A Nation Turned Inside Out

By Jeannette Cooperman

A whole lot of us are grieving—and as a result, feeling even more vulnerable, because sadness, in this culture, reads as weakness. And weakness scares us, because it means we are defenseless and powerless.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Life Lines

By Jeannette Cooperman

Clotheslines are at once homespun and ethereal, whether they are strung across apartment buildings in Brooklyn or overlook a field of sunflowers in the Midwest.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

The Story of a Literary Friendship and How It Ends Badly

By Zachary Manditch-Prottas

Be it Hughes and Hurston, Baldwin and Wright, or Tupac and Biggie, burdened friendships are a recurrent and disturbingly alluring theme in the study of Black writers. Yet, if it is the dramatic bite of high-profile betrayal that tends to ignite a hot-selling story, in the case of Zora and Langston it is the dynamics of friendship that provide a happy counterexample.

Reviews

How the 1904 World’s Fair Destroyed a Man’s Soul

By Jeannette Cooperman

In 1895, Samuel Verner, a white man from South Carolina, moved to the Belgian Congo to work as a Presbyterian missionary. It seems he had a greater aptitude for acquiring human beings than saving souls. In 1904, he received a commission to bring a dozen people from the Congo to St. Louis to be exhibited at the World’s Fair.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

While We Fuss About Immigration, Americans Are Emigrating

By Jeannette Cooperman

Is this the usual pre-election jitters, when we all threaten Canada? Or is it the blend of clear-eyed realism, hope, and fantasy that brought settlers here in the first place? This country, for so long the world’s golden child, has tarnished.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

What Does a “Reset” Even Mean?

By Jeannette Cooperman

Reset. That is what we want to come out of this crisis. Not a “transformation,” which has a glowing aura but never works the promised miracle. Not a “reform,” which could be political and painful, or an “overhaul,” which would be expensive and exhausting. Just a “reset,” simple as pushing a button.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

All the Roads That Lead to Rome

By Timothy J. Moore

Addis offers a dark view of Rome’s history, in which historical change comes about not through high-minded actions or progress, but rather through brutality, ruthlessness, and accident. This is a healthful antidote to the triumphalist histories, acclaiming the expansion of the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity, Italian nationalism, or Western civilization, of which the city of Rome has sometimes been the center.

Reviews

How the Exile Compels the Acceptance of the Community

By Michael Faccini

Overall, The Soul of the Stranger is a daring book. Ladin dares to speak as a transgender person, unapologetically, and assert that transgender people have a place in Judaism, whatever people may say and think.

Reviews

The “Thin Places” Suffering Can Break Through

By Jeannette Cooperman

What would it feel like to be quarantined with a parent who was stressed to the breaking point, symptoms flaring, but could not seek help, either because illness had them paranoid or because they were afraid they would lose custody of the one reason they stayed alive?

Essays

Requiem for a Young Soldier Who Vanished

By John Griswold

Maybe it was being mistaken for that other young man that fixed the incident in my mind for 35 years. Maybe it was the helplessness of an army’s search at sea, on rivers, and in the jungle. Maybe I am predisposed to worry over everything turning away in time, calmly.

Essays

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