This week, we’re sharing stories from Steve Kolowich; Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg; Taffy Brodesser-Akner; Carolyn Murnick; and Jamie Lauren Keiles.
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1. Who’s Left to Defend Tommy Curry?
Steve Kolowich | Chronicle of Higher Education | July 27, 2017 | 32 minutes (8,030 words)
A black philosopher at Texas A&M thought forcing a public discussion about race and violence was his job. Turns out people didn’t want to hear it.
2. Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow’
Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg | The New York Times | July 21, 2017 | 12 minutes (3,000 words)
An exhausted single mother takes a bath and her five-year-old daughter wanders out of the apartment and is found outside. Instead of being returned to her mother, a neighbor calls child services and the daughter is put in foster care. For women living in poor neighborhoods with few child care options, a single mistake can lead to a legal nightmare.
3. Let’s Go to Jerusalem for Soup Again
Taffy Brodesser-Akner | Saveur | July 21, 2017 | 7 minutes (1,816 words)
Taffy Brodesser-Akner travels to Israel to reexamine the soup of her youth and the gap between memory, desire, and (ugh) reality.
4. What I Know About My Best Friend’s Murder
Carolyn Murnick | New York Magazine | July 25, 2017 | 13 minutes (3,435 words)
An excerpt of The Hot One: a Memoir of Friendship, Sex and Murder, by Carolyn Murnick. Murnick tries to make sense of the stabbing death of her childhood best friend at 22, in 2001, just eight months after they last saw each other.
5. Naked Truths
Jamie Lauren Keiles | Racked | July 25, 2017 | 17 minutes (4,419 words)
Jamie Lauren Keiles spends a week at a naturist camp to learn “why people get naked.” As she exercises, sun tans, and square dances her way through a week garbed for the most part only in shoes, she gets stripped not only of inhibitions around her own body, but also of notions around naturist intent, learning that most enthusiasts take off their clothes not for sexual reasons, but simply to feel free.
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