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The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life

Stephen Rodrick | The Magical Stranger | 2014 | 11 minutes (2,779 words)

Below is the first chapter from The Magical Stranger, Stephen Rodrick’s memoir about his father, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick. Our thanks to Rodrick for sharing it with the Longreads community. Read more…

Penny Pritzker’s Path from Family Tragedy to Business Success

Longreads Pick

How the Obama Commerce Secretary’s early family tragedies shaped her path to business and political success:

Earlier this year her youngest brother, J.B., told Chicago magazine of his mother’s battles with alcohol and how the children were often left to fend for themselves. As the oldest, Penny says, she stepped in to take care of her brothers, especially J.B., who was only 7 when their dad died. “I tried to be positive and hold us together as a family,” she says. But she remains protective of her mother’s legacy. For all her troubles, Sue was a mother who instilled in her daughter the confidence to take risks. “She believed I could do everything,” Penny says.

Source: Fortune
Published: Jun 4, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,700 words)

How To Win a Million Dollars Writing Poetry in Abu Dhabi

As poetry readings go, the setting was unique. The Al Raha Beach Theatre in Abu Dhabi boasted light-up floors, backdrop projections and a light show of a kind that would be familiar to fans of Pop Idol, X Factor or America’s Got Talent.

Since February, global audiences of up to 70 million have tuned in to watch Million’s Poet, in which men (there were no female contestants this year) in traditional dress take turns to deliver self-penned verses of a type of colloquial Arabic poetry called Nabati. A panel of judges delivers feedback, the Emirati royal family puts in an occasional appearance, and the contestants are gradually whittled down.

If this format seems alien to the business of poetry, described by Wordsworth as “emotion recollected in tranquillity”, then the prize money may also give us pause for thought. When 27-year-old Saif al-Mansuri won the sixth season of the show last week, he took home five million UAE Dirhams – that’s $1.3m or £800,000. As literary prizes go, the only thing that comes close is the Nobel Prize for Literature, which stands at eight million Swedish kronor ($1.2m or £700,000).

All this raises questions about poetry and our preconceptions of poets. As Robert Graves put it, “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.”

William Kremer, writing for the BBC World Service. Kremer’s piece also explores the historical associations between poetry and poverty, and the stereotype of the starving artist, or “poet in the garret.”

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Photo: Stan Dalone & Miran Rijavec, Flickr

A Chinese Photojournalist Becomes a Star in Iowa: Our College Pick

Beginning writers are fond of openings stories with quotes that aren’t strong enough to lead with. Who is the speaker? Why do we care? Until they have more experience distinguishing a great quote from a merely good one, journalism instructors urge students not to open with some one else’s words. In a profile, opening with a strong quote can give us a sense of the subject’s voice and identify—who they are, and why we care. In her profile of fellow Iowa State University student Yue Wu, writer Elaine Godfrey manages to use her subject’s voice to tell the story without falling prey to the trap of stringing quotes together. By the end of the profile you wish you could meet Wu. Thanks to Godfrey, you have.

Yue Wu

Elaine Godfrey | Ethos Magazine | February 28, 2014 | 12 minutes (2,924 words)

Yes, All Women: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women

This week, a lot happened. A misogynist went on a violent rampage. #YesAllWomen took off on Twitter. Dr. Maya Angelou, feminist author and all-around genius (and don’t get me started on her doctor honorary), died at 86 years old. This week, I present a long list of essays, articles and interviews written by women. Many are about women, too. Some are lighthearted; others reflect on the events of the past week. I included a variety of subjects to honor those who might be triggered by the deadly violence of last week’s shooting, because women do not only write in the wake of tragedy—we write, we exist, for all time. So in this list there is reflection and humor; there are books and music and religion; there are all kinds of stories, fiction and non. Read what you need. Engage or escape.

1. “Summer in the City.” (Emma Aylor, May 2014)

Aylor, author of Twos, uses #YesAllWomen to write about about the sexual harassment she experienced as she researched her dissertation on the work of Wallace Stevens.

2. “In Relief of Silence and Burden.” (Roxane Gay, May 2014)

The author of An Untamed State and critically acclaimed badass gives her “testimony … so we can relieve ourselves of silence and burden” in the vein of #YesAllWomen, sharing stories of harassment, abuse and more.

3. “Not All Women: A Reflection on Being a Musician and Female.” (Allison Crutchfield, Impose Magazine, May 2014)

A wide range of female musicians react to a depressingly misogynistic article in Noisey about how to tour in a dude-dominated band. They share what they’ve learned on the road, emphasizing self-care, communication with bandmates, and doing what you need to do to feel safe and be your best self.

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'When You Make Art Out of Something, They Get Another Chance'

She was still living in the rectory when “Rape Joke” was published in The Awl. There is a section of the poem about the speaker’s parents’ response to the rape:

It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit… .”

Lockwood came downstairs one night after the poem was published to find her mother sitting in the dark in front of her computer, reading the poem and crying. …

Of her parents’ reaction to the rape, she later said: “People don’t necessarily respond as their best selves in the moment. The initial conversations were not totally ideal. But when you make art out of something, they get another chance.”

Jesse Lichtenstein, in the New York Times Magazine, on poet Patricia Lockwood, whose new book is Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals.

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On Going Back Home: A Reading List

We are expats and nomads. We are products of multiple countries. We run away from places that don’t feel quite right, only to never find where we belong. These stories celebrate the journey of returning to (or discovering) our roots, and the elusive, ever-evolving concept of home. Read more…

The Pagan Rituals of Modern Winemaking

I had come back to AmByth to help hasten the vines’ resurrection by taking part in a ritual. I’d been invited the month before, while dining with Philip Hart and his wife, Mary. We’d talked for several hours that night, around their fireplace, wine glasses in hand. They asked me why I was so interested in biodynamic wine. I told them it was the relationship between wine and mysticism that really interested me. The conversation drifted to religion, and Mary told me she was a Christian, and considered herself born again. Philip didn’t come out and say what he believed, but it was clear he took Rudolf Steiner’s metaphysics quite seriously. A disagreement between them broke out at one point: Mary said, ‘as a Christian’, she was turned off by the pagan elements of biodynamics.

Philip mentioned they would be dispersing a preparation called ‘three kings’ shortly after the turning of the New Year. The ‘three kings’ preparation was devised decades after Steiner’s death, by Hugo Erbe, a disciple of his who also claimed to be in touch with nature’s ‘elemental beings’. Erbe said he’d seen these beings take flight from his farm after the atomic levelling of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In order to rescue them, and heal the Earth’s wounds, he developed a preparation made from the gifts given to the infant Christ by the three wise men: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The preparation is dispersed once a year, on 6 January, the date the wise men showed up in Bethlehem. ‘You’re welcome to join us, if you’re in town,’ Philip said to me.

Ross Andersen, in Aeon magazine, on the mystical roots of biodynamic wine.

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Photo: peterburge

Without Chief or Tribe: An Expat’s Guide to Having a Baby in Saudi Arabia

Nathan Deuel | Friday Was the Bomb | May 2014 | 21 minutes (5,178 words)

 

For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share a full chapter from Friday Was the Bomb, the new book by Nathan Deuel about moving to the Middle East with his wife in 2008. Deuel has been featured on Longreads in the past, and we’d like to thank him and Dzanc Books for sharing this chapter with the Longreads community. 

Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle)

Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks)

 

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