Under Trump, A Hard Test for Howard University

For The New Yorker, historian and journalist Jelani Cobb dives deep into the history of Washington D.C.’s Howard University, one of the nation’s largest HBCU’s. Howard alumni include Thurgood Marshall, Kamala Harris, and Toni Morrison, and the school has played a large role in facilitating the social mobility of blacks in America since the Civil War. Cobb speaks at length to Wayne Frederick, the university’s current president, whose pragmatism during the Trump era has drawn ire from student activists. But similar tensions have arisen before.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 8, 2018
Length: 29 minutes (7,383 words)

The Case for the Subways

In every other city on earth, underground transit is revered as a national wonder: Hong Kong’s expects 99.9 percent of its trains to run on time, London is moving towards driverless trains, even Los Angeles has invested in its underground mass transit, despite having one of the largest freeway systems in the country. But New York’s subway, once the glory of the world, is in tatters. We are already too late to fix it, but will we be too late to save it?

Published: Jan 3, 2018
Length: 34 minutes (8,500 words)

The Afterlife of Newsies

The Newspaper Boy Strike of 1899 was unlikely fodder for a Disney movie, but the 1989 film taught a generation about the true meaning of a fun job, great friends, and the necessity of organized labor.

Source: The Baffler
Published: Jan 8, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,800 words)

Dance Me to the End of Love

In this personal essay, Abigail Rasminsky looks back on the youthful days she trained to become a professional dancer — and the injury that put an end to her dreams.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 8, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,983 words)

The Space Between Us and the Ground Below Us, or: Why I Traveled to Japan

Gaijin find traveling in Japan both daunting and welcoming. Try traveling there black and gay, and yet, for some people, it’s America that feels more foreign.

Source: Catapult
Published: Jan 3, 2018
Length: 17 minutes (4,353 words)

The Strike that Brought MLK to Memphis

In a compelling history of the strike of sanitation workers that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis in 1968, Ted Conover connects the concerns of Memphis fifty years ago with present-day, national movements around labor and income inequality.

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Jan 2, 2018
Length: 25 minutes (6,466 words)

Describing My Struggle

Six volumes later, and even fans of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle struggle to understand why his novel is so addictive. His life is so ordinary, his prose so utilitarian. Literature professor Toril Moi takes a refreshingly serious look at this international hit, and argues that My Struggle is important because it defies literary convention and critics’ standard notions of art. Appreciating Knausgaard’s virtues requires we learn to read differently and think differently about what qualifies as “good writing,” which presented its own challenge for Moi.

Author: Toril Moi
Source: The Point
Published: Jan 28, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,202 words)

How I Learned to Look Believable

Possibly the most powerful piece the Times’ Style section has ever produced, this interactive story beautifully illuminates how self-consciously women must move through the world, especially after they dare to be audacious enough to speak out about their victimization.

Published: Jan 3, 2018
Length: 9 minutes (2,383 words)

Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection

The world of garbage collecting in New York City is split into night and day. By day, the 7,200 workers from the city’s Department of Sanitation collect the trash from residences, following a set number of routes for a set number of hours, “with a median base pay of $69,000 plus health care, a pension, almost four weeks of paid vacation.” By night, the private companies take over to collect the commercial garbage. For these workers the pay is low, the danger is high, and the darkness is neverending.

Source: ProPublica
Published: Jan 4, 2018
Length: 39 minutes (9,800 words)

Fifty Years Ago, Protesters Took on the Miss America Pageant and Electrified the Feminist Movement

In the wake of a sexist email scandal that has led to new management of the Miss America Pageant, Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay reports on 1968 protests by radical feminists against all that the pageant stands for.

Author: Roxane Gay
Source: Smithsonian
Published: Jan 1, 2018
Length: 6 minutes (1,646 words)