What Does a Gentrifying City Look Like? Talk To the Man Who Delivers the Mail

Downtown Tucson’s redevelopment efforts are pitting property owners against each other and driving out renters. It has hit long-time Latino renters especially hard. Redevelopment will also mean more residents but not more postal carriers. Here’s how gentrification looks along one long-time carrier’s route, and what continuity means in a community.

Published: Jan 1, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,088 words)

What Being a Bike Courier Taught Me About Our Broken Economy

To earn money during a rough patch as a freelancer, Sam Riches worked as a bike courier, delivering food in Toronto during a six-month period. While the job lacked in pay, it offered one intriguing benefit: a crash course in human nature.

Author: Sam Riches
Source: The Walrus
Published: Dec 12, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,261 words)

The Mystery of Jesus, the Naked Hippie Dancer

During the last quarter of the 20th century, William Jellett danced at countless rock shows in the UK. From Black Sabbath to the Sex Pistols to Queen, he was there, holding cryptic signs and rattling a tambourine. You can see his skinny shirtless frame in countless photos and live footage. So who was he, and where did he go?

Source: Medium
Published: Jan 3, 2018
Length: 33 minutes (8,281 words)

Changing My Mind About Pig’s Feet and Cornrows

In this personal essay, Dara Lurie reflects on what she discovered about her own racism while living for ten months at a state-run home for disadvantaged children.

Author: Dara Lurie
Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 15, 2018
Length: 12 minutes (3,011 words)

What Are You?

A personal essay in which Valerie Vande Panne writes about learning why she never quite passed as white growing up, despite allegedly being the product of two caucasian parents. She recalls being questioned all her life about her racial and cultural identity; finally learning through a DNA test that her father wasn’t who she thought he was; and dealing with white people’s racist responses to the new information about her heritage.

Published: Dec 15, 2017
Length: 8 minutes (2,187 words)

You Are What You Hear

A personal essay in which Pauline Campos writes about trying to forget the harsh words she heard about her body as a child, and to avoid passing along her body shame to her young daughter.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 12, 2018
Length: 13 minutes (3,469 words)

How Coming Out Made Me Whole: High Maintenance’s Katja Blichfeld Tells Her Story

In this as-told-to personal essay, High Maintenance Katja Blichfeld speaks about the vital importance — and difficulty, particularly after being raised evangelical — of coming out as gay this past year, and ending her marriage to her collaborator.

Source: Vogue
Published: Jan 12, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,218 words)

Who’s Going to Believe Us?

Tensions between the Bad River Reservation and Ashland, Wisconsin run high, due to white police violence and mistrust. It’s a continuation of the tensions between white Americans and Native Americans that go back to the nation’s founding. It’s systemic and accepted, and many tribal members don’t believe it will end.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jan 9, 2018
Length: 17 minutes (4,443 words)

Katja Blichfeld Gets What She Wants

A profile of Katja Blichfeld, the co-creator of HBO’s High Maintenance, in the wake of her coming out as a lesbian, and the amicable end of her marriage to Ben Sinclair — her collaborator on the show, and its star.

Published: Jan 10, 2018
Length: 11 minutes (2,796 words)

Where the Peppers Grow

Sichuan peppercorns are famous for their citrusy, mouth-numbing heat — and for being one of the hardest-to-find spices in the U.S.

Published: Oct 22, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,719 words)