Fiction Pick of the Week: "Who Will Greet You at Home"
Magic, horror, and handmade children.
Magic, horror, and handmade children.
Lesley Nneka Arimah New Yorker Oct 2015 25min Permalink
An Alabama woman took the equivalent of one Valium during her pregnancy. A few weeks after she gave birth, she became one of more than 1,800 new and expecting mothers arrested under the state’s chemical endangerment law.
Nina Martin ProPublica Sep 2015 40min Permalink
A father’s attempt to combat the wage gap.
"How do we give Ivy the same opportunities as Abe? Do we praise her 21.7 percent more? Hug her 21.7 percent harder?"
The lives of Sue and Hector Badeau, who felt a calling to raise children and adopted twenty of them.
Larissa MacFarquhar New Yorker Aug 2015 45min Permalink
“We still have retrograde ideas about how pregnant women should feel, and we need to revise them — not only for depressed women but for all women.”
Andrew Solomon New York Times Magazine May 2015 25min Permalink
Paul Gayle wants to raise his daughter, but he needs a job and a home. What he gets is 16 lessons on fatherhood from the Obama administration.
The Washington Post Eli Saslow May 2015 Permalink
How one community is struggling to understand and respond to a cluster of suicides.
Diana Kapp San Francisco Magazine May 2015 25min Permalink
The author discovers devastating secrets while going through her late father’s belongings.
A home for troubled children in California comes undone.
Joaquin Sapien ProPublica, California Sunday Apr 2015 45min Permalink
The government says Matt DeHart is an online child predator. DeHart—and his parents—say he’s being framed over his knowledge of CIA secrets.
David Kushner Buzzfeed Mar 2015 40min Permalink
Family problems and a myriad of solutions.
"I don’t know if my husband and I are on the way to church or a hangover. It is too early in the drive to tell. The first Thursday of every month, my husband’s sister comes over to watch the kids. They are too old for a sitter, but the older one keeps trying to kill herself and we don’t want to risk it. Always keep an eye on them, I tell my sister-in-law. Don’t leave them alone for a second, not even to ice a cake, organize a closet, dry the dishes, say a prayer."
N. Michelle AuBuchon Hobart Mar 2015 Permalink
“The FBI man knocked on Kerri Rawson’s door 10 years ago Feb. 25.”
Roy Wenzl The Wichita Eagle Feb 2015 20min
The love story behind the battle over gay marriage in Texas.
Pamela Colloff Texas Monthly Mar 2015 40min Permalink
An investigation into the past of a prominent voice in the men’s rights movement.
Adam Serwer, Katie J.M. Baker Buzzfeed Feb 2015 25min Permalink
"Some of you probably think it’s a bad thing to group ourselves according to skin color—the lighter the better—in social clubs, neighborhoods, churches, sororities, even colored schools. But how else can we hold on to a little dignity?"
Toni Morrison New Yorker Feb 2015 10min Permalink
A black 16-year-old lights a white, agender 18-year-old’s skirt on fire while riding the bus. Is it a hate crime? And what’s the appropriate punishment?
Dashka Slater New York Times Magazine Jan 2015 25min Permalink
Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, want to tell your children what to learn in school.
William Martin Texas Monthly Nov 1982 30min Permalink
The U.S. is one of only two countries that don’t guarantee paid maternity leave. As a result, women across the country are rushing back to work after C-sections and losing their positions in order to take care of newborns.
Claire Suddath Businessweek Jan 2015 15min Permalink
People with Prader-Willi syndrome, caused by a genetic defect, always feel as though they’re starving. How can you condition them to control their appetites when temptation is everywhere?
Kim Tingley New York Times Magazine Jan 2015 25min Permalink
Thousands of Korean children were sent abroad beginning in the 1950s. Now, many of them are returning to their country of origin.
Maggie Jones New York Times Magazine Jan 2015 25min Permalink
The truth about a girl's father, shrouded in mystery.
Cyn Vargas The Chicago Reader Jan 2015 15min Permalink
The theme-park chain where kids learn to pilot a plane, pay taxes, and pretend to be adults.
Rebecca Mead New Yorker Jan 2015 25min Permalink
As the most famous helicopter news pilot in American history, Bob Tur prided himself on being the ultimate alpha male. Except all along, he knew he wasn’t.
Ed Leibowitz Los Angeles Magazine Dec 2014 10min Permalink
A postapocalyptic world, motherhood, and centaurs.
"The girls were born the day before the world ended. You had eighteen hours of bliss and then the satellites went out, and with them the systems that sent news around the world. An asteroid, you heard people say. Huddled in your darkened hospital bed, your daughter’s mouths so pink and empty. Like birds. One asteroid and then another, and another, and then so many more that no one could keep track. They pounded into the oceans and the hills. The shaking made the earthquakes come, and from them, the volcanoes. The oceans rose. The clouds that came in the wake of the asteroids were thick and hard, studded with cosmic ash."
Amanda Leduc Necessary Fiction Dec 2014 10min Permalink
The belief that hidden memories can be “recovered” in therapy has been discredited, but the mental health establishment does not always learn from its mistakes—and families are still paying the price.
Ed Cara Pacific Standard Nov 2014 25min Permalink