Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism.
Story
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Story
For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors
My Soviet husband said we’d need 24-hour day care for any children we might have. Many years and the fall of an empire later, I finally realized why he said it.
Posted inArts & Culture, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Shooting For Truth
Adam Skolnick visits director Chris Weitz on the set of his new film, Operation Finale.
Posted inArts & Culture, History, Nonfiction, Story
A History of American Protest Music: Which Side Are You On?
Just as we were in the 1930s and ’60s, America is suffering a moral crisis. We have to decide which side we are on: hate and exclusion, or justice, inclusion, and democracy?
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Not Quite Not White
Sharmila Sen grew up understanding distinctions between castes and religions, between the educated and the illiterate. Race was a distinction she didn’t understand until she came to America.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Science Fiction, Story
Working Through the Apocalypse: An Interview with Ling Ma
In Ling Ma’s “Severance” — a novel she began to write after getting laid off, while living partly on severance pay — the characters keep going to work, even though they know it’s the end of the world.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
To Be Clean
A tender relationship with a fellow exotic dancer shows Natassja Schiel how to love her sister, a recovering addict.
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Story
The Horse Was a Lie (The Horse Is Here With Us Now)
In Mario Chard’s “Land of Fire,” was it the truth or a lie that killed the migrants in the desert? And what if that’s the wrong question? What if we say it was a horse?
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story, Writing
I Would Never Say That, But the Character, He Said It: An Interview with Catherine Lacey
“When I write, I’m creating a character, and then I’m just performing that character, and typing what they say.”
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Semi-Fluid States: The Rigid Line of Straightness
Minda Honey interrogates her sexuality and questions the future of straight-by-default.