America’s Worst Graveyard Shift Is Grinding Up Workers

Companies pay undocumented immigrants low wages to sanitize dangerous slaughterhouse equipment quickly, under pressure and cloak of night, because undocumented workers don’t always understand their worker rights, and they want to avoid deportation. This is the human cost of America’s affordable meat.

Published: Dec 29, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,041 words)

Fake This Marriage

As part of The Awl’s excellent “Fakes” series, Kelly Stout chronicles her life as an “ACOD” (adult child of divorce) in the wake of her parents’ 2011 acrimonious split when she was in her early 20s, and tries to make sense of the lie her parents and family are no longer living.

Source: The Awl
Published: Dec 27, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,069 words)

The Other People in Springfield

A personal essay in which Imran Siddiquee considers how his identities — as a Bangladeshi-American and as a man — were shaped by growing up in the shadow of The Simpsons.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 29, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,638 words)

The Plot to Bomb Garden City, Kansas

When some angry white male Kansans got tired of Somali refugees living in their little town in “God’s country,” they did the least God-like thing and decided to blow up their place of worship, to stop Islam’s destruction of America. These are men, mind you, who read Breitbart and believe Sandy Hook was a hoax, and they targeted refugees from crisis zones who now work at meat-packing facilities.

Published: Dec 12, 2017
Length: 30 minutes (7,598 words)

The Teens Trapped Between a Gang and the Law

More than 200,000 children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras came to the U.S. unaccompanied between 2014 and 2016. Allowed to enter the country while awaiting deportation proceedings or asylum decisions, many settled with relatives in parts of Suffolk County, Long Island. For The New Yorker, Jonathan Blitzer writes of the precarious course the children must walk — enduring threats of gang violence and a local power structure hostile to their existence.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 1, 2018
Length: 25 minutes (6,475 words)

How Hospitals Are Failing Black Mothers

In the latest entry of ProPublica’s Lost Mothers series, which looks at maternal care in the U.S., Annie Waldman examines how black mothers who deliver at hospitals that disproportionately serve black patients are more likely to suffer serious complications.

Source: Pro Publica
Published: Dec 27, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,245 words)

On Basquiat, the Black Body, and a Strange Sensation in My Neck

Aisha Sabatini Sloan weaves together recollections of her own neck injuries and back pain with a study of visual artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s diligent, abstract renderings of body parts and bones.

Published: Oct 26, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,268 words)

‘What Are We Going to Do About Tyler?’

A devastating indictment of America’s failure to treat mental illness. ProPublica reporter Sarah Smith tells the story of Tyler Haire, who was sent to jail at age 16 for a violent crime and then spent years locked away while waiting for a psychological evaluation. Tyler struggled since early childhood, but state services are underfunded and only designed to help when a crisis occurs. His family, frustrated and exhausted, was unable to find a way for him to get the help he needed — until it was too late.

Source: ProPublica
Published: Dec 28, 2017
Length: 41 minutes (10,280 words)

‘I Want It to Stop’

Fifteen-year-old Ruben Urbina suffered from depression and attempted suicide multiple times. His friends and family members pleaded with him to get help. But one morning, Ruben couldn’t handle it anymore and called the police to falsely report that he had a bomb strapped to his chest.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Dec 27, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,637 words)

Kenji Dreams of Sausage

A profile of beloved food writer J. Kenji López-Alt, who uses science to perfect cooking methods and is opening a beer hall in Silicon Valley.

Source: Grubstreet
Published: Dec 26, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,000 words)