“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.”
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The Quest for Native American Voting Rights
What would Martin Luther King do? “About Native voting? He sure as hell wouldn’t dither about technicalities,” says Four Directions consultant Healy, a former head of the South Dakota Democratic Party. “Read Dr. King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ on the subject of waiting for rights.” In the 1963 letter, King decries the man “who paternalistically […]
The Healing Power of Human Fat Tissue
In Aeon, Jalees Rehman, an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Illinois, discusses the potential healing power of stem cells found in human fat tissue: The discovery of regenerative cells within our fat has opened up new doors. As adult stem cells, they can be converted into tissues such as bone […]
We No Longer Drop Dead as Frequently as We Used to
Jacob M. Appel practices medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and his writing has appeared in numerous literary journals.
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.” […]
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
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.
‘It Is An Opportunity for Great Joy’: The Power of Narration & Medicine
Jalees Rehman | December 2012 | 8 minutes (1,957 words) Jalees Rehman is a cell biologist and physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who’s been featured on Longreads in the past. Below is an essay first posted at SciLogs, which he has allowed us to repost here for the Longreads community. * * * […]
Insult To Injury
Florida trauma centers charge outrageous fees the moment you come through the door: Before any X-ray was taken, any blood collected, any medicine delivered to his broken body, crash victim Eric Leonhard was charged $32,767 just to pass through the doors of a Fort Pierce trauma center. The bill was not for the surgery Leonhard […]
‘It Is An Opportunity for Great Joy’: The Power of Narration & Medicine
Jalees Rehman, a cell biologist and physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago, on his grandfather’s surgery, and what he learned about humanity and healing: “Since that time I spent with my grandfather and the other patients on the eye ward, I have associated medicine with narration. All humans want to be narrators, but […]
