Here it is! A new collection of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress.
As always, you can find our past collections here. You can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations, or subscribe to our free weekly email.
Publishers, writers, you can share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.
1. What Happens When a Veteran High School Teacher Becomes a Student for the Day
“I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day.” A high school teacher learns some sobering lessons about how kids experience a typical day — and the amount of sitting required.
2. No Apology
The truth about being Muslim in America:
In the eyes of those perpetually seeking an apology from Muslims, I am a Bad Muslim. I don’t put hashtag-suffixed apologies online for what someone else of my faith does. When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and terrified as anyone else was. We scary-looking Muslims experience human emotions, too. … We Muslims react to unexpected loss of life like any non-Muslim would. We cry, we mourn.
3. The Rise and Fall of Public Housing in NYC
A “subjective overview” of the history of public housing in New York City from the novelist Richard Price, framed through the lens of his own upbringing in the North Bronx’s Parkside Houses.
4. Ways Men In Tech Are Unintentionally Sexist
Kat Hagan, This Is Not a Pattern
How our behavior and language can have a harmful impact — and how we can fix it. “Small, simple changes will build the foundation for a better tech culture.”
5. Gone Girls: Human Trafficking on the Home Front
Mike Kessler, Los Angeles Magazine
Kessler talks to survivors of child prostitution, as well as law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, and advocates working to prevent the sex trafficking of minors.
6. The Evans Family Is Living in This World
Linda Vaccariello, Cincinnati Magazine
A community comes together to help a family after a tragedy:
“The reality hit me like nothing I’d ever experienced,” McDonald says. “She had no one. I couldn’t imagine what that was like.” McDonald went to Ao, threw her arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, and said, “We’ll help you.”
7. The Plunge
The story of Shavarsh Karapetyan, a Soviet swimming champion who dove into Armenia’s Lake Yerevan and saved dozens of lives from a sinking trolleybus.
8. How Pixar’s Gurus Brought the Magic Back to Disney Animation
A profile of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, whose intense focus on storytelling helped revive Disney’s animation studio with hits like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph.
9. ‘I Am Darren Wilson’: St. Louis and the Geography of Fear
Sarah Kendzior & Umar Lee, Quartz
St. Louis is a city long on the run from itself. White flight has spread from suburbia to exurbia, while decades of black demands — for better jobs, better schools, better treatment—go unheeded. This is a region deprived of resources, forcing residents to scrounge for more fertile terrain.
10. Stephen Powers Puts the Writing on the Wall
From the magazine Bklynr, a profile of the street artist behind some of Brooklyn’s most recognizable murals.
Photo: dystopos, Flickr
Filed under: Community, Reading, WordPress, WordPress.com
