Search Results for: Pacific Standard

The 2017 National Magazine Award Winners: A Reading List

Longreads Pick

While the big titles, like New York, ESPN the Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, held sway in several categories, there were some stunners among the honors, including Huffington Post Highline, Pacific Standard, California Sunday Magazine, and Eater. Mother Jones won the Ellie for “Magazine of the Year.”

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 7, 2017

The 2017 National Magazine Award Winners: A Reading List

Credit: Keith Jenkins/Flickr

This year’s National Magazine Awards—otherwise known as the Ellies (or the award shaped like a modernist elephant)—was held at a luncheon Tuesday afternoon in New York. While the big titles, like New York, ESPN the Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, held sway in several categories, there were some stunners among the honors, including Huffington Post Highline, Pacific Standard, California Sunday Magazine, and Eater. Mother Jones won the Ellie for “Magazine of the Year.” Read more…

Drinking Chai to Savannah: Reflections on Identity, Inclusion and Power in the South

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Anjali Enjeti | Longreads | January 2017 | 10 minutes (2,425 words)

I am sitting in the middle seat of the third row of a minivan. A heap of purses crowd my feet. Elbows and knees jab my sides. We are gridlocked on I-285 during Atlanta evening rush hour in a crawl-pause rhythm, our progress as tedious as arranging the frames of a stop motion animation film. The nose of our van points southeast to Savannah, the historic coastal town Union Army General Sherman spared during the Civil War. When raindrops the size of nickels smack our windshield, the hazard lights on surrounding vehicles blink on like garlands of bulbs on a Christmas tree.

“Hey,” my friend in the second row calls, craning her neck to make eye contact. “Do you want chai?”

I lean forward. The seatbelt catches my breastbone. “You want to make a stop already? We’ll never get there at this rate.”

“No, no,” says the driver, my neighbor from up the street. “We brought a thermos. And cups.”

I am incredulous, not only because my friends thought to pack chai on a four-hour road trip, but because, judging by the way the rest of my friends continue their chatter, I am the only person who finds it odd.

It’s no wonder. Among our seven passengers, six have immigrated to the U.S. from South Asia. They sip chai from morning to night. Percolating pots of fresh ginger, full fat milk and cardamom serve as background music in their homes.

I am the only one of us born and raised in the States, the only one who considers bagged tea to be actual tea, the one who stubbornly refuses to wear saris to celebrate South Asian holidays, the clueless audience for conversations rattled off in Hindi, a language I don’t understand.

I am the interpreter of academic monograms like S.A.T. and A.P., the friend who suggests they not worry so much about their kids’ grades or test scores, the beloved Aunty who sticks up for their children whenever a parental rule interferes with their enjoyment of authentically American childhoods.

Steam from the chai forms a layer of film on my face. I inhale its aroma, hopeful it will ease the dull ache in my gut, the sinking feeling my friends probably can’t decipher because they grew up in countries where their brown skin and names did not summarily mark them as outsiders. Not even these ladies, my closest friends, know that I harbor a deep-seated fear of small American cities and towns.

Like the one we’re headed to. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week.

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A Sober Utopia

Longreads Pick

At Pacific Standard, Will McGrath reports on Fort Lyon — “a Betty Ford Center for the homeless — a radical experiment to rehabilitate some of society’s most vulnerable members.”

Published: Jan 2, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,539 words)

A Resolute 2017: A Reading List

Photo: Kevin Cole

In 2016, I published my New Year’s resolutions on Longreads. As 2017 dawns, I thought I’d check in with my old self, dust off 2016’s goals and set some new intentions.

1. Alas, I never did make it to Iceland, but I did a lot of domestic travel in 2016. In Washington State, I touched the Pacific Ocean for the first time and slept on a sailboat. In Asheville, I got a new tattoo and swooned inside Firestorm Books & Cafe. I saw friends and family marry in Richmond and Chautauqua. I saw Deaf West perform Spring Awakening and the one-weekend revival of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater in NYC. I even visited Foamhenge! (That’s me in the photo above.) I’m returning to Asheville in 2017; beyond that, I have no concrete travel plans. Feel free to sponsor me on a trip to the ends of the Earth and back! I’ll write about it! For now, I’m seeing the world via the following essays from 2016:

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My Favorite Animal Longreads of 2016

In November 2015, I adopted a dog. Harley. These 12 pounds of mostly shelter-raised animal cracked open the harder parts of my heart and I found myself sobbing into my coffee, almost daily, while reading the latest stories about rescue dogs. I’d gone so far as to set a Google Alert on “rescue dog,” and while I have calmed down — somewhat — I still find myself getting weepy when I read that a shelter has had its entire stable adopted or some flawed pooch got a new lease on life or … you get the idea.

I present my state of mind to explain why my favorite read about dogs this year was a Longreads exclusive by Richard Gilbert: “Why I Hate My Dog.” A year ago, I might have enjoyed this piece as an abstraction, but reading it after AD (After Dog) made it hit home in ways I would never have felt in my BD (Before Dog) era:

See what Belle brings out in me? The worst. My sadistic streak. Dogs are supposed to do the opposite. Would a good dog occasion such darkness? I think not.

As an extension of human ego—an undeniable dog role: something that kindles pride in their owners—she’s a washout. The odd thing is how close I’ve grown to Belle. The odd thing is how much her anxious nature illuminates mine.

I get this.

Not all my favorite animal reads this year are about dogs, or even directly about animals, they’re more about the complex ways humans interact with and react to animals. Some of these are a reach, but they’re all excellent reads with animals (in one case, a Triassic period aquatic crustacean, no really) as the instigator. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

America’s HGTV Obsession: A Reading List

Let’s get this out of the way: I can binge-watch House Hunters for hours. In the past, I’ve devoured episodes of House Hunters International and Tiny House Hunters as well, but the original House Hunters gives me the most satisfying fix: its predictable formula has never felt stale, even after many seasons.

America’s most popular home renovation and real estate network, HGTV—the home of House Hunters, its spinoffs, and a growing network of lifestyle porn—succeeds because of its consistent programming in useful escapism. In a single episode, I might learn how to refresh the color palette of my bathroom or see how much space $800K will buy me in the vacation rental market in Maui. In a half-hour dose, I can experience that strangely pleasurable thing called House Hunters rage: I’m inspired, enlightened, and incensed in equal measure, my voyeuristic side piqued by the entitled and pointless arguments over whether the kitchen countertop is the right shade of granite or whether an older house has enough “character.”

Regardless of what you think of its shows, HGTV knows the formula for successful programming. Here are six reads that touch on why this network can dish out exactly what its audience wants, hour after hour. Read more…

A Reading List for the Fourth of July

In between bites of hot dog and sunscreen applications, you can read about police brutality, what the rest of the world thinks about the United States, one woman’s American wardrobe and so much more. Happy Independence Day, America!

1. “Quintessential American Fiction, According to the Rest of the World.” (Lit Hub, July 2015)

J.D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, Yiyun Li, Julie Otsuka and Annie Proulx are just a fraction of the authors cited by this “deeply unscientific survey of nearly 50 writers, editors, publishers, critics, and translators, representing 30 countries.” I feel patriotic just reading this list!

2. “How to Be Canadian on the Fourth of July.” (Stephanie Hallett, Pacific Standard, June 2016)

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