A dozen exceptional stories from 2018 that deserve our ongoing attention.
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Posted inStory
The Final Five Percent
If traumatic brain injuries can impact the parts of the brain responsible for personality, judgment, and impulse control, maybe injury should be a mitigating factor in criminal trials — but one neuroscientist discovers that assigning crime a biological basis creates more issues than it solves.
Posted inArts & Culture, Commentary, Culture, Current Events
On Blackface, Bert Williams, and Excellence
A complicated racial anxiety rests at the heart of American entertainment.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women, Writing
Lyrical Ladies, Writing Women, and the Legend of Lauryn Hill
Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism.
Posted inReading List
Alternative Reality: An Alt-Weekly Reading List
Nine excellent stories discovered in U.S. alt-weekly newspapers.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Essays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Of Blackness and ‘Beauty’
At an art exhibit exploring black models through Western art, Morgan Jerkins finds historical evidence of the white supremacist definitions of beauty Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom identifies in ‘Thick: and Other Essays.’
Posted inBooks, Culture, Nonfiction, Story
A Childhood in Cars
How one young man cut against the grain of American masculinity and freed himself from car culture.
Posted inNonfiction
The Lasting Effects of the Lolita Complex
Lacy Warner examines the downward turn of actress Dominique Swain’s career, and how the trouble began the moment she grew up.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Back To School: A Reading List
Bullies, teachers, classmates—it’s time to head back to school with these six stories from the The Big Roundtable, Los Angeles Times, and more.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story
An Interview with Sarah Smarsh, Author of ‘Heartland’
The author of “Heartland,” a National Book Award longlisted memoir about growing up poor in rural America, gives her views on politics, identity, and cultural appropriation.
