Missing People in the U.S. (03/23)
The number of active missing persons cases in the U.S. has declined steadily since 1997. This is due in large part to improvements in connectivity and communication, with cell phones and other handheld devices making it considerably easier to track a missing person's potential whereabouts. While this decline is cause for celebration, it ...
Adoption Outcomes for Birth Mothers (03/23)
Lola, the likeable and resilient protagonist in Bisi Adjapon's Daughter in Exile, finds herself in multiple difficult situations over a matter of years. At one point, pregnant without a partner after her husband dies, she is left to manage a toddler, her grief and an unborn daughter.
An active member of a parish community, Lola looks ...
Houston, We Have a Problem (03/23)
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on Houston, Texas. It was the biggest rainstorm in United States history and
the third major storm of its kind to hit the city in as many years. Huge swathes of Houston and its surrounding suburbs were submerged. Floodwater laced with toxic runoff, sewage and debris inundated ...
Abortions in the U.S.: Who Has Them? (02/23)
Jennifer Haigh's novel, Mercy Street, centers around a clinic that provides women's health care services, including abortion.
As most know, it is already difficult to gain access to legal abortion services in many parts of the United States; but legislation to outlaw access is now gaining traction, both by the Supreme Court and in many...
The Uphill Climb for Sub-Saharan African Girls' Education (02/23)
In the short story 'Dark Matter' from Gothataone Moeng's collection Call and Response, which takes place in Botswana, childhood friends Tumo and Nametso love swimming in the river and they love school. Daughters of teachers, they are inseparable until Tumo's mother is transferred. The girls meet up again at university in Gaborone. In her ...
Fascism in Pre-War England (02/23)
In Marie Benedict's historical novel The Mitford Affair, much of the narrative focuses on the rise of fascism in Great Britain before World War II.
Merriam-Webster defines fascism as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime…that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized ...
Involuntary Sterilization in the United States (12/22)
In Take My Hand, the protagonist Civil Townsend works at a family planning center in Montgomery, Alabama in 1973. She visits a Black family and administers birth control shots to two sisters, ages 11 and 13, at the behest of her supervisor, a man who later orders the girls to be sterilized. This story is based on the real-life ...
The White-Savior Complex (12/22)
What exactly is a white-savior complex (also known as white saviorism)? In Dipo Faloyin's
Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent, the definition is not as important as the negative impacts upon those who experience it.
According to
Black Equality Resources, white-savior complex is defined as 'an idea in which a white ...
The Lebensborn Program in Norway (11/22)
Jennifer Coburn's novel Cradles of the Reich largely takes place in Germany's first Lebensborn ("Fount of Life") home, Heim Hochland. Germany's economic hardship following its defeat in World War I was a key factor in the National Socialist Party (aka the Nazi Party) gaining control of the country in 1933. Led by Adolf ...
Mass Shootings in Oregon (10/22)
Kindra Neely's debut graphic memoir for young adults, Numb to This, documents her experiences as a survivor of the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in October of 2015. This was Oregon's deadliest mass shooting, resulting in 10 fatalities (including the gunman) and seven further casualties.
The incident is part of a larger ...
Teaching Young People Philosophy (10/22)
In K.J. Reilly's coming-of-age novel Four for the Road, main character Asher Hunting is fortunate to have an insightful sidekick to advise him. Will has suffered loss just as Asher has, but Will presents as more equipped to navigate his way through his grief. Early on in the book, Will recites Kierkegaard to Asher, noting that the ...
The Rise of Vehicular Homelessness in the U.S. (09/22)
In 2018, in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood, a woman named Sabrina Tate died inside her RV. She was almost 28 years old. A chronic drug user, Sabrina may have been killed by an infection. Two men living in the same vehicular lot, what was considered a safe space, had died there earlier in the year. Sabrina's parents, who had tried to help her...
Imposter Syndrome (09/22)
Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first identified '
imposter phenomenon,' popularly known as 'imposter syndrome,' in 1978. It is characterized by a belief that one's success is accidental. Clance and Imes' research was based on high achieving women who couldn't accept the success they had created and were frightened others ...
Rent Control in New York City (09/22)
In Sidik Fofana's Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, gentrification and rent rises pose a threat to the struggling characters living in an apartment building in Harlem. New York City and some neighboring suburban counties operate rent control and/or rent stabilization policies.
Rent control is rare, only applying to about 16,000 ...
Who Is Sallie Mae? A Brief History of Student Lending in America (09/22)
In 1972 the Student Loan Marketing Association, or Sallie Mae as it came to be known, was created as a government sponsored enterprise to provide and manage education loans in the United States.
The conditions for the student loan industry were established much earlier. At the beginning of the 20th century, most families would only be...
Suicide Among Combat Veterans (08/22)
War casts a long shadow, and no more so than when combat veterans return home carrying the heavy burden of physical and psychological wounds. As a result, one of the most urgent issues facing the United States military today is the epidemic of suicide among veterans. According to a
2021 article, since the terrorist attacks of September 11...
Female "Hysteria" (07/22)
Chris Pavone's portrayal of a victimized woman being called 'hysterical' in
Two Nights in Lisbon alludes to a phenomenon that can be found in accounts dating as far back as ancient Greece.
In a Curiosities of Medical History feature for
Medical News Today, Maria Cohut, Ph.D.,
details how conditions ranging from depression to ...
The Harms of Industrial Hog Farming in North Carolina (07/22)
In Wastelands, Corban Addison recounts the true story of a group of North Carolina residents fighting for justice after suffering through years of pollution and nuisance from neighboring industrial hog farms. It's an uphill battle against a powerful multinational corporation, a broken regulatory system and a political establishment ...
Rare Earth Metals and Global Politics (07/22)
In The Brilliant Abyss, Helen Scales draws attention to growing international interest in rare earth mining. Rare earths look set to overtake fossil fuels as the most valued energy resource on the planet, as they are key to producing green technology. What will this profound shift mean for oil- and gas-producing countries?
In the 20th ...
Language Challenges for U.S. Immigrants (06/22)
Language and communication are key themes throughout the work of Ocean Vuong. In both his fiction and poetry — including his newest collection, Time Is a Mother — he discusses the difficulties his mother faced as a Vietnamese immigrant living in the U.S. who didn't read, write or speak English.
Historically, being a melting...
Eating Disorders in Figure Skating (06/22)
A tiny, limber child, Keri Blakinger at the age of nine yearned to be smaller than her six-year-old dance classmate. To spite her health-conscious mother, Keri began sneaking brownies and cookies and the occasional Big Mac. Then, she would bike four blocks away and vomit in the bushes. 'I've puked here so many times,' she writes in ...
Generation Gaps in the Workplace (06/22)
Walk into any office and you'll likely find a mix of people at different points of their lives: Baby boomers, Generation Xers, millennials. And the presence of Generation Z continues to grow.
Iona, the main character in Clare Pooley's Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting, often experiences people judging her competencies based on ...
Sweatshops in Asia (06/22)
In Joan Silber's Secrets of Happiness, Ethan's father, Gil, has a lucrative career in the women's clothing industry, frequently jetting off to parts of Asia to oversee the outsourcing of production. Elsewhere in the book, a character named Bud takes a job with an organization in Cambodia campaigning to improve working conditions in ...
The Importance of "Tech Company" Status (06/22)
In Big Vape, Jamie Ducharme describes an existential crisis at the heart of Juul; while its founders (and many of its employees) saw the business as a tech start-up, to the Food and Drug Administration (and much of the public) it looked like a manufacturer of tobacco products. This distinction is not a mere matter of brand identity —...
Loneliness and Social Isolation in Japan (06/22)
Loneliness is one of many themes deftly explored by Mieko Kawakami in her novel All the Lovers in the Night, which follows a freelance proofreader living in Tokyo who has withdrawn from society.
A 2022 study conducted by the American Psychological Association concluded that global rates of loneliness have increased during the COVID...
Lavender Marriages in Classic Hollywood (06/22)
Nghi Vo's Siren Queen follows protagonist Luli Wei through an alternate version of historical Hollywood. While many aspects of the novel's world are fictitious to the tune of spells and supernatural beings, it also explores real-life social and political issues of the time and place, including the phenomenon of 'lavender' marriages. A ...
Gambling Addiction (06/22)
In Julie Clark's
The Lies I Tell, main character Kat's boyfriend Scott struggles with a gambling addiction, which affects the two of them and their relationship. When asked in an
interview what she wanted readers to take away from Scott's gambling problem, Clark stated, 'I want readers to see the complexity and heartache of loving an ...
Content Moderators' Lawsuit Against Facebook (2018) (06/22)
We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets centers on a group of content moderators for a large social media site, who are technically contract workers employed by a smaller, third-party company. Their story and company are fictionalized, but Bervoets draws heavily on material about a 2018 lawsuit by content moderators against Facebook ...
Open Adoption in the United States (04/22)
Around 140,000 children are adopted in the U.S. each year. This equates to
nearly 100 million Americans having some experience of adoption within their immediate family. While the process was once shrouded in secrecy and stigma for many, it is much more commonly discussed and celebrated today. In fact, many U.S. agencies now encourage ...
English and American Coverture Law (03/22)
As is made clear in Kate Moore's The Woman They Could Not Silence, the laws of coverture were to blame for the abuse, institutionalization and subsequent poverty Elizabeth Packard suffered at the hands of her husband and other men in her community. Brought to North America by English colonizers, 'coverture' was a common law that made ...
Book Burning and Censorship (02/22)
Hugo Hamilton's The Pages is narrated by a book that survived the Nazi regime's ceremonial book burning in wartime Berlin. Censorship of books has been a recurring issue throughout history, which suggests the power and influence of the written word and poses questions surrounding the motivation and fears of the censors.
The book ...
Could COVID-19 Spark Lasting Change? (02/22)
Setting people on a path to change is difficult. And when you're talking about millions of people, it often takes decades to see a mass evolution in behavior. Sometimes, however, a cataclysmic event will act as a catalyst that forces society as a whole to step off the precipice. Such events (e.g., the Great Depression, World War II, ...
Talking About Race Matters (02/22)
Years ago, comedian Chris Rock told a joke: 'All my black friends have a bunch of white friends and all my white friends have one black friend.' It is one of those bits of humor where the laughter leaves you reflecting on a sadder truth. Particularly, that racial segregation is still normalized in white communities. To have more than one ...
Anti-Chinese Sentiment Past and Present (01/22)
In
Last Night at the Telegraph Club, some of the pressure that Lily faces in her family life is related to their precarious situation as immigrants, specifically as Chinese immigrants in the aftermath of the anti-communist hysteria of
McCarthyism. Chinese immigrants have a long, often obscured history in the United States, which includes ...
The Laogai Research Foundation (01/22)
In her debut book,
Made in China, Amelia Pang cites the
Laogai Research Foundation (LRF) as a source for much of the information she presents about China's Laogai system (pronounced like loud-guy but without the 'd'). The organization's website explains:
'The Laogai system is the Chinese network of prisons, factories, and farms ...
American Intervention and Counter-Narcotic Efforts in Afghanistan (01/22)
The events of Jasmine Aimaq's debut novel, The Opium Prince, play out in the lead-up to the 1978 Saur Revolution, in which the Afghan president Mohammed Daud Khan was assassinated and overthrown by the Soviet-backed Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (the PDPA). The president had himself come to power in 1973 by overthrowing...
The "Central Park Five" (The Exonerated Five) (01/22)
On the night of April 19, 1989, several dozen teen boys went into New York City's Central Park as a loose group. Early on the morning of April 20, Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white investment banker, was found in the park; she had been raped and badly beaten. She remained in a coma for two weeks and retained no memory of the attack.
...
Libraries and Other Imagined Communities (11/21)
In The Book Collectors, a band of Syrian resistance fighters work together to salvage and share books from their bombed-out suburb of Damascus. The book focuses on the protagonists' newfound passion for reading, which helps them cope with the hardships of everyday life during very dark times.
Though it's nice to think that these young...
Transphobia in Gender-Critical Feminist Ideology (11/21)
In Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters draws attention to the views of feminists who discriminate against transgender women through the thoughts of Reese. 'In old books she had read,' Peters writes, 'Reese remembered women saying that if your husband doesn't beat you, he doesn't love you, a notion that horrified the feminist in Reese but ...
Gamification and AI: Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go (11/21)
As American political scientist Joseph Nye postulated in the 1980s, there are two ways to control people in geopolitics: hard power (i.e., coercion via violence) or soft power (i.e., enticement via incentive). Successful geopolitical strategy is often about knowing when to use soft power instead of force.
In We Have Been Harmonized, ...
The UK Independence Party (UKIP) (10/21)
Jasper Fforde's novel
The Constant Rabbit is a not-so-thinly-veiled allegory of racism and xenophobia that takes place in an alternate version of the United Kingdom. The governing party in the book is the UK Anti-Rabbit Party (UKARP), led by Nigel Smethwick, who seems to be based on Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK ...
The 13th Amendment and Contemporary Slavery in the US Prison System (10/21)
As we all know, slavery was abolished in the United States after the Civil War when Congress passed the 13th Amendment. What many might not recognize is that the 13th Amendment did not ban slavery entirely. In fact, it explicitly states an instance in which slavery and involuntary servitude are permitted — when people are ...
A Brief History of Trade Unions in the U.K. (09/21)
In Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club, the residents of the Coopers Chase retirement community are, in some ways, very much like any other group of retirees. They fawn over their grandchildren, they gather to discuss various aches and pains, and they frequently misunderstand technology. And like many other retirees, they also have ...
Racism and Ronald Reagan's 1980 States' Rights Speech (09/21)
In
Some Go Home, author Odie Lindsey references then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan's 'states' rights'
speech as the vehicle that 'had re-radicalized Hare's power, breathing life into his limp narrative.' Lindsey implies that the candidate's speech allowed the fictional character Hare Hobbs to create an illusion of power for himself...
Norway's Halden Prison (08/21)
Since its opening in 2010, Halden Prison, located in Norway's Østfold region, has been held by many who believe in the necessity of prison reform to be a model institution due to its humane treatment of inmates and emphasis on rehabilitation. In
Waiting for an Echo, Dr. Christine Montross visits Halden for a tour and contrasts ...
Reparations for Black Americans (08/21)
In White Too Long, Robert P. Jones makes clear that his view of racial justice includes a 'tangible economic accounting' of the ways in which churches have benefited from slavery and white supremacy, as well as restitution to the Black community. In doing so, Jones joins a large chorus of activists, politicians and others calling for ...
Discriminatory "Coffin Problems" in the USSR (08/21)
In
The Nesting Dolls, Natasha dreams of entering the mathematics program at Odessa University. However, after correctly solving all of the initial equations on her entrance exam, she is presented with an additional equation, one that seems impossible to answer. When she cannot answer it, Natasha is failed and refused admission. ...
Trauma and Abuse in Foster Care (07/21)
Jarvis Jay Masters was five years old when he was taken from his overwhelmed mother and placed with foster parents Mamie and Dennis Procks. They bestowed upon him the kind of luxuries middle class children take for granted. He had his own room, his own toys and clean clothes. His sheets were even ironed. More importantly, he wasn't ...
Miles of Freedom (07/21)
In his memoir,
When Truth Is All You Have, Jim McCloskey writes about several of the people his organization, Centurion, has helped free from prison after they were wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. Richard Miles, founder of the nonprofit
Miles of Freedom, is one of those McCloskey helped to exonerate.
On May 16, 1994, Deandre ...
Stone Mountain Confederate Monument (06/21)
In Memorial Drive, Natasha Trethewey explores how racism was a common and formative experience as she grew up in the South in the late 1960s and early '70s. This theme is established as she recalls driving to her mother's former apartment, located in Stone Mountain, Georgia, 20 miles northeast of Atlanta. The city is home to a national ...
