Search Results for: Guernica

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Sady Doyle, Rolling Stone, The Awl, Guernica, The Believer, plus fiction, and a guest pick from Jared Keller.

Interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo about the difficulties, rewards—and traps—that come with reporting on the poor: 

When I pick a story, I’m very much aware of the larger issues that it’s illuminating. But one of the things that I, as a writer, feel strongly about is that nobody is representative. That’s just narrative nonsense. People may be part of a larger story or structure or institution, but they’re still people. Making them representative loses sight of that. Which is why a lot of writing about low-income people makes them into saints, perfect in their suffering. But you take Abdul, for instance. He’s diffident, he’s selfish, he’s not very verbal. Even his own family considers him charmless. But when the reader meets him, they sense he’s a real person, that he’s not a construct. And even Manchu—who’s good and generous in many ways—she’s good and generous as a way of getting back at her mother. The more righteous she can be, the better she can stick it to her mom. So you try to let the reader have a sense of this person and soul, as a recognizable human.

“Reporting Poverty.” — Emily Brennan, Guernica

More Guernica

[Fiction] Two friends decide to loot houses after a natural disaster strikes:

I turned onto the first street, where we entered one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, a pink two story house greeting us in every direction. The houses had fared well, except for their roofs, now without tiles. Every roof looked identical, the neighborhood having managed to maintain its vision, even post-hurricane. Red tiles were sprinkled throughout, mixing with branches and debris, giving the neighborhood an artistic vibe that the residents, had they been around to see it, would’ve commented on favorably. I could see all this, because the moon, as if privy to the artistry of the red clay tiles, had found a cloudless opening. I kept going, crushing a tile, only to realize that pulverizing it only added to the street’s flavor. Still, I kept driving over them, as they were impossible to avoid, an unwilling artist.

‘Cut the lights,’ Danny said.

“Looters.” — Alex Perez, Guernica

More fiction

[Fiction] A couple returns home from Israel: 

It’s six-thirty now and the boys are back in bed; it’s early afternoon Israel time. For the moment, Noelle feels as if she’s in a bubble, lying awake next to Amram while the children are asleep. She presses her ear to the wall to see if her sisters are awake; it’s been a fitful night for them too.

She rolls over onto her stomach and back again. She wonders what she looks like from up on the ceiling, lying sleepless in her childhood bed. This is where she spent summer after summer. And Christmas vacation and spring break. Amram, who has risen, is in a T-shirt and cutoff jeans, his thighs thick as ham hocks, his prayer fringes sticking out from under his shirt, twisted as always around his belt loops. His yarmulke, blown by the breeze coming through the open window, flips over itself so that it’s barely hanging from a few tendrils of hair; it droops to the side like a single earmuff.

“The World Without You.” — Joshua Henkin, Guernica Magazine

More #fiction longreads

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Stories from Guernica, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Village Voice, and Mother Jones, plus fiction from Joyland and a guest pick from writer John Fram.

A Palestinian-American writer flies to Israel on her way to visit her sister. Despite having an American passport, she doesn’t make it far:

An hour later, the bearded young man who had originally questioned me at the immigration hall became my guard. When I tried to go to the bathroom, he said I was not allowed. This made me nervous. I had been allowed to go before. I told him so. ‘Well, it’s different now,’ he said.

‘Different how?’ I asked. ‘Am I under detention?’

He would not answer me. I told him that I was an American citizen and that I demanded to know whether or not I was under detention. He closed his eyes, then opened them, and said, reluctantly, ‘Yes.’

I lost it. I demanded to see someone from the embassy or the consulate. He ignored me. I said that he needed to take me to the bathroom. He said no. I lifted up my dress and pretended to squat, and shouted, ‘Fine, then I will go to the bathroom right here!’

“Imagining Myself in Palestine.” — Randa Jarrar, Guernica

More #longreads from Guernica

[Fiction] A sisters’ weekend and an unexpected encounter bring back memories:

When Trisha comes to town we have to go out. She’s the bitterest soccer mom of all time and as part of her escape from home she wants to get drunk and complain about her workaholic husband and over-scheduled, ungrateful children. No one appreciates how much she does for them. All she does is give, give, give, without getting anything back, et cetera. I don’t really mind—I enjoy a good martini, and while Trisha rants I don’t have to worry about getting sloppy, given that she’s always sloppier—except that even her complaints are part boast. She has to mention her busy husband and the two hundred thousand he rakes in a year. Her children’s after-school activities for the gifted are just so freaking expensive and time-consuming. There’s a needle in every one of these remarks, pricking at my skin, saying See, Sherri? See?

“Casino.” — Alix Ohlin, Guernica

See more #fiction #longreads

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: GQ, The New Yorker, Inc. Magazine, The Classical, New York Magazine, #fiction from Guernica, plus a guest pick from Largehearted Boy’s David Gutowski.

On riots and race. What has changed, and what’s still bubbling under the surface, 20 years after the riots in South Central Los Angeles:

The L.A. Riots (or uprising, civil unrest, or rebellion, depending) are often considered the first ‘multiethnic’ riots. As a pivot point of race and urban relations, they constitute a resonant moment for immigrant America. Korean Americans living on the West Coast at the time remember the first day, 4-29, or sa-i-gu, with time-freezing clarity.

For many of us, the riots were a schooling in color and class. Our household, run by two working-class parents, was consumed by frantic arguments and phone calls about race, cities, and the distribution of wealth. There was talk of structural, large-scale discrimination, not merely individual prejudice or circumstance, which shaped the course of my life. Last summer, approaching the riots’ twentieth anniversary, I sought out the lessons of 1992. I was drawn in particular to the riots’ crucible in South Central, since refashioned as ‘South L.A.,’ though its infamy and boundaries–set by highways and thoroughfares–remain unchanged.

“South L.A., Twenty Years Later.” — E. Tammy Kim, Guernica Magazine

See more #longreads about L.A.

Featured: Rahel Aima, writer/editor at The State. See her story picks from The Millions, Guernica, New York magazine, plus more on her #longreads page.