Butches, Femmes, and Mobsters: The Three Lives of Malvina Schwartz

“Moms Mabley? She was a very good friend of mine. We used to go to the Theresa Hotel, Frank’s Restaurant, and Johnny Walker’s—that was the one black gay bar, uptown. Billie Holiday used to come there, and Lionel Hampton, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan. Everything was accepted. You were just another freak, barking along.”

Author: Hugh Ryan
Source: Hazlitt
Published: Oct 12, 2016
Length: 19 minutes (4,855 words)

I Was Pregnant, and Then I Wasn’t

The aftermath of a miscarriage, immediate and raw: “It was an animal sadness born of the worst kind of disappointed expectation. The future stretched out before us, one torturous minute at a time. The sadness lived in me as an ache in my stomach, and it’s with me still.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Oct 12, 2016
Length: 15 minutes (3,930 words)

Generation Adderall

Casey Schwartz spent years using Adderall, the stimulant and A.D.H.D. drug, to get through college, grad school, and the start of a career. Then she tried to stop.

Published: Oct 12, 2016
Length: 19 minutes (4,984 words)

America’s HGTV Obsession: A Reading List

HGTV knows the formula for successful programming. Here are six reads that explore why the popular home improvement network can dish out exactly what its audience wants.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 12, 2016

On Female Friendship and the Sisters We Choose for Ourselves

Essayist Chloe Caldwell on the “sisters” we choose for ourselves, and her close relationship with her surrogate younger sister, Cheryl Strayed’s daughter Bobbi.

Published: Oct 12, 2016
Length: 19 minutes (4,768 words)

‘Let’s Suck This Week Less Than We Did Last Week’: An Oral History of The Stranger

Twenty-five years after its debut, here is the story of an independent newspaper in Seattle that spawned Dan Savage and won a Pulitzer Prize.

Source: The Stranger
Published: Oct 12, 2016
Length: 14 minutes (3,636 words)

Trump, China, and the Ties That Bind

While Donald Trump champions the need to create more jobs in America, he manufactured his ties overseas. One journalist did what labor groups could not: he located the Shengzhou, Chinese factories that made Trump-brand ties and traveled there.

Source: Racked
Published: Oct 5, 2016
Length: 22 minutes (5,614 words)

Birth—and Rebirth—after Bulimia

In pregnancy, writer Judy Tsuei found herself confronting the eating disorder she’d recovered from and her Chinese-American upbringing—and in the process, rebirthing herself as the kind of mother her daughter would need her to be.

Author: Judy Tsuei
Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 11, 2016
Length: 14 minutes (3,571 words)

Big Food Strikes Back

Michael Pollan chronicles the Obamas’ promising early attempts to reform America’s industrial agricultural complex, the ways Big Foods’ lobbying muscle and money impeded progress, and America’s food movement needs to build a powerful presence in Washington.

Published: Oct 5, 2016
Length: 23 minutes (5,796 words)

‘The great thing about writers who are not alive is that you don’t meet them at parties.’

In an interview with W magazine, iconic New Yorker Fran Lebowitz talks about social media, Donald Trump, and her insomnia.

Source: W
Published: Oct 2, 2016
Length: 9 minutes (2,369 words)