Author
Search Results for: Jay Caspian Kang
Grantland's Jay Caspian Kang: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011
Posted by 
Longreads
Longreads 
Jay Caspian Kang (pictured above) is an editor at Grantland. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine and The Morning News. His first novel, The Dead Do Not Improve, will be published by Hogarth/Random House in August 2012.
***
David Hill: “$100 Hand of Blackjack, Foxwoods Casino” (McSweeney’s)
This is the sort of piece you want to compare to other writers like Didion or Carver or even James Baldwin, but you hold off because you don’t want to piss off the author by getting it wrong. Yes, there’s a bit of Didion’s calmness here, a bit of Carver’s bleariness, and a bit of Baldwin’s honesty-at-all-costs, but David Hill’s prose sings with a melancholy that’s truly original. The one piece from 2011 that had me punching the wall with jealousy. By far my favorite read of the year.
Mike Kessler: “What Happened to Mitrice Richardson?” (Los Angeles magazine)
Great crime writing. Thoroughly reported and well constructed.
Alma Guillermoprieto: “In the New Gangland of El Salvador” (New York Review of Books)
My thoughts on Guillermoprieto can be found here.
Francisco Goldman: “The Wave” (The New Yorker, sub. required)
This is gut-wrenching. Goldman’s novel, Say Her Name, is somehow even more powerful.
Jon Ronson: “Robots Say the Damnedest Things” (GQ)
When this very funny piece about robots is over, you start thinking a bit differently about love. I don’t know how Jon Ronson achieved that effect, but “Robots Say the Damnedest Things,” was my most fun read of 2011.
***
See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >
Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
Jay Caspian Kang: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010
Posted by Longreads
Longreads Jay Caspian Kang is a fiction writer living in San Francisco. He is the author of The High is Always the Pain and the Pain is Always the High, an essay on gambling addiction that appeared in the Morning News and has been named on several “Best of 2010” lists.
***
In no particular order.
THE LEGEND OF BLACK SUPERMAN — Rafe Bartholomew, Deadspin
I’m typing this in a Starbucks in the Robinson’s Place Mall in Manila. Everywhere I go in this city, I am reminded of Pacific Rims, Bartholomew’s chronicle of the place of basketball in the culture of the Philippines.
The excerpt on Billy Ray Bates was my favorite sports read of the year. Any documentary filmmaker who wants a subject…
THE MURDERERS OF MEXICO — Alma Guillermoprieto, New York Review of Books
What else could you possibly ever want out of a journalist? Fearless, measured and whip-smart with an eye for narrative detail that should be the envy of every writer who has ever read her work.
Her reflections, observations and opinions on the war in Mexico should tower over every other work on the subject, the way Orwell towers over the Spanish Civil War. Hopefully, before it’s too late, someone in publishing will drive up to Guillermoprieto’s door with a suitcase filled with money, because if there is going to be another Homage to Catalonia, it will be Alma Guillermoprieto on the Narco Wars.
INSANE CLOWN POSSE: AND GOD CREATED CONTROVERSY — Jon Ronson, The Guardian
The perfect companion for the world’s most baffling music video. I wish someone had done this for the Wu, circa 1994.
Ronson also broke open the seal for long-form articles written specifically to explain baffling youtube videos. Like somebody please write 3,000+ words on how they got that fucking bird to dance to that Willow Smith song. Choire Sicha, I’m looking you straight in the eyes and I am saying please.
PELE AS A COMEDIAN — Brian Phillips, Run of Play
There are so many reasons why this essay should annoy me. It’s about a really kinda bad David Foster Wallace essay, it’s about soccer and it involves a lot of footnotes. And yet, it took me about a paragraph to discard all those hang-ups and just revel in the quality of writing, the intelligence of the mind at work.
RICHARD LAWSON’S AMERICAN IDOL COVERAGE — Richard Lawson, Gawker
The only reason I still watch the show. And, along with temperate weather and Mexican food, one of the three reasons why I love living on the West Coast. Because on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I can wake up and have Lawson’s mammoth recaps already posted on Gawker.
Sometimes, I find myself typing and deleting twitter messages to Richard Lawson. Mostly, they are about how my day is going. Sometimes, they are jokes about Crystal Bowersox. Once, it was a suggestion he get cloned so he could also write about the Biggest Loser.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Posted by Longreads
Longreads STR/AFP/Getty Images
This week, we’re sharing stories from Jay Caspian Kang, Ryan Goldberg, Brendan I. Koerner, Andrew Richdale, and Ferris Jabr.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…
15 True Crime Longreads and the Questions We Should Ask Ourselves When Reading Them
Posted by 
Catherine Cusick
Catherine Cusick (Armin Weigel/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
“I think one of the reasons these stories are so popular — and they’ve been very popular since long before whatever true crime boom we’re currently in,” Rachel Monroe notes while discussing her book Savage Appetites, on our cultural fascination with crime, is that “they’re very emotionally engaging.”
“Whenever we’re telling these stories,” Monroe continues, “we’re participating in that emotional, social, political conversation, whether we want to admit it or not.”
For all that we can stream entire seasons of docudramas in a single day, true crime stories often take years to report out and get right. Whether the person facing the facts of any given case is a staff writer or a law enforcement official, even full-time, invested professionals can lack the bandwidth or the resources to investigate every life story that crosses their desks, with the undivided attention each of those lives deserves.
A Reading List of Long-form Writing by Asian Americans
Posted by 
Mike Dang
Mike Dang The Aug. 13, 2017 cover of the New York Times Magazine. Feature by Jay Caspian Kang.
A few years ago, reporter and journalism professor Erika Hayasaki traded a few emails with me wondering why there weren’t more visible Asian American long-form writers in the media industry. After discussing some of our own experiences, we concluded that part of the issue was not only a lack of diversity in newsrooms, but a lack of editors who care enough about representation to proactively take some writers of color under their wings.
“There needs to be more editors out there who can act as mentors for Asian American journalists and give them the freedom to explore and thrive,” I wrote. Long-form journalism, we noted, is a craft that is honed over time and requires patience and thoughtful editing from editors who care — not only about what story is being written, but also who is writing those stories.
We also listed the names of a few Asian American writers who have been doing some really fantastic long-form work. With the Asian American Journalists Association convention currently underway in Atlanta, Georgia (if you’re around, come say hello!), I wanted to share some of my favorite long-form pieces written by Asian American writers in the last few years. Read more…
Longreads Best of 2017: Investigative Reporting
Posted by Longreads
Longreads We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in investigative reporting.
Rachel Morris
Executive editor, HuffPost Highline
Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades (Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, The New York Times)
From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories (Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker)
For Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey to expose Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual predator was a feat in itself, one that reporters had been attempting for years. But the culture-bending force of these stories was their dissection of how sexual harassment works, psychologically and operationally. Ronan Farrow’s raw, complex account of the experiences of women like Annabella Sciorra and Asia Argento, among many others, created a deeper, truer understanding of why women don’t come forward after an assault, or why some women may even maintain a relationship with their abuser in an effort to recover some sense of agency. That these women were willing to tell their stories in such intimate, unsparing detail is a testament to their courage — more than that, to their generosity — and Farrow’s exceptional care and sensitivity in gaining their trust. Read more…
Longreads Best of 2017: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Posted by Longreads
Longreads All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2017. Here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
If you like these, you can sign up to receive our weekly email every Friday. Read more…
What a Fraternity Hazing Death Revealed About the Painful Search for an Asian-American Identity
Longreads Pick
Jay Caspian Kang reports on the death of Michael Deng, a college freshman who died while rushing an Asian-American fraternity, and examines the history of oppression against Asians in the U.S. and how it has shaped a marginalized identity.
Author:
Source:
The New York Times Magazine
Published: Aug 9, 2017
Length: 29 minutes (7,433 words)
Please Watch This Video Showing the Unfathomable Cruelty of U.S. Immigration Policy
Posted by 
Mark Armstrong
Mark Armstrong I’ve been obsessed with systems in government, and in business, that completely erase our humanity. That could mean an algorithm on Facebook that’s designed to prevent nudity but unwittingly bans one of those most powerful images from the Vietnam War. It means the lengths we’ll go to pretend that our phones are not built from slave labor. Or it could mean the layers of bureaucracy built into a company that allows its owner, now one of the President’s top advisers, to target and harass low-income tenants without sullying his own hands in the process. Read more…
You must be logged in to post a comment.