The Scream
“Is this the end for Muslims in India?”
Grief’s Anatomy
“Hope awaits organizers like a trap.”
Back from the Afterlife
“Misadventures in near-death experience.”
Eat Your Vegetables
“On Deborah Madison and the taint of vegetarianism.”
One Man’s Trash
“Two new books reveal the meaning latent in the junk we collect.”
The Empire of All Maladies
Waste Away
“To say that we’re drowning in our shit—the shit we all made together—is no longer a figure of speech in Lebanon today.” Lina Mounzer writes about Beirut’s broken sewage system and the political and economic factors that have drowned the city in its own waste.
Death, Disembodied
In the wake of COVID-19, Ann Neumann asks on behalf of a nation in mourning: “how do we honor the dead when we can’t see them, touch them, gather to comfort ourselves?”
A Pretty Penny
A review of two novels set in contemporary East Asia, If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha and Breast and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. Both critique wealth, beauty, and power through the lens of various young women.
On a Wing and a Mayor
Are mayors the heroes of 21st century politics, or is going from getting the snow shoveled and the sewer lines fixed to managing a global pandemic a leap too far?
