Domingo Martinez, a 2013 National Book Award finalist, recalls Sunday luncheons with his family in South Texas eating pit-roasted barbacoa: As soon as I was old enough, which in rural Brownsville was around fourteen, it was my job to get up before anyone else those mornings and drive to the barbacoa place for our ration. […]
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Interview: Caitlin Moran on the Working Class, Masturbation, and Writing a Novel
“I’m very much a bitch-gotta-pay-rent girl. I worked my way up from the ghetto and I think women should be paid for their great ideas.”
Experiences of Black Americans: A Reading List
As a white woman, my role in conversations about race is to listen and learn. This week, I wanted to include pieces about empowerment, stereotypes and intersection in the realm of race. One reading list cannot encompass the vast array of experiences of black Americans; this is not meant to be exhaustive. Send me your […]
The Problem with Colin Firth
Colin Firth goes all the way home to London but as soon as he gets there he realizes he forgot his Portuguese sex slave on the baggage carousel or something. So he abandons Christmas dinner with his loving family and flies back to France. The one expression of genuine love in this movie and Colin […]
Without Chief or Tribe: An Expat’s Guide to Having a Baby in Saudi Arabia
Nathan Deuel | Friday Was the Bomb | May 2014 | 21 minutes (5,178 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share a full chapter from Friday Was the Bomb, the new book by Nathan Deuel about moving to the Middle East with his wife in 2008. Deuel has been featured on […]
Jesus Land
“They don’t know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we’re black.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
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. * * * 1. The Undefeated Champions of Defeat City Kathy Dobie | GQ | May 13, 2014 | 25 minutes (6,333 words) A Little League […]
The Last Hand-Me-Down: Retracing My Brother’s Life Through His Clothes
Tom Molanphy | Loud Memories of a Quiet Life (OutPost 19) | May 2012 | 18 minutes (4,652 words) Tom Molanphy earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He freelances for 10Best/Travel Media Group at USA Today and teaches creative writing, composition and journalism at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. This […]
My Tears See More Than My Eyes: My Son’s Depression and the Power of Art
Alan Shapiro | Virginia Quarterly Review| Fall 2006 | 20 minutes (4,928 words) Alan Shapiro published two books in January 2012: Broadway Baby, a novel, from Algonquin Books, and Night of the Republic, poetry, from Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt. This essay first appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review (subscribe here). Our thanks to Shapiro for allowing us to reprint […]
Interview: Caitlin Moran on the Working Class, Masturbation, and Writing a Novel
“I’m very much a bitch-gotta-pay-rent girl. I worked my way up from the ghetto and I think women should be paid for their great ideas.”

