This excerpt from Hua Hsu’s memoir offers a glimpse into his parents’ generation of immigrants from Taiwan to America, and the faxes they sent to each other about homework, zines, and Nirvana. My parents had fond memories of listening to the station when they were teen-agers, back when it was Armed Forces Radio. In time, […]
Personal Essay
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Woke Up With an Allergy to Cold
How can someone become allergic — full-on, allover hives allergic — to cold? This essay from Alison Espach unfolds like a slow walk along a precarious ridgeline: You feel the discomfort, but you also trust the journey enough to enjoy it. There’s a practiced sense of pace here, an easy deliberation that pairs well with […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Acid Church
An essay by Courtney Desiree Morris on Louisiana, her grandmother, drugs, feeling alive, and finding one’s queer tribe. I roll my hips like the Mississippi, joints loose and easy, feeling light and free. I cannot remember the last time I felt this way. That makes me sad. I accept this insight and let it go […]
Posted inStory
The Emptying
“I’m amazed at our human capacity to adapt to the unbearable. Almost anything can seem normal if it’s inflicted on us long enough.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sewing Lessons
In this personal essay at Salvation South, a new magazine edited by the founding editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner, Shelley Johansson retells her family’s story against the background of World War II. I know my great-grandmother felt that she was helping the war effort when she sewed bandages – her pride radiates off the page […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Searching for the Mountaintop in Upstate New York
A family confronts its racial past along the Appalachian Trail.
Posted inAnnouncements, Nonfiction, Writing
Calling All Writers: Pitch Us Your Essays
Do you have an idea for a Longreads essay? Now is the time to share it.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Ungrown
“Here it is: Women are the gravity stopping humanity from drifting off aimlessly into the void. We mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, grandmothers — women — are the backbone of the world.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Searching for Sleeper Trains
“Trains are still a part of my blood, my birthright. Through them I embrace my own kind of mobility and ambition, those two valued traits in my family line, if not quite manifested in the direction I’m heading.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Gradual Extinction of Softness
“The memory of hunger is a curse that never leaves you.”