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Longreads Best of 2020: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks

All Best of Longreads illustrations by Kjell Reigstad.

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2020. Here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

A chromosome map at 500X magnification of a patient with Down's syndrome. An arrow indicates the 21st pair of chromosomes, which show the instance of trisomy 21, a third chromosome in that pair which causes Down syndrome.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Sarah Zhang, Jameson Rich, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Tristan McConnell, and Merritt Mecham.

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1. The Last Children of Down Syndrome

Sarah Zhang | The Atlantic | November 18, 2020 | 31 minutes (7,888 words)

In 2019, only 18 babies in Denmark were born with Down syndrome. Prenatal testing is changing who gets born and who doesn’t.

2. I Live With a Digital Security Threat Inside My Body

Jameson Rich | OneZero | November 18, 2020 | 17 minutes (4,353 words)

“A device connected to my heart could save my life. It could also be hacked.”

3. Things Ain’t Always Gone Be This Way

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | Kenyon Review | November 11, 2020 | 13 minutes (3,257 words)

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers recounts her mother’s efforts to overcome voter suppression in Georgia, and as a 9-year old, her own special role in helping elderly Black people to vote in the 1976 U.S. presidential election.

4. Illuminating Kirinyaga: Meaning and Knowing in Mount Kenya’s Forests

Tristan McConnell | Emergence Magazine | November 18, 2020 | 20 minutes (5,070 words)

“Anyone can walk in the woods, but who truly knows them?” Tristan McConnell writes about the shrinking mountain forests of Mount Kenya, and the people there with a deep understanding of the land and the trees.

5. The Muppets: Sex & Violence

Merritt Mecham | Bright Wall/Dark Room | November 9, 2020 | 15 minutes (3,953 words)

“I understand drawing the line at (Muppet) cannibalism and murder, but I also have to admit that the current zeitgeist has me flocking to these sketches more often than ever.”

‘My Tongue Swallowing the Taste of Home Soil’: On Filipino Food, Family, and Identity

WASHINGTON DC - September 5TH: Sisig from Purple Patch shot on September 5th, 2017 in Washington DC. (Photo by Goran Kosanovic for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

At The Margins — the online magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) — writer, filmmaker, and photographer Jill Damatac explores identity, colonalism, and memory through the lens of family and Filipino food. In “Dirty Kitchen,” Damatac shares two recipes — tinola, a ginger chicken soup; and sisig, a diced-up pork dish seasoned with calamansi juice, onions, and chili peppers — and weaves cooking instructions throughout sharp, sensory prose.

On the taste of tinola, and memories of her childhood:

When I was little, before I departed the sunny, Pacific chaos of our world for the chilly, Atlantic silence of the new world, we often had tinola for Sunday lunch at Lolo and Lola’s house, where I would spend weekends. In the early mornings, Lolo and I would stroll the barrio streets to buy fresh pandesal from the local bakery, me skipping along in mumbled song with the roosters, him punching the air with calisthenic fists, just as he had done with the American GIs during the war. In Pennsylvania, where he had followed us a year after we left, he would walk me to and from school, the two of us passing a bag of sticky, sour sampalok between us, spitting out the smooth, shiny seeds into our palms. He always wore his pristinely white Reeboks and sometimes his ten-gallon cowboy hat. I still remember my shame on the days he would arrive in that hat.

It was during those early years in the land of the free and the home of the brave that I first felt shame, which is a hunger for pride, and loneliness, which is a hunger for belonging. Tinola’s plain, clear-brothed, ginger-laced embrace helped to sate these hungers, my tongue swallowing the taste of home soil.

Sauté the garlic, ginger, and onion in oil in a large pot, stirring until soft. 

On sisig, but also colonialism, home, and identity:

“You want to know why my sisig is special?” Tito asked me recently over a sizzling plate. We were sharing a meal next to the volcano, Taal. I had just returned to the islands after twenty-two years of undocumented American exile.

“Because I make it with pork belly. Usually it’s made with the cheap parts of the pig, ha. Why should we eat only cheap parts? And love. I cook it with love.”

Sisig is no longer made with just the discarded cuts, but its poisonous effects remain. The Americans are gone, but their imperious scars linger. No longer trapped by our colonizers, we trap ourselves. We transform to survive, but we still bear the boiled, charred, gristled remnants of our past. I will continue to exist in a hungry space between longing and belonging, for my body, exported from its country of birth, deported from its country of growth, now has only sense and memory to call home.

Serve immediately, using two large spoons to stir in the eggs to cook. Enjoy with garlic fried rice. 

Read the essay

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, Sunday, June 25, 2017. Rhodes was one of many speakers at the "Rally Against Political Violence," that was to condemn the attack on Republican congressmen during their June 14 baseball practice in Virginia and the "depictions of gruesome displays of brutality against sitting U.S. national leaders." (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Mike Giglio, Omar Mouallem, Katherine Laidlaw, Dave Daley, and Tim Greiving.

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1. “Civil War Is Here, Right Now”

Mike Giglio | The Atlantic | October 1, 2020 | 27 minutes (6,950 words)

“A Pro-Trump militant group has recruited thousands of police, soldiers, and veterans. An Atlantic investigation reveals who they are and what they might do on Election Day.”

2. January 8, 2020

Omar Mouallem | Edify Magazine | September 28, 2020 | 15 minutes (3,835 words)

“The day that PS752 was shot down will forever be frozen in his memory.”

3. Heartbreaker

Katherine Laidlaw | Toronto Life | September 28, 2020 | 26 minutes (6,601 words)

“To women in search of love, Shaun Rootenberg seemed like a catch. What they didn’t know: he’d spent decades stealing from just about anyone who crossed his path. Lonely women on dating sites were only his latest prey.”

4. I Cry for the Mountains: A Legacy Lost

Dave Daley | The Chico Enterprise-Record | September 27, 2020 | 22 minutes (5,500 words)

A rancher’s account of a wildfire’s devastating impact on his family, his cattle, and the forests they have relied on for generations.

5. The Oral History of ‘Best in Show’

Tim Greiving | The Ringer | September 29, 2020 | 24 minutes (6,200 words)

“Looking back at the dog show–centric successor to the mockumentaries ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ and ‘Waiting for Guffman’ on its 20th anniversary.”

“Civil War Is Here, Right Now”

Longreads Pick

“A Pro-Trump militant group has recruited thousands of police, soldiers, and veterans. An Atlantic investigation reveals who they are and what they might do on Election Day.”

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Oct 1, 2020
Length: 27 minutes (6,950 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Getty Images

This week, we’re sharing stories from Barton Gellman, Latria Graham, Teju Cole, Samuel Ashworth, and Shanna Baker.

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1. The Election That Could Break America

Barton Gellman | The Atlantic | September 23, 2020 | 38 minutes (9,621 words)

“If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?”

2. Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream

Latria Graham | Outside | September 21, 2020 | 22 minutes (5,512 words)

“Two years ago, Latria Graham wrote an essay about the challenges of being Black in the outdoors. Countless readers reached out to her, asking for advice on how to stay safe in places where nonwhite people aren’t always welcome. She didn’t write back, because she had no idea what to say. In the aftermath of a revolutionary spring and summer, she responds.”

3. In Dark Times, I Sought Out the Turmoil of Caravaggio’s Paintings

Teju Cole | The New York Times Magazine | September 23, 2020 | 34 minutes (8700 words)

“The work the artist made near the end of his life changed my understanding of both beauty and suffering.”

4. The Slow, Troubling Death of the Autopsy

Samuel Ashworth | Elemental | September 21, 2020 | 29 minutes (7,275 words)

Doctors make mistakes. The true cause of a person’s death is often complicated and unclear. “Why you should get an autopsy if it’s the last thing you do.”

5. Where Camels Take to the Sea

Shanna Baker | Hakai Magazine | September 22, 2020 | 32 minutes (6,900 words)

“In Gujarat, India, a special breed of camel is not constrained by land—but it cannot escape the many forces of change.”

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Steve McAlister, Getty Images

This week, we’re sharing stories from Adam Serwer, Alexandra Marvar, Timothy Snyder, Gaby Del Valle, and Sulaiman Addonia.

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1. The New Reconstruction

Adam Serwer | The Atlantic | September 8, 2020 | 30 minutes (7,613 words)

“There has never been an anti-racist majority in American history; there may be one today in the racially and socioeconomically diverse coalition of voters radicalized by the abrupt transition from the hope of the Obama era to the cruelty of the Trump age. All political coalitions are eventually torn apart by their contradictions, but America has never seen a coalition quite like this.”

2. The Unfinished Story of Emmett Till’s Final Journey

Alexandra Marvar | GEN | September 3, 2020 | 22 minutes (5,559 words)

“Till was murdered 65 years ago. Sites of commemoration across the Mississippi Delta still struggle with what’s history and what’s hearsay.”

3. What Ails America

Timothy Snyder | New York Review of Books | September 3, 2020 | 8 minutes (4,700 words)

“We would like to think we have health care that incidentally involves some wealth transfer; what we actually have is wealth transfer that incidentally involves some health care.”

4. Waiting to Be Thrown Out

Gaby Del Valle | The Verge | September 8, 2020 | 33 minutes (8,280 words)

Following the story of one Cameroonian, Gaby Del Valle dives deep into how video teleconferencing technology in the U.S.’s immigration courts fuels the deportation machine.

5. The Wound of Multilingualism: On Surrendering the Languages of Home

Sulaiman Addonia | LitHub | September 8, 2020 | 6 minutes (1,627 words)

“Learning a language as an adult or in your teens, especially with a history of repeated migrations between languages and countries, is extraordinarily difficult. It isn’t just about swallowing new words like passion fruit that glides down your throat. It’s like chewing on stones breaking your teeth in order to seed the foundations of that new language on your tongue already heavy with many idioms.”

A Lover’s Blues: The Unforgettable Voice of Margie Hendrix

Michael Ochs Archives / Getty / Design by Katie Kosma

Tarisai Ngangura | Longreads | September 2020 |14 minutes (3,715 words)

 

Hive is a series about women and the music that has influenced them, edited by Danielle A. Jackson. Read more at Longreads and The Believer

 

The voice of Margie Hendrix on “Night Time is The Right Time” comes at you out of nowhere, like an explosive, thunderous crack in the sky after a period of steady rain. Long after the song is over, it’s her words that stay ringing in your ear. You’ll belt out, “Babyyyyyyy!” in the shower, while out for a jog, or when giving your friends a hard time as they share their most trying relationship conundrum. On The Cosby Show, it’s her part that is most memorable when reenacted by adorable, pig-tailed Rudy, played by Keshia Knight Pulliam. In the 2004 biopic Ray, it was future Academy Award winner Regina King who played the role of Hendrix. King spoke of the difficulty in channeling the musician, as few references, visual or text, were available to use as inspiration for the role: “There isn’t a lot of information out there on Margie, so I had to rely on her voice to guide me.” The kind to stop you in your tracks, Hendrix’s voice remained unchanging, and from her earliest solo releases to her final years, it was an infallible offering from an artist who was moved to sing.

I stared at a blank page for days trying to figure out how best to begin my story on Hendrix, but nothing felt appropriate, fitting enough for the woman who had outsung Ray Charles. I’ve thought about her regularly for years, wondering how a woman with that voice could disappear from the public eye so easily, after making such an unforgettable appearance. It’s a thought that’s stayed with me, because it carries the sobering reality that someone can be incredibly talented — phenomenal even — and still find themselves omitted by history. It could happen to anybody, but it seems to happen most often to talented Black women who are bold enough to chase their dreams, then fall apart from the sheer pressure of it all. Women who are public but invisible and who are noticed without really being seen. Women like Margie Hendrix.

I stared at a blank page for days trying to figure out how best to begin my story on Hendrix, but nothing felt appropriate, fitting enough for the woman who had outsung Ray Charles.

She didn’t look like the performers most record producers wanted Black women to be. She was too dark, had a gap between her two front teeth and was a Southern girl with none of that Northern polish and glam. The music industry of today is incredibly corrosive and toxic, but it was even more so for Black musicians in the middle of the twentieth century, who dealt with nothing but no-good managers, unfair contracts, and stolen music credits. Anti-black racism and its social realities make it astounding that artists emerged who weathered through even when it seemed like everyone at some point or another crumbled, with many never making it back.  The argument could be made that had Hendrix managed to stay far from the drugs that would ravage her body, and kicked those bad habits, she would have lasted longer and achieved success rivaling that of her still living peers from that “golden” era. Yet the number of Black women uncounted and unnamed in music history makes it clear that this wasn’t only a question of sobriety. It was also about opportunity, and a perverse lack of care for the artists whose mental and physical health were secondary so long as money continued to be made. Hendrix’s death and eventual erasure from the mainstream were not simply tragic turns in a complicated life, but the outcome of a series of events that befell a woman unloved by those she committed herself to, and unprotected by those whose coffers she filled. 

Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

(Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Tana Ganeva, Garrett M. Graff, Janelle Monáe, Ellen Cushing, and Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder.

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1. Flimsy plastic knives, a single microwave, and empty popcorn bags: How 50 inmates inside a Michigan prison prepared a feast to celebrate the life of George Floyd

Tana Ganeva | The Counter | August 6, 2020 | 13 minutes (3,397 words)

Michael ‘Thompson came up with a way to mark Floyd’s death inside: a special meal that he’d share with the inmates in a “celebration” honoring Floyd’s life…After they returned their cells, each man sat in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. And then they began to eat.’

2. The Furious Hunt for the MAGA Bomber

Garrett M. Graff | Wired | August 12, 2020 | 32 minutes (8200 words)

“Scarred by trauma and devoted to Trump, a man began mailing explosives to the president’s critics on the eve of an election. Inside the race to catch him.”

3. Stacey Abrams and Janelle Monáe on the Fight for Democracy in an Election Season for the Ages

Janelle Monáe | Harper’s Bazaar | August 10, 2020 | 20 minutes (5,152 words)

‘The former Georgia Representative talks to singer and fellow Atlantan Monáe about voter suppression, Joe Biden, and whether Abrams herself will one day run for president. (The answer: “Absolutely.”)’

4. I Was a Teenage Conspiracy Theorist

Ellen Cushing | The Atlantic | May 13, 2020 | 15 minutes (3,881 words)

“Our minds work in particular ways that make us all receptive to conspiracy thinking,” says Rob Brotherton, a psychologist and the author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. ”

5. The Way of the Goldfinch

Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder | Emergence Magazine | July 15, 2020 | 6 minutes (1,525 words)

“Watching a goldfinch sway on a blade of grass, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder writes to her soon-to-be-born daughter about beauty, balance, and lessons of uncertainty.”

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

US President Barack Obama (R) hugs US Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, one of the original marchers at Selma, during an event marking the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015. und Pettus Bridge. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Barack Obama, Andrea Pitzer, Hannah Dreier, Ismail Muhammad, Niela Orr, Hanif Abdurraqib, Danielle A. Jackson, and Cassie Owens, and Karolina Waclawiak.

Note: the Top 5 Longreads of the week will return on August 14th, 2020.

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1. Barack Obama’s Eulogy for John Lewis

Barack Obama | The Atlantic | July 30, 2020 | 14 minutes (3,641 words)

“He, as much as anyone in our history, brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals.”

2. My Midlife Crisis as a Russian Sailor

Andrea Pitzer | Outside | July 27, 2020 | 28 minutes (7,025 words)

“For a book project about 16th-century polar explorer William Barents, Andrea Pitzer needed to reach the remote Arctic island where he and his men came to grief. She booked passage on an expeditionary boat out of Murmansk, then headed north on a trip marked by unforgettable scenery, unexpected loss, and wild magic that changed her life.”

3. The Worst-Case Scenario

Hannah Dreier | The Washington Post | July 24, 2020 | 16 minutes (4,240 words)

“A white police officer fresh from de-escalation training, a troubled black woman with a gun, and a crowd with cellphones ready to record.”

4. Black Talk, Black Feeling: Media Round Table

Niela Orr, Ismail Muhammad, Hanif Abdurraqib, Danielle A. Jackson, Cassie Owens
The Believer | July 29, 2020 | 37 minutes (9,261 words)

“So much of my work as a writer and editor is to make sure that Black people have the ability to write about more than just moments like the one we’re in right now, and a big disheartening thing for me has been to live through this moment and again see editors scrambling to get Black writers to write and then undoubtedly those same editors will vanish when those Black writers want to write about, I don’t know, ice cream or whatever the fuck.”

5. What My Mother Didn’t Talk About

Karolina Waclawiak | BuzzFeed | July 25, 2020 | 16 minutes (4,245 words)

“My mother and I were very close, but when she died last year there was still so much I didn’t know about her.”