“It was important to me that the ‘villains’ in the book were ordinary people, because readers are ordinary people, and people who do terrible things are often ordinary people.”
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The Precarity of Everything: On Millennial (Blacks and) Blues
Reniqua Allen — the author of It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America — on Black millennials, millennial burnout, and hope in a time of uncertainty.
A Dispatch From the Fast-Paced, Makeshift World of High-End Catering
The unsung heroes of the food world battle against time and chaos, cooking haute cuisine over lit cans of Sterno in the gloomy back hallways of New York’s civic landmarks.
To Tell the Story, These Journalists Became Part of the Story
In two recent books about immigrant families seeking asylum in the U.S., the authors’ attempts to help become part of their subjects’ stories.
Hating Big Pharma Is Good, But Supply-Side Epidemic Theory Is Killing People
New books about the opioid crisis — “Dopesick,” “Fight for Space” and “American Fix” — have different ideas about who’s to blame and what to do next. Our critic says regulating supply can have deadly consequences, and we need to address users’ pain.
Namwali Serpell on Doing the Responsible Thing — Writing an Irresponsible Novel
“I joke that this is the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.”
The Paths of Rhythm
A Tribe Called Quest’s pioneering music is one of many filaments that connects Americans of color with each other now and back through time.
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.
‘Imagine Us, Because We’re Here’: An Interview with Mira Jacob
Mira Jacob talks about why she wrote a graphic memoir, and why she is tired of performing her pain in order to help white people understand racism.
The Anarchists Who Took the Commuter Train
The Stelton colony, initially associated with the likes of Emma Goldman and Eugene O’Neill, was a radical suburb whose anarchist residents took the commuter train to New York.
