Violet was born at 25 weeks and five days—more than three months ahead of her due date. This is a story about becoming parents in the face of uncertainty.
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Meet the Man Behind the First Slavery Museum in America
He was driving around the Whitney in his Ford S.U.V., making sure the museum would be ready for the public. Born and raised in New Orleans, Cummings is as rife with contrasts as the land that surrounds his plantation. He is 77 but projects the unrelenting angst of a teenager. His disposition is exceedingly proper […]
How Patty Hearst Went From Kidnapping Victim to Armed Guerrilla
On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley, CA apartment by members of an urban guerrilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. Two months after she was abducted Hearst— the granddaughter of the real life “Citizen Kane,” publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst—had joined the SLA, adopted the the name “Tania” as her […]
Desperate Characters
An excerpt from the 1970 novel by Paula Fox: Status-conscious Sophie and Otto Bentwood attend a dinner party in Brooklyn Heights in the late sixties, shortly after Sophie sustains a bite on her hand from a stray cat.
Looking for Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles
Tracing Raymond Chandler’s early days in L.A.
The Daytime Dance Party As Harbinger Of Gentrification
The hundreds of people who show up each week to party at Mister Sunday are out for a good time. What the carefree fun-seekers likely do not realize is that they are also a part of a powerful real-estate developer’s plan to remake Industry City—and the Sunset Park community in which it sits—into the Next […]
A Liberated Woman: The Story of Margaret King
Inspired by her governess, the radical feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret King cast aside her immense privilege, cross-dressed as a man to go to medical school, and inspired a new generation of women to push against the rigid conventions of their era.
This Better and Truer History
On memory, therapy, and cats in the dryer: A discussion with J.M. Coetzee
On Not Going to College After Excelling in School
I know that for the rest of my life, I’ll have to explain myself to future employers. My hope is that my work and life experience become of such high quality that my education (or lack thereof) will fall off the bottom of my résumé. I’m aware it will be an uphill battle. Traveling was […]
Think of This as a Window: Remembering the Life and Work of Maggie Estep
“I moved to Lower Manhattan when I was seventeen. The only things I cared about were books and music.”
