The Latest
The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country
J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy has been held up as a guidebook for understanding the 2016 election, but it’s rooted in a dangerous myth.
What New Zealand’s “Unfortunate Experiment” Can Teach Us About Medical Abuse
New Zealand’s response to medical misconduct should be a model for the rest of the world.
Rescuing Economics from Neoliberalism
As we heap scorn on neoliberalism, we risk throwing out some of its most useful ideas.
Imagine Every Light Is a Woman Who Came to the City Alone
A mother is a mother, regardless of the latest information regarding her children.
Keeping the Faith
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s latest book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, is his clearest expression yet of political fatalism. But black activism has always believed in the possibility of change.
In the Name of Victims
Looking beyond the symbolic crisis to the realities of Title IX implementation.
Three Poems
Words a rotted barn, full of must
and straw and animals sleeping.
I want to dream with you the mountainsides,
the beaches, the necking in guestbeds,
the words the wiring of our cry.
Maria
The erudition of a monster is a hard, cruel thing,
the way it makes a body ache, stitch to stitch,
with all it will not, cannot, know. But crueler still
is how the erudition fades, how Frankenstein rose
Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue
“The intake process begins with dismantling her personal space, one mantle at a time.”
Broken Fairytales
Two recent books, works of collage and fragmented biography, bring Czech masterworks to new readers.
Two Cheers for Polarization
We may not like it, but when it comes to U.S. politics, polarization may very well be part of the solution.
Lies
The seals are synchronized swimming again, like sad old ladies
in frilly bathing caps
My grandma nicknamed me Lemonade because I was yellow and ridged and buttery as
popcorn in that yellow sweater
For American Corporations, Winning Is Not Enough
Standing Rock shows us that businesses don’t simply silence protestors, they also discredit and bankrupt them.
The Untold Story of Mass Incarceration
Reform can’t succeed unless we understand the complex political forces behind the expansion of the carceral state.
Who Owns the Wind?
There is more than enough wind energy to power our future. But our model of paying for it is stuck in the past.
The Sound Tomorrow Cannot Make
Alan Felsenhal’s striking debut collection, Lowly, achieves something like early modern surrealism.
The Very Sexy Oracle of Delphi
—peach and coconut flashes
behind vegetable prison bars—
that the prison is the mind,
that the pond is what we call thought.
Waving at Trains
Nalo Hopkinson on the politics of dystopia, writing from the Global South, and the enduring importance of black mermaids.
America’s Imperial Unraveling
Could Trump’s repudiation of the Iran Deal be the beginning of the end of U.S. hegemony abroad?
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