Search Results for: abortion

On Cheryl Strayed’s ‘Wild’ and the Redemption Narrative

Reese Witherspoon in Wild.

Like Dante, then, Strayed is on a spiritual journey, beginning in damnation, bound for deliverance. That makes Wild a redemption narrative — and that, in turn, helps explain its popularity, because redemption narratives are some of the oldest, most compelling, and most ubiquitous stories we have. We enshrine nature writing in the canon — you were probably assigned Thoreau and Emerson et al. in high school — but it is redemption narratives that dominate our culture. Among other things, you can hear them in religious services all across the land and in AA meetings every day of the week.

Wild embodies this ancient story. Or, more precisely, it embodies the contemporary American version thereof, where the course is not from sin to salvation but from trauma to transformation: I was abject, dysfunctional, and emotionally shattered, but now I see. This version has more train-wreck allure than the traditional one (being a mess is generally more spectacular than merely being an unbeliever), and it is also more inclusive. Identifying with it requires no particular faith, beyond the faith that a bad life can get better.

The American redemption narrative, then, is entertaining, accessible, and privately comforting. And, in the case of Wild, it is culturally comforting as well. Before Strayed sets off on her journey, she embodies much of what America fears about young lower-class women: She does drugs, sleeps around, gets an abortion. Eleven hundred miles and 315 pages later, she has sobered up, sworn off the one-night stands, and become as wholesome and appealing as the girl next door.

In New York magazine, Kathryn Schulz takes a walk with the bestselling author and explores what made her book such a huge hit.

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Longreads Best of 2014: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2014. 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…

For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.

Belle Boggs | The New New South | August 2013 | 62 minutes (15,377 words)

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We’re proud to present, for the first time online, “For the Public Good,” Belle Boggs‘s story for The New New South about the shocking history of forced sterilizations that occurred in the United States, and the story of victims in North Carolina, with original video by Olympia Stone.

As Boggs explained to us last year: 

“Last summer I met Willis Lynch, a man who was sterilized by the state of North Carolina more than 65 years earlier, when he was only 14 years old and living in an institution for delinquent children. Willis was one of 7,600 victims of North Carolina’s eugenics program, and one of the more outspoken and persistent advocates for compensation.

“At the time I was struggling with my own inability to conceive, and the debate within my state—how much is the ability to have children worth?—was something I thought about a lot. It’s hard to quantify, the value of people who don’t exist. It gets even more complicated when you factor in public discomfort over a shameful past, and a present-day political climate that marginalizes the poor.”

Thanks to Boggs and The New New South for sharing this story with the Longreads Community, and thanks to Longreads Members for your helping us bring these stories to you. Join us.

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When Mitch McConnell Met Roger Ailes: An Early Lesson in Winning At All Costs

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Alec MacGillis | The Cynic | September 2014 | 13 minutes (3,241 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from The Cynic, a book by The New Republic writer Alec MacGillis about U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. Our thanks to MacGillis for sharing this with the Longreads community.

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Interview: Caitlin Moran on the Working Class, Masturbation, and Writing a Novel

Jessica Gross | Longreads | Sept. 25, 2014 | 13 minutes (3,300 words)

Caitlin Moran has worked as a journalist, critic, and essayist in the U.K. for over two decades, since she was 16. In her 2011 memoir/manifesto, How to Be a Woman, she argued women should keep their vaginas hairy, said she has no regret over her own abortion, and advocated for the term “strident feminist.” Moran brings the same gallivanting, taboo-crushing spirit to her debut novel, How to Build a Girl, which follows Johanna Morrigan, a working class teenager, as she navigates her way toward adulthood. Morrigan shares a few traits with Moran, from her background and career path to her obsession with music and masturbation.

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As I read How to Build a Girl, I pictured you laughing uproariously to yourself as you were writing it. But in the acknowledgments, you say, “Writing a book is literally worse than giving birth to a baby—in hell.”

I wrote the acknowledgments in a welter of self-pity. I love writing—it’s the easiest thing in the world for me to do. But all through that summer, my children and husband would disappear and come back all covered in sand, having been to the beach while I sat at the table I’m at now, in the garden, chain smoking roll-up cigarettes, chain-drinking coffee. I was working so hard that I genuinely thought I’d have to go to the psychiatrist and get some valium prescribed to me. I’ve always been incredibly cheerful and laid-back, and that summer I was incredibly anxious and depressed, like my head was going to explode. There was one morning where I was putting the coffee pot on, and I noticed it said that it made 12 cups of espresso. I’d been drinking that, diluted with milk, before lunchtime. I stopped drinking the coffee, and it all got a bit easier after that. Do not drink 12 espressos before midday. It’s enormously bad for your mind.

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The Prodigal Prince: Richard Roberts and the Decline of the Oral Roberts Dynasty

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Kiera Feldman | This Land Press | September 2014 | 34 minutes (8,559 words)

This Land PressWe’re proud to present a new Longreads Exclusive from Kiera Feldman and This Land Press: How Richard Roberts went from heir to his father’s empire to ostracized from the kingdom. Feldman and This Land Press have both been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and her This Land story “Grace in Broken Arrow” was named the Best of Longreads in 2012.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo: doug88888, Flickr

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.

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Can’t Do It Alone

Longreads Pick

Susan Cahill lost everything when her clinic was vandalized. Now western Montana risks losing one of its only abortion providers.

Moving men carry a small white refrigerator into a truck parked outside, then return for a large plastic bin full of forceps and speculums. The equipment will remain in storage until Cahill decides whether to use them again. Following the break-in and the calculated dismantling of her professional equipment and personal items, Cahill, 64, has yet to decide if she’ll ever return to the Flathead Valley practice she’s built up over the course of her career.

Published: May 15, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,672 words)

‘So What Do You Do?’: A Reading List

“So what do you do?” is one of the most commonly asked questions at parties. Here: four first-person accounts of folks working in different industries.

1. TSA Screener: “Dear America, I Saw You Naked.” (Jason Edward Harrington, Politico, January 2014)

Those full-body scanners? They don’t work. One TSA agent is speaking out.

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