A dozen exceptional stories from 2018 that deserve our ongoing attention.
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The World of Nora Ephron: A Reading List
Seven stories about the journalist and director, on the 20th anniversary of the release of the film, “You’ve Got Mail.”
Mountains, Transcending
“Ever since I was five years old,” wrote opera singer–turned–Buddhist lama Alexandra David-Néel, “I craved to go beyond the garden gate, to follow the road that passed it by, and to set out for the Unknown.”
‘TV Has This Really Fraught Relationship with the Audience.’
Emily Nussbaum talks about why TV’s relationship with its audience has become more intimate, whether we can blame Trump on True Detective, and how a TV critic’s biggest challenge is just figuring out what to watch.
Dancing Backup: Puerto Ricans in the American Muchedumbre
Carina del Valle Schorske traces a lineage of Puerto Rican backup dancers in American entertainment from Rita Moreno to JLo.
Putting a New Stone on the Grave: Sjón Brings the Golem to Iceland
Sjón’s “CoDex 1962” is the fulfillment of a pact he made with the Maharal of Prague in the Old Jewish Cemetery almost three decades ago.
‘The Survivor’s Edit’: Bassey Ikpi on Memory, Truth, and Living with Bipolar II
Bassey Ikpi discusses writing about mental illness. “I could count on the morning. It became the thing that existed without my input… without determining whether or not I was worthy of it.”
On Being an Ill Woman: A Reading List of Doctors’ Dismissal and Disbelief
Eight stories of being ill and being dismissed by the medical establishment.
Border Wars
When writer and scholar Zandria F. Robinson tries to understand what makes “southernness” a distinct quality in music, food, language, or attitudes about race, she realizes that borders and categories are porous.
Mothering on the Borders
Yifat Susskind stands at three of the world’s most militarized borders and reflects on what is revealed about these zones of separation and violence when we see them from the perspective of mothers.
