, where the natural world is part of the national DNA? Sort of.
McDreamy, McSteamy, and McConnell By Samuel Ashworth Feature Congressional fan fiction is real, it’s glorious, and it might be reshaping our political world.
It Comes in Waves By Lilly Dancyger Feature Years after her cousin was killed, Lilly Dancyger is haunted by images of murdered women in the news.
Truly Seeing the River: An Interview with Writer Boyce Upholt By Aaron Gilbreath Feature Writing about the culture and beauty of the Mississippi Delta requires seeing the mighty river as more than a line of water.
Remembering Daniel Johnston By Tom Maxwell Feature This outsider musician made music sound new again to everyone who listened.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Sandra Sidi, Lena Solow, Aubrey Hirsch, Noelle Mateer, and Amanda Hess.
Welcome to the Military-Educational Complex By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight The way schools choose to redesign themselves to protect students from shootings will determine how schools look, and how well students can learn in them, for decades to come.
What’s Happening to My Body? By Devorah Heitner Feature Devorah Heitner reflects on the ways she is reclaiming her relationship to her own body while grappling with the legacy of her mother’s poor body image and early death.
‘To Be Polite By Ignoring the Obvious’: Jess Row on Unpacking Whiteness in Literature By Morgan Jerkins Feature “I was looking for texts that seem to go the extra mile in hiding something — texts that almost seem to be begging to be interpreted in terms of what’s not being said.”
My Love Affair with Chairs By Longreads Feature Chairs the world over have loved me, and I love them all back.
Prayers to Lucia By Heather Quinn Feature When a high-risk pregnancy jeopardizes their eyesight, Heather Quinn explores the expectations of motherhood and finds common ground with a patron saint.
After Three Children, Reclaiming My Body and My Mind By Ukamaka Olisakwe Feature In the wake of childbirth and postpartum complications affecting her mental health and her marriage, Ukamaka Olisakwe picks herself up and starts over — in grad school.
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