Jamaicans are primed to contend with all who speak ill of their country. As someone who grew up and lived in Jamaica until my midtwenties—although I now live in the US—I understand how the culture reacts to criticism.
“Walkers are ‘practitioners of the city,’ for the city is made to be walked, [Michel de Certeau] wrote. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibiliti [...]
The surge in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the US border is so alarming that President Barack Obama described it as “an urgent humanitarian situation.” Following the president’s comments, the federal government announced a $2 million legal-aid program to help provide legal assistance to these kids, who normally must navigate the immigration-court system without representation. Given the overwhelming number of these kids, how far can $2 million go?
We are thrilled to congratulate Charles Wright on his appointment to the post of US Poet Laureate. A frequent contributor to VQR since the 1990s, Wright writes elegantly and powerfully about—in his words—“landscape, language, and the idea of Go [...]
Even casual readers of literary warhorses the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books will recognize the name Francine Prose. She’s written more than a dozen novels dating back to 1973, from Judah the Pious (Atheneum, 1973) [...]
This past January, I stood in the snow across the street from Matt’s Bar with a dozen fellow Minneapolitans, shivering in the subzero wind chill, as a short film was projected on the side of the building—five atmospheric minutes of people walking [...]
Editor's note: As a complement to her piece in our Spring 2014 issue, "A Difficult Balance," Carlene Bauer offers these five books on faith and fiction.
Everything That Rises Must Convergeby Flannery O’Connor
What is there to say? She [...]
The music closest to my heart (and soul) has been jazz, blues, rumba, son, reggae, soca, R&B, and—later in life—gospel. (This, despite being a godless Jew.) Growing up in Chicago helped. It was home to the powerful WVON (Voice of the N [...]
We first crossed into New Mexico westbound on Interstate 40 at Bard. It was the spring of 2005, and we were heading to Las Vegas to see my sister-in-law Gail graduate from law school. When my wife told me that she wanted to attend the ceremony, I had [...]
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