Search Results for: Narrative.ly

The Work of Inspiration: Five Pieces about Poetry

How do you write? My best friend might look at her old poems and draw from those. My former newspaper advisor tweeted at me: “Nulla dies sine linea,” or “Never a day without a line.”

“Write something every day,” my English teacher wrote, in blue marker on paper in the shape of a pencil. The best artists of any kind–poet, painter, performer–will inspire awe, not envy. They will make you want to make things of your own. When I’m feeling stuck, I’ll read about poets who inspire me/who are new to me, and today, I’ll share a few with you.

1. “Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry.” (Claudia Rankine, Poets.org, 2011)

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric has garnered lots and lots of (well-deserved) praise. Here, several years earlier, she analyzes a poem by having a conversation with Tony Hoagland and through Hoagland’s hostile reaction to (well-deserved accusations) of racism: “I begin to understand myself as rendered hyper-visible in the face of such language acts. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that I am present. My alertness, my openness, my desire to engage my colleague’s poem, my colleague’s words, actually demands my presence, my looking back at him.” Read more…

Couchsurfing: The Craigslist of Travel

On Sunday, I shared stories about Airbnb. In my research, I read about Jennifer Katanyoutanant’s experiences traveling abroad, using Airbnb’s older (grittier?) brother, couchsurfing.com. Katanyoutanant had a disturbing stay with a Roman impostor who tries to get her into bed—literally—but she doesn’t want to give up the prospect of global friendship:

I had been disheartened when Milena emailed two days before I was supposed to show up to tell me she had an unexpected out-of-town emergency. She told me she’d handed hosting duties over to Raul, her roommate. Despite my disappointment, I still felt thankful that she had gone out of her way to help me out.

When I got off at the wrong stop, I had to walk a couple blocks back to where I agreed to meet him. My travel-sized rolling luggage bounced off the sidewalk every couple steps. I was relieved that I would soon get some rest, even if the company had changed. Twenty minutes later, a twenty-three-year-old guy showed up on a moped. He wore a long-sleeve tee that framed his muscular arms but did little to hide his protruding belly. He had small eyes, and a slightly hooked nose. He introduced himself as Raul, and seemed friendly enough.

But I began to worry. I was about to sleep in the same house with a man who was a complete stranger. Maybe this was a really bad idea.

“Hold on to my waist,” he said.

I climbed onto the moped and grabbed his shoulders instead.

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Reservation Confirmed: A Reading List About Airbnb

It’s easy to get distracted while reading about Airbnb. First, the listings themselves range from luxurious to quaint, and if you have any sort of upcoming vacation planned … well, let’s say it’s a timesuck. Double if you have I-want-to-see-where-you-live voyeuristic tendencies. Second, Airbnb is giving away $1 million to customers who document their random acts of kindness, which is a hell of a headline and a bit of an oxymoron. Airbnb’s detractors are firm and its fans are rabid; Its prices, tempting. I’m planning a trip to Seattle in the summer—we’ll see where I end up sleeping. Here are five pieces about Airbnb hosts, the company’s founders, its guests and its implications for city politics.

1. “The Dumbest Person in Your Building is Passing Out the Keys to Your Front Door!” (Jessica Pressler, New York Magazine, September 2013)

Two idealistic art students founded Airbnb, and business boomed once the recession hit. But they didn’t foresee backlash from New York politicians or affordable housing advocates. Read more…

Five Stories About Addiction

Stories of drug addiction take many forms; every story is different and intensely personal. This week, read an excerpt from a journalist’s memoir, a profile of a lead singer, a mother’s reflection and more.

1. “My Rehab: Coming of Age in Purgatory.” (Kevin Heldman, The Big Roundtable, September 2013)

Naively, I expected a cut-and-dry story of teenage years spent in and out of rehab. Instead, I read about Kevin Heldman’s experiences in “therapy” centers that used disturbing, humiliating “treatments.” In spite of the staff’s best efforts, Heldman made friends—many whose futures were tainted by their time in the Therapeutic Community. Read more…

Meet the Kids Who Don’t Want Toys For Christmas

Photo: ThinkStock

It had been only two days since Ruth Soukup had re-organized her daughters’ room, and there were still a few toys on the floor that her kids, then three and six years old, refused to pick up. “I would say to the girls, ‘If you can’t take care of your stuff, I’m going to have to take it all away,’” Soukup recalls. It was an empty threat, until that afternoon when Soukup realized she genuinely “wanted it all gone.”

Very calmly, Soukup started taking everything except for furniture out of their room and amassing their toys into a gigantic pile.

She took away all their dress-up clothes, baby dolls, Polly Pockets and stuffed animals, all of their Barbies, building blocks and toy trains, right down to the furniture from their dollhouse and play food from their kitchen. She even took the pink Pottery Barn Kids comforter from their bed.

Her kids stared at her. Soukup was surprised, too. She couldn’t believe how much stuff had amassed in her home, especially in lieu of her recent efforts to donate, de-clutter and organize.

“It was a shock, kind of,” Soukup says. “I thought, ‘What are we doing with all this stuff? How could I let that much stuff come into my house?’”

She was also stunned at what happened next.

Soukup had expected crying and wailing and protesting from her kids, but they were unfazed by the ordeal. They resolved to play without toys, saying, according to Soukup, “That’s okay, Mommy, we can just use our imaginations.”

– Are toys integral to child development or do they hinder creativity? Gina Ciliberto talks to parents who adopted a minimalist approach to gift-giving and child-rearing at Narratively.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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Reading List: Love in the Time of Context

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Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

One reason I admire longform journalism is its ability to tell stories. Some of these stories gain national attention. Some are perfected in an MFA workshop. Some are written on the backs of receipts, after waking in the middle of the night, while in traffic.

Most longform stories are written with love: toward craft and toward subject. These four are no exception. They focus on falling in love with chance encounters and with self-acceptance. They are about a love of career and a love of potential. They are about the struggle-love of family. That is the loyalty of longform: to a love of context.

1. “Owning the Middle.” (Kate Fagan, espnW and ESPN The Magazine, May 2013)

Women’s basketball superstar Brittney Griner makes strides on the court and in LGBTQ athletic culture. Be sure to check the video interview and gorgeous portraits by Cass Bird.

2. “Growing Up With Sailor Moon.” (Soleil Ho, Interrupt Magazine, May 2013)

In the midst of her parents’ emotional divorce, a young Ho discovers and relies upon the subversive gender-empowering message of Sailor Moon.

3. “A Ruckus of Romance.” (Rachel Howard, Narrative.ly, February 2013)

They fall in love on the dance floor: Emily Hall Smith plays matchmaker to the artsy, queer women of New York City.

4. “Butch in the Airport.” (Kate, Autostraddle, May 2013)

The seemingly innocuous airport can be place of great anxiety for those whom identify as genderqueer. Here, Kate reflects on such practical and emotional difficulties.

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What are you reading (and loving)? Tell us.

Photo: Rosa Middleton

Our Longreads Member Pick: Watch Dog, by Kerri Anne Renzulli & Narratively

This week, we’re excited to share a Member Pick from Narratively, the New York-based (and Kickstarter-backed) storytelling site that launched last fall and has been featured on Longreads in the past.

“Watch Dog,” by Kerri Anne Renzulli, will be published in a two weeks, and they were kind enough to make the story available early to Longreads Members. Renzulli, a journalist and Columbia grad student, investigates the difficult task of training guide dogs for New York City—and helping develop relationships between the dogs and their future owners.

Read an excerpt here.

Support Longreads—and get more stories like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.

Illustration by Laura McCabe

Longreads Member Exclusive: Watch Dog, by Kerri Anne Renzulli & Narratively

Longreads Pick

This week, we’re excited to share a Member Pick from Narratively, the New York-based (and Kickstarter-backed) storytelling site that launched last fall and has been featured on Longreads in the past.

“Watch Dog,” by Kerri Anne Renzulli, will be published in a two weeks, and they were kind enough to make the story available early to Longreads Members. Renzulli, a journalist and Columbia grad student, investigates the difficult task of training guide dogs for New York City—and helping develop relationships between the dogs and their future owners.

Support Longreads—and get more stories like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.

Source: Narratively
Published: Apr 25, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,425 words)

Longreads Best of 2012: Michael Hobbes

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Michael Hobbes lives in Berlin. His essays from his blog, Rottin’ in Denmark, were featured on Longreads this year. 


I read news when I want to be entertained. I read features when I want to learn something. Here’s nine articles I read this year that changed the way I look at the world, and made me wonder how I seem when it looks back.

“Diary of a Mad Fact-Checker,” James Pogue, Oxford American

It’s been a bad year for truth. From Mike Daisey and Jonah Lehrer to Rush Limbaugh and Mitt Romney, 2012 felt like a yearlong debate about the role of exaggeration, hyperbole, fact-checking and outright fabrication in the pursuit of an argument. Pogue’s piece, a kind of letter from the extreme-pedant end of the spectrum, illustrates how fidelity to facts can obscure the truth, and how embellishment can reveal it.

“Lost in Space,” Mike Albo, Narrative.ly

Maybe I only feel like I learned something from this essay because I’m in essentially the same position as Albo. I’ve been single for almost 10 years, and I’m realizing that if I had applied all the hours I’ve wasted on the promiscu-net to something useful, I could have knitted a quilt, learned French, mastered Othello and read all of Wikipedia by now.

If our society has learned anything from the first 20 years of internet access, it’s that looking for what you want isn’t always the best way to get it, and that getting it is a great way to stop wanting it. Albo’s essay couldn’t have been written by any gay man in America because they’re not as good at writing as he is, but I get the feeling it’s been lived by most of them.

“The Innocent Man,” Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly

and

“The Caging Of America,” Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

OK, so it’s not exactly earth-shattering news that America’s prison system is problematic and that “Texas justice” is an oxymoron. But this year brought a new impetus for action, partly due to new numbers (the widely reported stat that 1% of America’s population is incarcerated), legislative action (Obama’s plan to combat prison rape, scorchingly reported in the New York Review of Books) and, qualitatively but no less essentially, longform pieces like Gopnik’s and Colloff’s.

People are always quoting the MLK-via-Obama line “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice,” and articles like these—one a macro view of the problem, one micro—is what that bend looks like.

“Does Mitt Romney Have a Soul?” Wells Tower, GQ

It’s easy now to forget that this was an election year, and that we spent basically all of it squabbling, speculating and pontificating about its outcome, which we now say we knew all along.

Most election reporting is disposable, either gaffe play-by-plays (“Binders Full of Women: Interactive Timeline”), instantly obsolete hypotheticals (What if Romney picks Christie for VP?) or politically orchestrated profiles (“Obama’s audacious plan to save the middle class from Libyan airstrikes”). If you remember these articles past ctrl+w, it’s only until events catch up, and then they poof out of your consciousness forever.

Towers’s Romney profile is one of the few still worth reading after the election. Nominally a standard “let’s hang out in the campaign bus!” piece, it transcends its premise by capturing the conflicting forces tugging at the hem of the Republican party, and how Romney’s sheer empty-vesselness managed to please, and displease, everyone at once.

“Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea’s Music Video Sensation,” Max Fisher, The Atlantic

Maybe it’s just the ubiquity of its subject, now the most-viewed-ever video on YouTube, but no article stuck with me this year quite like Fisher’s. In a culture that strains to call itself postracial, sharing “Gangnam Style” on Twitter and Facebook was a safe, quiet way to shout ‘look how weird Koreans are!’ and invite your friends to gawk alongside you.

According to Fisher, “Gangnam” isn’t an expression of Korean culture, but a satire of it. Psy was saying the same thing we spectators were, only in a visual language (and, obviously, a verbal one) we couldn’t understand. He was laughing at his culture too, he just had no idea how easy it was to get the rest of the world to join him.

“The Truck Stop Killer,” Vanessa Veselka, GQ

It’s all in the execution, they say, and nothing demonstrated that this year better than Veselka’s harrowing investigation into whether the guy who kidnapped and then released her on the side of the road in 1985 was a serial killer.

She never finds the answer to her question. But who cares! It’s a great piece, super interesting, suspenseful, creepy, introspective in all the right places. We all know that compelling stories don’t always need happy endings. In this case, it doesn’t need one at all.

“The Bloody Patent Battle Over A Healing Machine,” Ken Otterbourg, Fortune

and

“How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work,” Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, New York Times

I admit it: I have no idea how the international economy works. I used to feel about this the way I feel about not being able to describe asexual reproduction, or the Spanish Civil War, or how to grow tomatoes. I can see why somebody’s got to do it, I just can’t see why it’s got to be me.

Since the 2008 crash, though, knowledge of economics has gone from nice to have to can’t miss, and things like competitiveness, productivity and efficiency have taken a place in politics previously reserved for life-and-deathers like sports doping and the Ground Zero Mosque.

Patent trolling and outsourced manufacturing aren’t the only issues facing the US economy, of course, but both these articles demonstrate how businesses, governments and consumers have made the wrong thing too easy, and how the hard thing might not be the way back.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.