The story of a Somali family uprooted by war and separated by America’s broken refugee resettlement system — and the siblings who brought them back together.
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When American Media Was (Briefly) Diverse
An economic downturn in 2008 shuttered numerous publications and further marginalized people of color in an already minimally integrated industry. But in the 90’s and early-aughts, multicultural publications flourished, providing an alternative model for journalism that bears remembering.
When Friendship Fades But the Images Linger
Eryn Loeb looks back on a summer spent taking pictures, and a friend she lost touch with.
Keepers of the Secrets
Who are the most interesting women and men in the world? The archivists, guardians of our forgotten stories.
Live Through This: Courtney Love at 55
Lisa Whittington-Hill on why Courtney Love deserves to be the girl with the most cake.
Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes: On Novelist Nettie Jones and the Madness of ‘Fish Tales’
Edited by Toni Morrison, the 1983 novel ‘Fish Tales’ by Nettie Jones was supposed to set the literary world on fire. It didn’t.
Nashville contra Jaws, 1975
In their time, “Jaws” and “Nashville” were regarded as Watergate films, and both were in production as the Watergate disaster played its final act.
‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
In 1995, a Manhattan-bound J train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge rear-ended an M train, killing the J train operator and injuring more than fifty passengers. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has run the trains at suboptimal speeds ever since, while publicly blaming the systemwide slowdown on budget cuts and euphemisms for overcrowding. Village Voice transit reporter Aaron Gordon traces how […]
It’s Like That: The Makings of a Hip-Hop Writer
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.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Caitlin Dickerson, Aaron Edwards, Alice Su, Jia Tolentino, and James Somers.

