Ben, Author at Common Reader

The Eternal Christmas Tree

A real tree is a sacrifice, a once-living being nailed to its stand, bleeding sap, a star on its crown. The artificial tree has no smell, no bark, no particularity. It never faced a north wind or nurtured a cardinal.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Santa Claus is Back in Town

By Gerald Early

All of the men profiled in Ron Cooper’s book have been trained to be Santa, have been taught how to talk to children, to put nervous children at ease, and to make misbehaving children less truculent. They have been taught how to deal with difficult or awkward requests or wishes. It takes some dedication to be Santa. Maybe we all need to take a bit of instruction at a Santa school.

Reviews

My Christmas Seasons in Ghana and the United States

By Keona Dordor

Each year, as the Christmas season approaches, I find myself instinctively measuring the present against a backdrop of my Ghanaian childhood.

Belief | Dispatches

How Black Migration in St. Louis Sparked Generation Nope

By Lyndsey Ellis

What was once America’s fourth-largest city remains an enigma consistently met with collective ambivalence. There is a dark side to the city, especially when it comes to racial disparities. Historically, decades of oppression have left a bad taste in the mouths of many Black St. Louisans.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

Five Reasons Black St. Louisans Are Migrating from St. Louis

By Lyndsey Ellis

The mass exodus of Black St. Louisans in recent years continues to raise eyebrows and stir concerns that question where longtime residents are going, but mostly, why they are leaving.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

Five Things I Learned at Greenwood Cemetery

By Keona Dordor

The fact that a place like Greenwood had to exist in the first place reveals much about the profound implications of racial dynamics at the time. The history of its desecration and neglect, followed by the necessity of its revival, poignantly illustrates the enduring struggle and resilience of African Americans in our pursuit of equality and acknowledgment.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Getting Fighters to Pick the Right Battles to Fight

By Jessica W. Chin

McClearen argues that the marketing and branding success of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was in great part made possible by sociocultural, technological, and political conditions that provided an ideal landscape for realizing success in building the promotion. Fighting Visibilityis McClearen’s assessment of these conditions, showing how the UFC aligned itself with dominant ideological messages and neoliberal logic, as well as movements of identity activism, to create a powerful sports business enterprise.

Reviews

TCR’s Annual “Top Fives”

By The Common Reader staff

With two “Notable Essays” selected for inclusion in this year’s Best American Essays anthology, plus landings in top Internet aggregators such as Longreads, 2023 was a banner year for The Common Reader. Here our staff goes one field further, naming five personal favorites published by the journal this year, along with five favorite cultural moments from the wider world of books, film, documentary works, podcasts, and food.

Essays

Reclining Nude Woman by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

What a Piece of Work Is a Woman

By Jeannette Cooperman

We face the same dilemma with gender that we face with race. Science has shown that neither is an essential category, just a convenient construct we imposed upon infinite variations. But because that construct allowed centuries of injustice, we have to keep using its labels in order to repair the damage they have done.

Essays

Helping My Friend’s Garden Grow

By John Griswold

Rocks and stones are reality agents, signifying only their own existence. Irreality stems from perception, thought, and language. In this respect, stones are easy; people and their choices are hard.

Essays