Essay
Summer 1964. Downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. Jim Scancarelli, staff member at local radio and television station WBT, spots “Uncle” Frank Rayborn sitting with his banjo on a poplar-wood chair on the sidewalk of South Tryon Street. He rushes to his office to grab a tape recorder. For this banjoist is truly unique: he only has »
Essay
“Those who had been medically incarcerated for many years found it difficult to seek lives on the outside, having internalized their ostracization as public health criminals, menaces, and ‘pests.’” Strum. Chucle. Cha-lang-a-lang. Croon. Twang. Clatter. Exuberant sounds from a party seem to float from snapshots taken around 1972 or 1973. In a large living room, »
Essay
“Nothing about us without us.” This call—first made by disability-rights activists in South Africa and since taken up by disabled people around the world—not only signals the central demand of disabled political movements for access, equity, and justice, it is also a connected reminder to those who tell the stories. Rejecting the well-worn narratives of »
Essay
For someone not accustomed to looking at one, an almanac or calendar that is meant to guide one’s farming and other activities is like looking at Sanskrit, and, in fact, some of the symbols look to be about that old. Comparing different calendars, each of which claims to be the most accurate, reveals enough similarities »
Poetry
How well its square fit my palm, my mouth, a toasty wafer slipped onto the sick tongue or into chicken soup, each crisp saltine a tile pierced with 13 holes in rows of 3 and 2, its edges perforated like a postage stamp, one of a shifting stack sealed in wax paper whose »
Memoir
I wasn’t much of a reader as a kid, but I carried books around with me so people would think I was one. It was a good look. I surrounded myself with books I didn’t read, something I do to this day: why do I have two copies of War and Peace if I’ve never even read »
Essay
Around midday on Saturday, May 27, 2000—the day that Eunice, Louisiana exploded—I was by sheer coincidence a tourist on foot in that small, Cajun Prairie town of about 11,000. A recent law school graduate, I had traveled to the town with my law school buddy Sam and his fiancé. Sam’s family roots were in Eunice, »
Poetry
there are different ways to sayscar tissue. pariah.there were plenty of us—I still feel sick when I comeeven when it’s my husband.I am called blank look. they beat us,& oftenin certain textbooksthey say the government wantedvirgins to stave off venereal disease.they gave me a modest sum.I walk with a limp.could be anyone—& I am as »
Essay
“The top of it is all we can see most of the time, but any true understanding of what we’re viewing tells us there is much, much more beneath the known surface, the still waters.” In October 2016, my wife, Jill McCorkle, and I drove our Tacoma pickup filled with cases of bottled water and »
Essay
Annabelle (18), Mekenzie (18), and Tanielma (17) stand at the edge of Island Road in Terrebonne Parish, the part of Louisiana’s coast that remains barely above the sea, watching as two excavators move dirt to build berms that might protect the land. When a storm blows from the west, or the east, the wind pushes »
Essay
Vidalia Mills had only been up and running for about a year when Eric Goldstein went on his quest. As soon as he’d confirmed that the demolition company was in possession of what he was looking for—that the machines hadn’t been destroyed after all—he flew from New York City to Greensboro, North Carolina, that same »
Essay
“When the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity came along, we got the chance to work together and ensure our voices were heard, just like our precedents who fought for our freedom and our rights.” Early August in Mississippi is typically characterized by a flood of students returning to crowded hallways and heavily air-conditioned classrooms. »