If [Rhiannon] Giddens were to tell us in a memoir that she’d been thinking about her own child when she sang, it would make the line a poignant narrative moment. But really, what would that reveal that we don’t know from her performance? It might risk drowning out other information we already have: Michael Brown’s […]
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Longreads Best of 2016: Essays & Criticism
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in essays and criticism.
From One Friendship, Lessons on Life, Death, AIDS, and Childlessness
S. Kirk Walsh reflects on her friendship with a gay man battling AIDS — how he taught her to grieve her own infertility, and live life more fully.
The True Story of Refugees in an American High School
The politics of immigration ignores the reality: a classroom of young people adjusting to life in the United States, and a teacher driven to help.
Day Care (and Its Discontents): A Reading List
Eight stories about modern-day child care, from 24/7 facilities to Montessori wonderlands.
Cloak-and-Dagger in America’s Cornfields
In Li’s luggage, [FBI] agents found two large Pop Weaver microwave popcorn boxes. Buried under the bags of unpopped snack kernels were roughly 300 tiny manila envelopes, all cryptically numbered—2155, 2403, 20362. Inside each envelope was a single corn seed. In Ye’s luggage, agents found more corn seeds hidden amid his clothes, each one individually […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * * 1. Inside the Race to Stop the Next Mass Shooter Mark Follman | Mother Jones | Oct. 5, 2015 | 21 minutes (5,481 words) […]
How Does It Feel? An Alternative American History, Told With Folk Music
On Guthrie, Robeson, Seeger, Lomax, Dylan, the Red Scare, the fall of labor, and what folk music had to do with it.
How Does It Feel? An Alternative American History, Told With Folk Music
On Guthrie, Robeson, Seeger, Lomax, Dylan, the Red Scare, the fall of labor, and what folk music had to do with it.
A Teen and a Toy Gun
This is the story of the last day of 17-year-old Quanice Hayes’s life. It involves a police department that says they have no good way of deciphering between real guns and fake ones, and a family still searching for answers.

