Why I Lied to Everyone in High School About Knowing Karate By Jabeen Akhtar Feature As a teen, Jabeen Akhtar discovered that trying to be an exceptional immigrant can make you do stupid things.
Silence is a Lonely Country: A Prayer in Twelve Parts By Sadia Hassan Feature A poet reflects on finding her words in the face of injustice.
The Law Is No Place for Ethics By Michelle Weber Highlight The SCOTUS opinion upholding the Muslim ban might not be legally wrong, but shouldn’t the court look at what is just as well as what is legal?
There Are Few Second Chances for Immigrants Who Commit Crimes By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight How America punishes immigrant criminals multiple times for the same crime and continues traumatizing them.
“The Beasts of the Crossing Have Been Pushed Into the Light” By Michelle Weber Highlight Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s Jezebel essay “A Theory of Animals” is a gut punch. Read it.
Frailty, Thy Name Is Immigration Control By Katie Kosma Highlight Quoting Shakespeare isn’t new, but using it in court to fight Trump’s immigration control is.
Andrew O’Hagan on The Grenfell Tower Fire, One Year Later By Krista Stevens Highlight “Everyone who died that night died above the tenth floor.”
Has India’s Booming IT Industry Finally Plateaued? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight India’s once lucrative IT sector now fears it’s glory years are ending as one of its biggest companie starts downsizing.
Politics and Prose By Marie Myung-Ok Lee Feature Marie Myung-Ok Lee finds herself conflicted about attending a controversial author’s reading and wonders: what does “speaking up” actually mean?
The Forever Nomad By Margarita Gokun Silver Feature For an immigrant, losing a home is a given, but Margarita Gokun Silver wonders if never finding one again is also part of the journey.
What If the Price of the American Dream Is Too High? By Michelle Weber Highlight In a blistering essay, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio eviscerates an American Dream that lures migrants with the promise of opportunity, then forces them to live under constant threat.
How Much Would You Endure to Flee Persecution? By Krista Stevens Highlight Now that Europe welcomes migrants no longer, asylum seekers are making nearly impossible journeys through South America to the United States.
Longreads Best of 2017: Local Reporting By Longreads Reading List We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in local reporting.
The Other People in Springfield By Imran Siddiquee Feature Imran Siddiquee considers the ways in which his identities — as a Bangladeshi-American and as a man — were shaped by growing up in the shadow of The Simpsons.
Greece’s Beleaguered Port City By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight The violent chipping center of Aspropyrgos, Greece is a microcosm of Europe itself, struggling to benefit from the global economy while protecting its identity.
The True Story of Refugees in an American High School By Longreads Feature The politics of immigration ignores the reality: a classroom of young people adjusting to life in the United States, and a teacher driven to help.
An Interview with MacArthur ‘Genius’ Jason De León By Matt Giles Feature The anthropologist studies the objects left behind by migrants as they cross the border.
On American Identity, the Election, and Family Members Who Support Trump By Nicole Chung Feature Nicole Chung reflects on the burden of engaging with racism and educating white people, including some in her own family.
Growing Up in Rural Washington as a Muslim Immigrant By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Hayat Norimine describes what it was like to grow up as an only child in a Japanese-Syrian household in Pullman, a town in the Palouse region of Washington State.
An Unforgiving Legal System Welcomes Black Immigrants to America By Longreads Feature The Black Alliance for Just Immigration helps those affected by racial profiling and harsh immigration laws.
Deporting Billions of Tax Dollars, Farm Work, Good People, and Affordable Food Right Out of America By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight TheHudson Valley offers a glimpse of the ways deportations will effect America’s farm economy and food system.
You’re Not Really Going to Move to Toronto By Michelle Weber Highlight You can probably stop browsing those real estate listings.
Please Watch This Video Showing the Unfathomable Cruelty of U.S. Immigration Policy By Mark Armstrong Highlight The willful dismissal of our own humanity and common sense lies at the core of U.S. immigration policy.
Young African Artists Lead Nuanced Conversation about Race in America By Danielle Jackson Commentary Taiye Selasi, Yaa Gyasi, and Toyin Ojin Odutola expand notions of blackness with layered, nuanced artwork.
The Refugees Abused in the Name of Chicken and Profit By Michelle Weber Highlight ProPublica blows the whistle on Case Farms, which targets refugees for their labor force.
The Faces of Deportation in Southern California By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Trump’s immigration policy has exiled tax-paying, working-class people of Mexican descent to limbo in Tijuana.
How Should a German Be? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight In Harper’s, Yascha Mounk examines how recent Islamic immigration challenges many Germans’ core idea of their national identity.
Stories of Immigration as Protest: Letters to Donald Trump By Krista Stevens Highlight Barbara Zitwer, Colm Tóibín, Elham Manea, Linda Coverdale, Kyung-sook Shin, and Anne Landsman share their stories of immigration to protest Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban.
Death in the Desert By Pam Mandel Commentary “The number of migrants crossing illegally from Mexico to the U.S. has declined dramatically. Yet the rugged borderlands of southern Arizona have become a death zone.”
Why Populism Will Not Make America Great: The Making of a Mexican-American Dream By Krista Stevens Highlight Sarah Menkedick suggests that America has everything to lose if it can’t reject the resurgence of nativist (white) populism to embrace this generation of smart, ambitious, second-generation Mexican Americans.
