As we look toward the New Year, here’s a look back at some pieces we’ve loved this year—our baker’s dozen.
We might need a new story. We’re staying strong. We’re looking for something beautiful out of the darkness. And looking for lessons in a fig library. We’re putting on a pop, err, country song. We’re confronting the afterlives of Jim Crow. We’re getting creative about voting rights. We’re making a space for all of us. We’re thinking about memory and mothers. And power and democracy. Plus a benediction.
Wishing you peace this holiday season, and happy reading.
I Might Need a New Story
by James Harrison
“What I always left out of the story—maybe I thought it mawkishly sentimental—is that it is a beautiful thing to be part of this small community in the mountains.”
“stay strong”
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
“The best offering I have available to me is a love that has flowed through a series of decisions, actions, and artifacts that I cumulatively name the Black feminist tradition.”
Something Beautiful out of the Darkness
Jesmyn Ward and Regina N. Bradley in conversation
“For me, the Gothic comes out in wrestling with that darkness, wrestling with trauma, wrestling with grief, wrestling with loss, wrestling with this idea that there is more to the world than what we see on the surface.”
Lessons from a Fig Library
by Katy Clune
“I’ve come to believe that a fig library is a sort of a mandate for a good life.”
“Pop Stars Don’t Die, They Move to Nashville to Record”
by Amanda Marie Martínez
“Despite the anxiety it’s induced, the link between country and pop has been key to country music’s enduring popularity and relevance.”
Confronting the Afterlife of Jim Crow
by Brian Palmer
“The older I got, the more I realized that our acceptance was . . . fragile, conditional. The signs were small but telling.”
“Blocks for Freedom”: Sewing for Voting in Post–Jim Crow Mississippi
by William Sturkey
“‘Blocks for Freedom’ helped dozens of poor Black Mississippi women fight for the right to vote—not with marches and sit-ins but through making clothes, selling lunches, and hosting concerts.”
A Rooming House for Transient Girls
by Jovonna Jones
“Freedom of mobility, accessibility of housing for one night or many, and a safe and secure environment for the many ways young Black women needed to spend their days—that was the point.”
A Visual Dispatch
by Colony Little
“The photographs and items my mother brought back with her from Texas tell her migration story, connecting me to the people, places, and events that shaped her life and echo in mine.”
Captive Maternal
by Kennedi Carter
“‘Help’ was a word that sat perched at the seat of my mouth almost daily—oftentimes uncomfortably.”
There Has to Be Power
Sherrilyn Ifill & Errin Haines in conversation
“What I want to see is a different way of talking about voting being unequivocal about the desire and the need for power to make change. The only way you make change is with power.”
The South’s Democracy Struggle Reaches New Urgency
by Benjamin Barber
“The current iteration of voter suppression that has swept across the South has been met by renewed organizing efforts that remain determined to fully restore the Voting Rights Act and secure the promise of democracy.”
Benediction
by Meg Day
“I learned to ride out
of necessity
as if it were the town
that bore me”
Header image: Detail from Calling the sun to work, by Lindsay Adams, 2024. Oil on canvas, 48 × 72 in., as featured in Sojourning.
