Blues and Roots
June 14, 2022
On the many faces of Charles Mingus.
John Washington
John Washington is the author of The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the U.S.-Mexican Border and Beyond. His work regularly appears in The Nation and The Intercept.
Strangers in our Midst
April 12, 2022
How Western governments debar and criminalize populations from countries they have invaded and exploited.
Absence of Malice
My mother’s family comes from a small village in Transylvania, a province horseshoed by the Carpathian Mountains and smack in the center of Romania. A shallow, purling river, the Sebeş, flows down from the foothills, cutting the village in half. With cemeteries at the edge ...
The Presence of Absence
March 17, 2021
Two films grapple with disappearances at the US-Mexico border.
The Kindness of Strangers
At the end of Moby-Dick, after the Pequod is splintered by the white whale, a coffin bobs up from the sinking wreckage, and Ishmael, treading water in the South Pacific, climbs on top of it. Over the next day, as sharks glide peacefully by, Ishmael floats “on a soft and ...