This week, we’re sharing stories from Rebecca Solnit, Aaron Gordon, Jason Daley, Maria T. Allocco, and David Marchese.
Nonfiction
The Zoo That Divided a Town
Exotic critters have gnawed the frail threads that once bound a small Ontario community.
“The Anger of Women is an Earth-shattering Thing”: Lidia Yuknavitch on Resisting the Hero Narrative and the Body as a Generator of Stories.
“I’m going to say a blasphemous thing, which is we are so fucking done with the hero’s journey. It has been to our peril.”
A Crying Public Shame
Dialogue, Twitter-style: you get called out on social media. People pile on to you. Other people pile on to the pile-oners. Soon everyone’s anxious or angry or both, no one’s really talking (or listening), and a few tech CEOs are buying new houses in Jackson Hole.
15 True Crime Longreads and the Questions We Should Ask Ourselves When Reading Them
By bringing new dimensions to an unjust process, a well-told story has the power to impact some of our most flawed systems.
What Do We Do With Feelings Now That They Don’t Matter Anymore?
Sarah Miller thinks about climate change and other current horrors, and what it’s like just being sad forever.
The Consequences of Surviving
“As medicine advances, we have more survivors. But those survivors carry trauma to their graves.”
The Criminalization of the American Midwife
New York midwife Elizabeth Catlin faces 95 individual felony counts at her upcoming trial. For what? For doing her job. Politics and patriarchy make the work of many credentialed, experienced midwives illegal — to the detriment of women and underserved communities.
A Design Aesthetic That Lets You Succeed In a World That Doesn’t Care If You Fail
Every era bears its aesthetic burden. This is ours.
Some Inland California History Begins with an Orange
Even as California’s Inland Empire loses its citrus industry to urbanization, urbanites can still keep social ties by planting fruit trees in their yards.
