Search Results for: Pakistan

Salt, Sugar, Fat, Repeat: A Reading List on Restaurant Chains

The first restaurant chain in the US, the late-19th-century Harvey House, popped up in train stations and followed the rapid growth of rail travel. It disappeared decades ago, but the project of connecting huge swaths of land with the promise of culinary sameness lives on. In a country that currently seems fractured and exhausted by its own divisions (at least from across the Canadian border, where I live), are chains a unifying force, a common denominator — or yet another arena in which cultural and political tensions play out?

Here are some of my favorite reads on America’s restaurant chains, from the generically upscale to the proudly down-home. They cover politics, economics, regional identity, and even (surprise!) food.

Read more…

Becoming One of the World’s 65 Million Refugees

Refugees at Budapest Keleti railway station, September 2015. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson | Cast Away: True Stories of Survival from Europe’s Refugee Crisis | The New Press | September 2016 | 20 minutes (5,452 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from Cast Away, by Charlotte McDonald-Gibson. This story comes recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky.

* * *

This war is none of my business.

Majid Hussain didn’t know who would turn up on his doorstep first: Colonel Gaddafi’s foot soldiers following orders to purge Libya of its migrant workforce, or vengeful rebels wielding Kalashnikovs and the conviction that everyone with black skin deserved to be lynched.

For months the Nigerian teenager had watched on television in Tripoli as rebels not much older than himself stormed through the desert in their cheap sunglasses and mismatching camouflage, and it had seemed inconceivable that this shabby army of the disaffected could pose a threat to Muammar Gaddafi’s calm and ordered capital. He had heard rumours that all Africans from south of the Sahara were at risk of attack from rebels seeking mass punishment for the few who had colluded with the regime – but surely these were just rumours? Every day Majid still went to work and returned home every evening to his reliable air-conditioning and his satellite TV. The rebellion had remained remote from his life, and he wanted it to stay that way.

This war is none of my business, he thought. I have already seen my own country torn apart by old hatreds – I don’t need to see that again.

Majid and his housemate Ali had laughed off reports on CNN and the BBC about fighting on the outskirts of Tripoli, and they didn’t want to believe the news that Gaddafi was bombing civilians in Benghazi. It was all Western propaganda, the two Nigerians convinced each other. Even when a spokesman for Gaddafi warned on public radio that they would flood Europe with migrants if there was any Western military action, the young men remained unconcerned. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2015: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.

If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free weekly email every Friday. Read more…

Celebrating the Trans Community: A Reading List

Transgender Awareness Week occurs during the beginning of November, traditionally culminating in the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This period serves to amplify the achievements of the trans community, as well as illuminate its struggles. The Transgender Day of Remembrance honors the victims of hate crimes, suicide, murder and countless other violences trans folks face daily.

2015 has not been kind to the trans community. Trans celebrities receive awards and accolades, yet 79 trans-identified folks have been murdered this year. Many of them are women of color. Many were killed by people they knew, people they trusted.

Historically, the complexities of the trans community have been overlooked, its activism whitewashed or erased or ignored completely. Hollywood continues to cast cisgender actors in trans roles, reaffirming these revisionist attitudes. Subconscious, thoughtless or intentional, this is insidious. Erasing the experiences of a community—the good and the bad—erases the community altogether.

Every story is, of course, different, though the American media prizes a certain, clean-cut narrative of triumph over adversity. Trans is an umbrella term; it encompasses a variety of gender identities, a million stories.

I hope something here inspires you to reaffirm your commitment to making this planet safe and welcoming and kind and generous, or shows you that you are not alone. Or both.

We remember. We remain. Read more…

The Minds Behind Diversity in Comics: A Reading List

Comics inspire me to be brave, to collaborate with my friends, to try new things, to stand up for myself. Maybe that’s trite, but it’s true. Vanity Fair’s profile of Kelly Sue DeConnick (#7) includes statistics about women: they are the fastest-growing demographic interested in comics; they are protagonists of twice the story arcs. Wired says diversity isn’t just good business–it’s honest, truthful storytelling (#1). I want everyone who walks into a comic book store to feel comfortable (#4), to find someone who looks or feels like them (#9) when they open a new issue of their favorite series. The people interviewed and profiled in the following pieces–creators and critics who advocate for diversity and inclusion in pages and on-screen–are the real superheroes.

1. “It’s Time to Get Real About Diversity in Comics.” (Laura Hudson, Wired, July 2015)

Rather than a superficial issue of optics or quotas […] Rather than seeing diversity initiatives as a matter of altruism or avoiding controversy, the most transformational approach advocated by critics and creators alike is the one that views it both as a form of honesty and as a valuable creative investment… Read more…

The Big Business of International Kidnapping

Photo via Risks Incorporated

As we drive to an office in nearby Pembroke Pines, Wilson briefs me on the bourgeoning business of international kidnapping. The White House’s recent acknowledgment of the accidental killing of two al-Qaida hostages in Pakistan in January, as well as the dark news from Syria in recent months, both overshadows and underscores the fact that kidnappings are a global scourge. As incidents have increased worldwide, a parallel industry has emerged, one that includes insurance companies, negotiators, lawyers, and security firms like Risks Inc. In a 2010 investigation, London’s Independent newspaper dubbed this the “hostage industry,” and estimated its worth at about $1.6 billion a year.

“You don’t have to be rich. People will kidnap you for next to nothing,” Wilson says. “Venezuela is out of control. Mexico is out of control.” Most of his clients for the Florida course are executives or wealthy individuals who live in high-risk areas, primarily in Latin America. (Wilson also offers the course in Belgrade, Serbia.) Other students have included American businessmen who travel to potentially dangerous locations, security contractors, and an international yacht captain. (Lambros Y. Lambrou, a trial lawyer in Manhattan and a father of two, took Wilson’s kidnap course to help ensure his family’s safety when they travel to countries like Mexico and Serbia, where his wife is from. “We live in a very uncertain world sometimes,” Lambrou says. “Unfortunately, most of the time the only person you have to protect you is yourself.”)

Read the story

Theorizing the Drone

Grégoire Chamayou | A Theory of the Drone | The New Press | January 2015 | Translated by Janet Lloyd | Originally published in France as Théorie du Drone by la Fabrique Editions, Paris, 2013 | 28 minutes (7,693 words)

 

Below are four chapters excerpted from the book A Theory of the Drone, by French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky.

 

* * *

1

Pattern-of-Life Analysis

Enemy leaders look like everyone else; enemy combatants look like everyone else; enemy vehicles look like civilian vehicles; enemy installations look like civilian installations; enemy equipment and materials look like civilian equipment and materials.

—American Defense Science Board

 

Read more…

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.

* * *

Read more…

Damage

Longreads Pick

The author, who spent her childhood in Pakistan, underwent a female genital mutilation procedure when she was seven years old. Having lived in the States for many years as a young adult, she reflects on the effects of this procedure on her sexuality and her relationship to her family, especially her mother.

Published: Jan 14, 2015
Length: 42 minutes (10,508 words)

‘Good Girls From Good Families Don’t Write About Sex’

In the Pakistan I returned to, control was focused on preventing the unmarried from gaining sexual knowledge or having pre-marital sex. Because sex outside wedlock is illegal in Islam, Pakistanis—Muslims everywhere—form entire morality enforcement industries to make sure the genders are kept separate in order to avoid temptation. Thus the “concerned citizens” telling me to wear long-sleeved apparel only and cover my chest with a dupatta. Everything is everyone’s business, and those of us girls who were curious about sex were suspect because good girls from good Muslim or Pakistani families do not even think about sex. And they certainly do not write about sex.

One day in the late 1990s after I’d married and moved to the U.S., I was reading a short story in a literary journal when I came upon the word “vagina.” I slammed the journal down. My stomach churned, my cheeks flushed, I was dizzy. My reaction perplexed me. After all, a vagina is simply a female body part, so why was I mortified? Iqbal’s genie, who I’d thought long excised, seemed to have only been buried and now leapt to life. I decided I was going to write through my discomfort and shame and battle both the genie’s censorship as well as my self-censorship by writing a story with “vagina” in the very first sentence. And so was birthed Papa’s Girl, a story set in the brothels of Bangkok, where a young boy is witness to his father’s dallying with a child prostitute and is consequently traumatized for life. It eventually appeared in the anthology A Letter from India.

– Soniah Kamal dared to read—and then write—literature considered explicit by conservative Muslim society. The backlash was intense. Read more from “Girls From Good Families” at The Butter.

Read the story