Working as a children’s librarian in a “one-library town,” Cleary, age 23, found bored boys asking, “Where are the books about kids like us?”
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Past Dictators Never Die
What happens when a regime founded upon exclusion, racism, nationalism, and an authoritarian leader ends? In Spain, such a regime never really ended.
Personal Comfort, Planetary Costs
When an increasingly uncomfortable climate forces more of life indoors, who might be forced to bear the costs?
Writers: Know Thyself in Excess
Why read MFA-trained writers writing about writers training in MFA programs?
Philanthropy and the “Jewish Continuity Crisis”
Remembering Is Resistance
Confronting painful pasts gives society an opportunity to change. This is why those invested in the amnesiac status quo fight against memory.
Episode 5: Novels & Medicine
How can reading novels affect the way doctors and patients communicate?
The DREAM Act Was Never Enough
In 20 years, Congress has never passed the DREAM Act. What has been lost in chasing this legislation’s narrow dreams?
B-Sides: Gary Indiana’s “Horse Crazy”
For Indiana, disaster is both imminent and ambient, both apocalyptic and manifested in everyday ordinariness.
What Does a “Click” Count For?
In the digital world, metrics mean everything. But who interprets just what they mean changes across organizations, countries, and cultures.
Empathy beyond Therapy
Sigrid Nunez’s fiction inspires the question: What would it mean to make caring for others into an explicitly public priority?
Who’s Afraid of Antiracism?
By France’s twisted logic, acknowledging race equals attacking the Republic.
Episode 4: Novels & Catastrophe
How do novels help us see the present in a broader historical perspective?
The Human Nature of Disaster
A storm is never just wind or rain. Our natural problems are social problems. The solutions to them must be social, too.
The Spy Who Came In from the Carrel
In Nazi Europe, countless books were banned. So those who saved books—whether university archivists or Jewish scholars—became smugglers.
Eugenics Powers IQ and AI
Both the definition of “intelligence” and the tech industry are deeply entwined with white domination. Will white-supremacist AI be the result?
Pay Attention When They Tell You to Forget
Remember that anti-Black violence has been the central dynamic of US history—and how Black women have struggled with this violence for centuries.
Episode 3: Novels & Intimacy
How can novels expand our understanding of sex and intimacy in the digital age?
Binging the Borderlands
Contemporary TV series that take on Latinx life have increasingly embraced the complexity of their subject matter.
When Nature Is Valued over Human Life
White South Africans used wildlife conservation to build a narrative as a race. Unfortunately, this pursuit came at the expense of Africans.
