This week, we’re sharing stories from Nell Boeschenstein, Hannah Giorgis, David Davis, Chris Randle, and Kelly Conaboy.
Granta
A Few Words about Fake Breasts
Nell Boeschenstein, writing almost seven years after her prophylactic mastectomy, examines how breasts — whether real or fake, attached to or removed from their original owner — carry an overabundance of personal and cultural meaning.
Haruki Murakami Strolls Through His Childhood Home After the Hanshin Earthquake
When Haruki Murakami walked the long distance between his childhood home outside Kobe and the city center, he found a city changed by the great Kobe earthquake, and the constant spector of violence.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from May Jeong, Leslie Jamison, Irina Dumitrescu, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Matt Wake.
Barbara Ehrenreich on Writing to Think
Barbara Ehrenreich on thinking as an antidote to “the unknown and potentially menacing.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantor, Susan Dominus, Jim Rutenberg, and Steve Eder; Eliana Dockterman, Stephanie Zarachek, and Haley Sweetland Edwards; John Woodrow Cox; Nadim Roberts; and Phil Klay.
Parsing Her Identity With A Long-Lost Folder, Plus the Internet
A.M. Homes wrestles with her ambivalence toward learning more about her birth parents and the circumstances of her adoption.
The File: Lost Then Found
A personal essay in which A.M. Homes — who ten years ago published The Mistress’s Daughter, a memoir about meeting her birth parents — reports on the experience of recently being given her long lost adoption file, and the effects of the information on her understanding of her origins.
Welcome Nowhere: The Plight of the Rohingya Refugees
Myanmar’s Rohingya people escape systematic discrimination at home only to suffer depredations in search of new homes.
Stories of Immigration as Protest: Letters to Donald Trump
Barbara Zitwer, Colm Tóibín, Elham Manea, Linda Coverdale, Kyung-sook Shin, and Anne Landsman share their stories of immigration to protest Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban.