Express
The Anti-Bloombergistas and the City in Exile
By Matthew VazJust make him stop speakin’ Spanish. That’s all I’m sayin’. We can’t go on like this son. Wit’ this guy speakin’ Spanish everyday in his press conferences man. Givin’ directions about Swine Flu in Spanish.
Letter to India: The Platform of Hope
By Tabish KhairThe most predictable thing about national elections in India seems to be their relative unpredictability. At least opinion and exit polls get it vaguely wrong almost every time, and this time they were sometimes glaringly off the mark.
Love in the Time of Swine Flu: David Lida’s Affair with Mexico City
By Mark DerySmell that? It’s the smell of Deep Time. Not in the scientific sense of the fathomless vastness of geological time, but in the mythic, plumed-serpent, under-the-jaguar-sun sense. The Mexican sense.
Hope for Justice at the World’s Court? Pamela Yates with Williams Cole
For 20 years now, the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (June 11th-25th at the Walter Reade Theater) has programmed documentary, narrative and animation from all over the world—including the U.S.—that engage issues and present stories that are often only blips in the American mainstream news.
Something About Histories in Berlin
By Joseph RiippiFive years ago, I tried to kill myself. At least I think I did. I was very drunk; I had taken a lot of pills.
Down in Jamaica: A Journey to the Calabash International Literary Festival
By Hirsh SawhneyThe smell of wet garbage and puke permeates the 3:30 a.m. West Village air. Crossing the street to avoid a tipsy homeless man, I pass by some students jamming on a discarded piano, trying to conjure up the artistic frivolity and earnestness that has long since disappeared from this pocket of Manhattan.
A Global Look at Women’s Rights
By Kaitlin BellRegardless of their stance on abortion, Westerners often have no problem dismissing as backward and misogynistic the practice of routinely aborting female fetuses.
The Pre-Fast Food Era: The Food of a Younger Land
By Christopher MichelMark Kurlansky’s new book, The Food of a Younger Land might have a better back story than any book that has come out in the last several years.
Addictive, Ephemeral Stories in a Digital Age
By Ian CrouchSusan Boyle was introduced to the world on Saturday, April 11. You may have already forgotten her, but most likely she’s still kicking around somewhere in your head.
Lost and Found in Bangkok
By Nicholas DeRenzoLawrence Osborne is not your mother’s travel writer. Ironically, he may be your grandmother’s. This is not to suggest that his new book, Bangkok Days: A Sojourn in the Capital of Pleasure, is stodgy or uptight.
An Interstate of Words
By Christopher MichelIt Might Do Well With Strawberries, a new book by David Matlin, sits at the blurry edges between diary, polemic, poetry, and essay collection. For the most part, Matlin, a West Coast poet who has previously written about the American prison system, constructs the book as a set of excerpts from his journals from early 2004 through the end of 2005.
