Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of age in a time when Black writers began breaking the white ceiling.
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Tom Petty’s Problematic Album Southern Accents
In 1985, one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most beloved songwriters made a regrettable misstep with a narrow conception of Southern identity.
When to Throw a Goodbye Party
Joy Notoma grapples with saying goodbye to friends before a move, the complicated grief of shunning, and the way one parting can be a painful reminder of so many others.
Reimagining Harper Lee’s Lost True Crime Novel: An Interview with Casey Cep
“Somewhere along the way it became very clear to me that I was writing the book she never would.”
I Entered the World’s Longest, Loneliest Horse Race on a Whim, and I Won
Somehow, implausibly, against all the odds, I became the youngest person and first woman ever to win the Mongol Derby. What made me so sure I was ready, when I was totally unprepared?
Took You By Surprise: John and Paul’s Lost Reunion
Five years after the Beatles disbanded, a period fueled by intense acrimony, Lennon and McCartney set aside their differences and got back together one more time. Inside the rollicking atmosphere of that May 1974 recording session.
The End of Poker Night
Mindy Greenstein looks back on the gambling that was a big part of life with her Holocaust refugee parents.
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
In fraught games of power politics, sometimes the best revenge is not being exiled to die alone on an island in the South Atlantic.
Shovel, Knife, Story, Ax
When you live with animals, you collect killing stories.
Total Depravity: The Origins of the Drug Epidemic in Appalachia Laid Bare
In an excerpt from his essay collection, Australian journalist Richard Cooke reports on the American opioid crisis through the astonished eyes of a foreigner visiting steel and coal country.
