“Like most cultural shifts in language, the rise of white, upper-middle class women who call themselves ‘mama’ seemed to happen slowly, and then all at once.” Elissa Strauss explores how the use of “mama” helped rebrand motherhood for the modern mother.
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Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Mountain Carver
Sculpture has always been a controversial art form in Iran, but that is where Parviz Tanavoli has found his greatest inspiration.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Loving Books in a Dark Age
In the “dark ages” of Europe, people began reading silently to themselves, and a love of books and learning took hold, pioneered by Bede.
Posted inNonfiction
Science, Chance, and Emotion with Real Cosima
Through her work on clone-thriller Orphan Black, science consultant Cosima Herter has helped open our eyes to the possibilities and perils of synthetic biology and the pursuit of genetic perfection.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Escape from Baghdad!: Saad Hossain’s New Satire of the Iraq War
In his debut, Saad Hossain brings a much-needed cynicism to our literature of the Iraq War. An absurdist protest novel in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Escape from Baghdad! relentlessly focuses the reader’s attention on the folly of war.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Death Made Material: The Hair Jewelry of The Brontës
What can an object tell us about a person’s life? Deborah Lutz investigates the mystery of an amethyst bracelet woven with Emily and Anne Brontë’s hair to explore the rich lives and tragic deaths of the Bronte siblings.
Posted inNonfiction
A Meditation on Pain
“Once, when the pain came, I grabbed for a knife, my fist tight around it, contemplating digging out my right eye. I was twenty-one.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why So Many Bottled and Canned Coffee Drinks Taste So Bad
It took Blue Bottle a year and a half to get to the point where they could regularly produce iced coffee at this scale. The seed of the idea was a can of cold cappuccino that James Freeman had on a plane to New York in late 2011. “I got this canned cappucino for, like, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Yes, All Women Part II: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women
My last Yes, All Women reading list was a hit with the Longreads community, so here’s part two. Enjoy 20 pieces by fantastic women writers. 1. “When You’re Unemployed.” (Jessica Goldstein, The Hairpin, June 2014) “The first thing to go is the caring…You develop a routine: changing out of sleeping leggings and into daytime leggings.” […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Loving Books in a Dark Age
In the “dark ages” of Europe, people began reading silently to themselves, and a love of books and learning took hold, pioneered by Bede.
