Today in History - December 7 https://t.co/l4K62iiGSU On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, killing more than 2,300 Americans. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Dec 7, 2021
Since we started the #longreads hashtag in 2009 to share great reads on Twitter, curation has been the beating heart of Longreads. All year long, we highlight our favorite stories in the weekly Longreads Top 5. At the end of the year, we love to reflect on and share the pieces that stayed with us, a tradition we’ve kept for 10 years! Today, we’re kicking off our annual curation celebration with five moving personal essays we loved in 2021. Watch for lists over the next couple of weeks that highlight reported essays, investigative reporting, features, and profiles.
For this category, I’m recommending a moving, lyrical personal essay from Kim Green and Chantha Nguon. Nguon is a co-founder of a women’s social enterprise in rural northeastern Cambodia. For 10 years, these two friends have been collaborating on Nguon’s life story, through interviews and cooking sessions, which will eventually culminate into Slow Noodles, a memoir on food, loss, and recovered family recipes. This excerpt from the memoir-in-progress is an evocative piece on surviving the Cambodian genocide, and remembering the flavors, the memories, and the past that the Khmer Rouge regime tried to erase. It’s also sprinkled with “recipes,” made up of ingredients that reveal details of Nguon’s life, particularly of her childhood in Battambang: “Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy French-Catholic-school education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Separate her from home, country, and a reliable source of food.” I’ve read this gorgeous essay a number of times, and each time I pay attention to new details — aromas, tastes — which make me appreciate it even more. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Authors Chantha Nguon and Kim Green on the story they wish they’d written this year:
We both loved “Cambodian Americans Are Ready to Share Their Cuisine, On Their Terms” by Maryam Jillani in Condé Nast Traveler. It’s a great primer on Cambodian cuisine that acknowledges the diaspora’s collective trauma without dwelling on it. And we love how she highlights the artistry of chefs we follow and admire. We wish we had written it but are also thrilled that Jillani did it so well.
In her exquisite piece about the human condition in the age of COVID, climate change, and other calamities, Briohny Doyle challenges readers — and herself — to give up the ghost of renewal. “What is an ideal community, a good life,” Doyle asks, “if nothing is renewed, if we are working in and through catastrophe with only what we have now and in the face of what will be?” This question is more than essay fodder. It’s a mantra, an incantation — for us all. —Seyward Darby
Author Briohny Doyle‘s personal essay recommendation:
I’m a long-time admirer of Vanessa Berry’s writing, which is always marked by assiduous curiosity and intimate detail. Gentle and Fierce — the title of her new collection — describes her writing as much as her animal subjects. This essay, “Perec’s Cat” is a wonderful example of her enviably light touch at work.
Even as artificial intelligence creeps across science and technology, bulldozing computational problems, we comfort ourselves in the face of such power by thinking there are some things a program simply can’t do. A program can’t be funny, can’t be fraught, can’t be human. And maybe it can’t. But in Vauhini Vara’s gutpunch of an essay, we begin to see the glimmer of otherwise. Unable to write about her sister’s death of a rare cancer years earlier, Vara began feeding the linguistic engine GPT-3 prompts about her sister — and over the course of nine increasingly stirring attempts, their two voices meld in a way that wipes away any preconceptions you might have brought to the piece. This isn’t a warning klaxon about robot overlords; it’s a bracing exploration of what can happen when we finally hold the mirror at the perfect angle. —Peter Rubin
Author Vanessa Angelica Villarreal on “Ghosts”:
“My own writing is largely a practice of communion with the dead—recording forgotten lives, lost records, documenting collective memory. I personally use tarot to tap into my own unconscious and excavate the buried material there, and have noted the recent trend of astrology apps and tarot on TikTok and the uncanny specificity of its algorithms to ensure the right message finds you. It is brilliant to use AI as a divination tool, and to explore what mathematical fabric algorithms might be connected to beyond our understanding.”
Alison Criscitiello’s essay about her climbing partner Anna Smith has stayed with me for a long time. It starts off as a rollicking adventure story: Two best friends embarking on a climbing expedition to the Indian Himalayas. The affection and admiration the women share spills out of her words, “opposites in almost every way imaginable, end members constantly bringing one another closer to an elusive center.” It is not just an exquisitely told quest: It is also about true friendship — and the joy found in sharing beautiful experiences.
Then it becomes something else. When Criscitiello describes Anna’s death, it is raw; I felt her pain. The essay turns into a survival story: Surviving not only the physical challenge of getting Anna off the mountain, but the grief, shock, and loneliness overwhelming Criscitiello now that she “no longer had Anna tethered to me.” For three days, she stays with Anna before a team arrives to help take her body down. Even then, Criscitiello remains, “guarding her” until Anna is finally cremated “along the shores of the Beas River in the heart of Manali” and her ashes taken home. It is time spent remembering Anna, whose “strength emanated from her core” and whose spark “set my aspirations afire.” —Carolyn Wells
Brimhall’s essay explores the influence that art, process, and ritual have on dealing with grief and loss as she mourns her mother’s death and the end of her marriage. So many essays deal with grief, but few consider the shape of it through so many disparate lenses. As Brimhall makes art out of the unexpected, she weaves a strand of persistent, insistent hope for the reader. “I love that nothing is wasted,” she writes. “Everything is ripe for transformation.” This essay reminds me that despite the fact that humans struggle with loss and change, maybe we can learn something about ourselves if we choose to lean on process and routine. Maybe too, we can get better at being more human as we deal with things that end, be it a life, a friendship, a marriage, or even just a time in our lives. —Krista Stevens
Quote of the Day: "The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others." - Robert Baden-Powell
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Dec 7, 2021
It cost only three cents for a copy of the Washington Post's very first issue in 1877. https://t.co/6i6Po5pQHu #DCHistory It cost only three cents for a copy of the Washington Post's very first issue in 1877. https://t.co/6i6Po5pQHu #DCHistory — Boundary Stones (@BoundaryS…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Dec 6, 2021
In case you missed it last week, read about these interesting New York City tenement house committee maps from 1894 in our latest blog post! Read the post here: https://t.co/Re0YGausE8 https://t.co/AlbHAWQXRo In case you missed it last week, read about these interesting New Y…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Dec 6, 2021
In the mid 1980s, the creation of the Friendship Archway in D.C.'s Chinatown was controversial among neighborhood residents because of its association with China's Communist government. https://t.co/zZQBfiTSPz #DCHistory In the mid 1980s, the creation of the Friendship Archw…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Dec 6, 2021
Looking for a gift for the reader in your life? Here are eight books we featured on Longreads this year: the memoir of a teen environmentalist, an essay collection on dance and illness, a refugee family’s story, and more.
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In this debut memoir, autistic climate activist Dara McAnulty writes about his immersive, intense connection to nature and wildlife with lyrical, evocative prose. The book’s entries, centered around McAnulty’s encounters around his home in Northern Ireland through the seasons, show a teenager’s deep appreciation for the natural world, science, and conservation.
Unfortunately, for me, I’m different. Different from everyone in my class. Different from most people in my school. But at breaktime today I watched the pied wagtails fly in and out of the nest. How could I feel lonely when there are such things? Wildlife is my refuge. When I’m sitting and watching, grown-ups usually ask if I’m okay. Like it’s not okay just to sit and process the world, to figure things out and watch other species go about their day.
Read an excerpt: ‘The Fledglings Are Out!’
When Jennifer Berney and her wife Kelly embarked on the journey to start a family, they found that the options available did not accommodate lesbian couples like them. Part-memoir, part-history of fertility and the LGBTQ+ community, Berney’s book explores feminism, outdated notions of heredity and paternity, and queer family-building.
As I was coming of age as a lesbian and considering my future, it had never once occurred to me that the medical industry could legally withhold services from me or anyone else, that they could say yes to straight couples and no to queers, but in fact they did just that. Most sperm banks and fertility clinics turned away any woman who wasn’t conventionally married. Sperm banks weren’t made for lesbians.
Read an excerpt: Binders Full of Men
Asad Hussein grew up in Dadaab refugee camp complex in Kenya, which was established in the early 1990s as families from Somalia fled the country’s civil war. When he was 9, his older sister Maryan was able to resettle in Arizona, but he and the rest of his family had to wait for years before they could come to America. Their story, told beautifully by Ty McCormick, is ultimately a hopeful one, while also revealing the absolute brokenness of the U.S. refugee resettlement program.
Many new arrivals in Tucson who had come from Dadaab, including Yussuf, had never lived outside of a small rural village. Some of the children had never seen the outside of a refugee camp. Maryan was unique in that she had lived alone in Nairobi. She also spoke decent English, and was used to a level of independence that was unusual in conservative Somali communities. This was a source of constant friction in her marriage, but it was also a font of opportunity in America.
Read an excerpt: When Refugee Families are Separated, Women Carry the Burden
Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living in rural Pennsylvania, in the greater Williamsport area, among communities caught in the middle of a fracking controversy. His book is a deep dive into the wider fracking debate, U.S. property rights, and the conflict between America’s notions of liberty and personal choice and the public good.
Thanks to land leasing, George had finally broken free of a lifetime of relative deprivation. Though he was hardly alone in turning to the fracking lottery in an effort to escape hardship, George certainly made out better than most. Of course, those who didn’t own any mineral estate couldn’t participate in the fracking lottery.
Read an excerpt: The Fracking Lottery
What does life look like for a ballet dancer with rheumatoid arthritis? This essay collection from Renée K. Nicholson explores the world of professional dance, the discovery of one’s body, and living with chronic disease.
The rest of my life will always be entwined with rheumatoid arthritis. But it’s my choice to also be something more, to not feel sick, to still find those shadows of a dancer, which is to say tiny flecks of magic, within me. Like anyone who is hopelessly in love, I will always be the keeper of a flame.
Read an excerpt: Happy is a Relative State
Plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso presents a whimsical discussion of the lives of plants, and the many lessons they can teach us about living and thriving on this planet — together. A manifesto of sorts, it’s playful, informative, and inspiring, reminding us of the interconnectedness of all things and urging us to take action in a time of climate change.
Playing with something whose working mechanisms are not well known is clearly dangerous. The consequences can be completely unpredictable. The strength of ecological communities is one of the engines of life on Earth. At every level, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, it is these communities, understood as relationships among the living, that allow life to persist.
Read an excerpt: Why Bumblebees Love Cats and Other Beautiful Relationships
In her memoir, Miranda Ward reflects on pregnancy loss, infertility, and the unique place of almost-motherhood: an uncertain landscape characterized by waiting, wanting, hoping, and not-knowing. A writer and geographer, she asks questions of geography on the most intimate scale and discovers the wilderness of her own body.
The idea of the miscarriage in progress perplexes the part of me that imagined that this is a thing that can only happen privately, violently, suddenly, because it is a thing that is happening without much noise at all, and meanwhile here I am transcribing an interview, here I am meeting with a freelance client, wearing a new skirt I bought yesterday from the charity shop, here I am buying groceries and planning dinner, with nothing but a question mark inside me.
Read an excerpt: The Geography Closest In
Natasha Pulley’s genre-bending and time-twisting novel is an original and entertaining adventure, blending history, speculative fiction, a love story, and a wartime tale into one.
Most people have trouble recalling their first memory, because they have to stretch for it, like trying to touch their toes; but Joe didn’t. This was because it was a memory formed a week after his forty-third birthday.
He stepped down off the train. That was it, the very first thing he remembered, but the second was something less straightforward. It was the slow, eerie feeling that everything was doing just what it should be, minding its own business, but that at the same time, it was all wrong.
Read an excerpt: Even the Steam Had a Shadow
