Arts · Books
(On June 16, 1976, the youth of Soweto, Johannesburg’s massive Black township, rose up to protest a new rule making Afrikaans the language of instruction in their schools—a language that most did not know well. They w...
Read article →Birth fractured my sense of time—of how time unfolded. I had previously taken for granted that time passed swiftly from one moment to the next. I organized my understanding of my own life according to the idea that ti...
Read article →Sugarcane plantations reigned supreme in Trelawny, Jamaica, in the late 1700s, when there were more than one hundred estates. The parish, covered by loamy rainforest soil, was established in 1770 by combining land fro...
Read article →It’s pride month! What better time to go spelunking in the archive, so as to situate the current moment, or thank an ancestor? I’ve been on a research kick, personally. Thanks to round-ups like this one from Lindsy Va...
Read article →The beloved British artist David Hockney, who died last week at the age of 88, is celebrated for his vibrant paintings, his innovative techniques, and his joyful kookiness. He also, like many visionaries and other peo...
Read article →I’ve spent much of my career reporting outside the United States, but in recent years, many of my interviews have ended the same way: with questions to me about what is happening at home. The world is watching the cha...
Read article →What happened in Santiago, the matter that began my great downfall, the rupture in my previously hallowed existence, was this: I played the concert of my lifetime. A statement that might sound foolish, grandiose, ridi...
Read article →Joy Williams wrote that one of eight essential attributes of the short story is “An animal within to give its blessing.” When I first came upon this wisdom, I was on the seventh draft of my debut novel Kitten, about
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