Search Results for: language

Murder of an Idealist

Longreads Pick

The life and last days of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed during a Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya:

“It’s curious that a kid from California who grew up knowing nothing about the Arab world would come to devote his career to the Middle East and North Africa—as opposed to, say, Asia or Scandinavia or even no particular place. A European woman named Henriette, who met Stevens in Jerusalem in 2003 and had a ‘fantastic, turbulent’ on-and-off romance with him for nine years, tried to explain it to me.

“‘After we had become a couple,’ she said, ‘I asked Chris when was the first time he noticed me with interest. He told me that it was at the dinner party where we first met. He said that he had liked the way I smelled. Chris was a sensualist—he applied all his senses in experiencing the world. For people like us, the Middle East is tantalizing. The smell of coffee with cardamom, and of apple tobacco burning in water pipes; the color and touch of carpets and fabrics; the sounds of the muezzin call to prayers and the energy of crazy urban traffic and large desert landscapes. The warmth of its people and the sound of their music and language. If you combine that with analytical curiosity invested in understanding the long history of the region and the complex dynamics of its current politics, the Middle East is a place you can’t resist. It is not only an intellectual endeavor—it makes you feel fully alive.'”

Author: Sean Flynn
Source: GQ
Published: Nov 6, 2012
Length: 18 minutes (4,605 words)

Yesterday My Daughter Emigrated

A father in Spain laments the lack of a future for his daughter in their home country:

Like many young people her age, my daughter was caught by surprise upon completion of her professional training. In the spring she returned to Spain with the intention of looking for a job here — it didn’t really matter what, as long as she could ‘do her thing.’ She got a few interviews, but the conditions that were offered to her always seemed to be abusive: a mere salary, 400 € a month, for a person with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, who speaks four languages, and who has worked abroad. Such salaries aren’t enough to eat or rent a room in the cities where they’re offered. She would have needed help from her parents — something we were willing to do. But our daughter didn’t want to keep being dependent on us — as this support would in fact subsidize the same employers that are taking advantage of our young people.

This summer, many of her friends stopped by the house to say goodbye. Their conversations always came down to the same thing: the depression of the crisis, layoffs or fear of layoffs, companies that take advantage of the crisis to impose unfair conditions, laying off a good part of the workers so that ‘supervisors’ end up doing everyone’s part of the job, intimidated by the threat of being let go. It seems to me that they feel guilty, and maybe they are somewhat responsible — as we all are — but not for the excessive burden we’ve unloaded onto them.

“Yesterday My Daughter Emigrated.” — Carlos M. Duarte, Huffington Post

More from The Huffington Post

Yesterday My Daughter Emigrated

Longreads Pick

A father in Spain laments the lack of a future for his daughter in their home country:

“Like many young people her age, my daughter was caught by surprise upon completion of her professional training. In the spring she returned to Spain with the intention of looking for a job here — it didn’t really matter what, as long as she could ‘do her thing.’ She got a few interviews, but the conditions that were offered to her always seemed to be abusive: a mere salary, 400 € a month, for a person with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, who speaks four languages, and who has worked abroad. Such salaries aren’t enough to eat or rent a room in the cities where they’re offered. She would have needed help from her parents — something we were willing to do. But our daughter didn’t want to keep being dependent on us — as this support would in fact subsidize the same employers that are taking advantage of our young people.

“This summer, many of her friends stopped by the house to say goodbye. Their conversations always came down to the same thing: the depression of the crisis, layoffs or fear of layoffs, companies that take advantage of the crisis to impose unfair conditions, laying off a good part of the workers so that ‘supervisors’ end up doing everyone’s part of the job, intimidated by the threat of being let go. It seems to me that they feel guilty, and maybe they are somewhat responsible — as we all are — but not for the excessive burden we’ve unloaded onto them.”

Source: HuffPost
Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 7 minutes (1,790 words)

The reverend has a new primetime show, but remains a polarizing figure:

Sharpton has a long record of involvement in civil rights cases, but there are still those who want to remember him as the guy who defended Tawana Brawley, the teenage girl who claimed to be gang raped by a group of white men before a grand jury dismissed her claims as bogus and Sharpton was successfully sued for defamation. They want to remember him as the guy who said inflammatory things—the man who railed against ‘diamond merchants’ and an ‘apartheid ambulance’—during the Crown Heights riots. Last year, he penned an apology in The New York Daily News for his language during the riots, and for failing to pay more tribute to Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian graduate student who was killed in what some Jews remember as the worst episode of anti-Semitic violence in American history. ‘I said things growing up. I used to use the ‘N’ word. I used to talk street language about a lot of things that you just can’t do,’ he says. ‘And they’ll bring it back to haunt you.’

‘The other thing I’ve learned, when I’ve had to deal with things I’ve said 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the first thing you should say is, “I shouldn’t have said it,”’ he says. ‘You don’t justify something. If you said something that’s wrong or that was stated wrongly, say that. The public can accept a mistake. What they can’t accept is you digging in and it’s an obvious mistake.’

“Al Sharpton’s Got a Brand New Bag.” — Marin Cogan, GQ

More from GQ

Al Sharpton’s Got a Brand New Bag

Longreads Pick

The reverend has a new primetime show, but remains a polarizing figure:

“Sharpton has a long record of involvement in civil rights cases, but there are still those who want to remember him as the guy who defended Tawana Brawley, the teenage girl who claimed to be gang raped by a group of white men before a grand jury dismissed her claims as bogus and Sharpton was successfully sued for defamation. They want to remember him as the guy who said inflammatory things—the man who railed against ‘diamond merchants’ and an ‘apartheid ambulance’—during the Crown Heights riots. Last year, he penned an apology in The New York Daily News for his language during the riots, and for failing to pay more tribute to Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian graduate student who was killed in what some Jews remember as the worst episode of anti-Semitic violence in American history. ‘I said things growing up. I used to use the ‘N’ word. I used to talk street language about a lot of things that you just can’t do,’ he says. ‘And they’ll bring it back to haunt you.’

“‘The other thing I’ve learned, when I’ve had to deal with things I’ve said 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the first thing you should say is, ‘I shouldn’t have said it,” he says. ‘You don’t justify something. If you said something that’s wrong or that was stated wrongly, say that. The public can accept a mistake. What they can’t accept is you digging in and it’s an obvious mistake.'”

Source: GQ
Published: Sep 17, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,282 words)

A mistake on a Wikipedia entry for one of his novels leads an author to set the record straight:

My novel ‘The Human Stain’ was described in the entry as ‘allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.’ (The precise language has since been altered by Wikipedia’s collaborative editing, but this falsity still stands.)

This alleged allegation is in no way substantiated by fact. ‘The Human Stain’ was inspired, rather, by an unhappy event in the life of my late friend Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton for some thirty years. One day in the fall of 1985, while Mel, who was meticulous in all things large and small, was meticulously taking the roll in a sociology class, he noted that two of his students had as yet not attended a single class session or attempted to meet with him to explain their failure to appear, though it was by then the middle of the semester.

Having finished taking the roll, Mel queried the class about these two students whom he had never met. ‘Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?’—unfortunately, the very words that Coleman Silk, the protagonist of ‘The Human Stain,’ asks of his classics class at Athena College in Massachusetts.

“An Open Letter to Wikipedia.” — Philip Roth, New Yorker

More New Yorker

An Open Letter to Wikipedia

Longreads Pick

A mistake on a Wikipedia entry for one of his novels leads an author to set the record straight:

“My novel ‘The Human Stain’ was described in the entry as ‘allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.’ (The precise language has since been altered by Wikipedia’s collaborative editing, but this falsity still stands.)

“This alleged allegation is in no way substantiated by fact. ‘The Human Stain’ was inspired, rather, by an unhappy event in the life of my late friend Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton for some thirty years. One day in the fall of 1985, while Mel, who was meticulous in all things large and small, was meticulously taking the roll in a sociology class, he noted that two of his students had as yet not attended a single class session or attempted to meet with him to explain their failure to appear, though it was by then the middle of the semester.

“Having finished taking the roll, Mel queried the class about these two students whom he had never met. ‘Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?’—unfortunately, the very words that Coleman Silk, the protagonist of ‘The Human Stain,’ asks of his classics class at Athena College in Massachusetts.

Source: New Yorker
Published: Sep 7, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,694 words)

A look at the Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and how they’ve preserved their identity and customs after more than a 100 years of a tenuous relationship with the U.S.:

Buried deep within the pages of the 2010 Defense appropriations bill, signed by President Barack Obama in December 2009, is an official apology ‘to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States.’ The resolution commends those states ‘that have begun reconciliation efforts with recognized Indian tribes,’ but there is no mention of reparations, nor of honoring long-broken treaties.

White Plume lit one of his rolled-up cigarettes and squinted at me through a ribbon of smoke. ‘Do you know what saved me from becoming a cold-blooded murderer? My language saved me. There is no way for me to be hateful in my language. It’s such a beautiful, gentle language. It’s so peaceful.’ Then White Plume started to speak in Lakota, and there was no denying the words came softly.

“In the Shadow of Wounded Knee.” — Alexandra Fuller, National Geographic

More from National Geographic

In the Shadow of Wounded Knee

Longreads Pick

A look at the Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and how they’ve preserved their identity and customs after more than a 100 years of a tenuous relationship with the U.S.:

“Buried deep within the pages of the 2010 Defense appropriations bill, signed by President Barack Obama in December 2009, is an official apology ‘to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States.’ The resolution commends those states ‘that have begun reconciliation efforts with recognized Indian tribes,’ but there is no mention of reparations, nor of honoring long-broken treaties.

“White Plume lit one of his rolled-up cigarettes and squinted at me through a ribbon of smoke. ‘Do you know what saved me from becoming a cold-blooded murderer? My language saved me. There is no way for me to be hateful in my language. It’s such a beautiful, gentle language. It’s so peaceful.’ Then White Plume started to speak in Lakota, and there was no denying the words came softly.”

Published: Aug 1, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,082 words)

My Brother in the Basement

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A closeted gay man’s self-perception shifts through the experiences of his almost-twin brother:

“He was dark; I was fair.

“He was slender and shy; I was stocky and talkative.

“As children our mother dressed us as twins. Matching woolen pea coats and Buster Brown lace-ups, khaki shorts and striped T-shirts, pajamas imprinted with pictures of cowboys and Indians, Davy Crockett coonskin caps. For Easter, matching sailor suits with starched white middy blouses.

“Even so, the neighbors often strained to see the resemblance between us. ‘You’re brothers?’ they asked. ‘You’re really brothers? Which one of you is older?’

“People imagined I was, because I was larger. But in fact he was older, by fifteen months. The bassinet into which I was placed was still warm from his having so recently lain there.

“Was it paradise, living like that, with someone made of the same flesh and blood as I? When Davis and I were little, we lay awake at night in our bunk beds, devising a language only the two of us could understand. ‘Peanut butter’ meant ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Bongo bongo’ meant ‘Go to sleep.’ ‘Applesauce’ meant ‘Laugh!'”

Source: Blackbird
Published: Sep 1, 2004
Length: 41 minutes (10,408 words)