My Mongolian Spot
An ephemeral birthmark is a rare gift, connecting me to generations spanning the centuries.
Who Was She? A DNA Test Only Opened New Mysteries
For most of her life, Alice Collins Plebuch believed she was the daughter of Irish Americans. A DNA test upended everything she thought she knew about her family history.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Ghosts
In this profile at New Republic, Josephine Livingstone talks with Viet Thanh Nguyen (winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Sympathizer) about the ghosts that inhabit his life, his writing, and his birthplace in Vietnam.
I Choose My Pearls: On Feminism, Disneyland, and Fashion
“‘We fought for years so you didn’t have to dress like that,’ said the woman next to me waiting to board Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.”
The Rise and Fall of Liz Smith, Celebrity Accomplice
At 92, gossip columnist Liz Smith is recovering from a stroke, but still looking for a scoop. She pioneered a kind of celebrity journalism in the 1980s that made national news: she made celebrities like her. Her friendship with Ivana Trump soon became part of the story, as the Trump divorce ripped headlines away from international news, like the falling of the Berlin Wall.
The Hijacking of the Brillante Virtuoso
A mysterious assault. An unsolved murder. And a ship that hasn’t given up all its secrets.
The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow’
An exhausted single mother takes a bath and her five-year-old daughter wanders out of the apartment and is found outside. Instead of being returned to her mother, a neighbor calls Children’s Services and the daughter is put in foster care. For women living in poor neighborhoods with few child care options, a single mistake can lead to a legal nightmare.
Yearning for My Emo Days in Nostalgia-Inducing Asbury Park
A personal essay in which writer Mabel Rosenheck considers her nostalgia for a key time in her life: the summer of 2003, when she was a young, depressed adult attending the Surf & Skate music festival in Asbury Park with friends in a similar emotional space, whom she’d met on the internet.
Who’s Left to Defend Tommy Curry?
A black philosopher at Texas A&M thought forcing a public discussion about race and violence was his job. Turns out people didn’t want to hear it.
I’ve Found Her
Photos of an elderly French stranger has one Canadian writer examining the threads that connect people across continents and generations.
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