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The Dead Are Arising—The Life of Malcolm X

Herb Boyd The Amsterdam News
This award-winning biography mines some hitherto untapped sources, including extensive interviews with members of Malcolm X's immediate family, to present the fullest picture yet of the famed Black Liberation Movement leader.

Taking it to the street: Food vending during and after COVID-19

Catherine Brinkley The Conversation
Yusuf Abdullah, one of the city’s horse-cart produce vendors known as arabbers, leads Tony and his cart through the streets of Baltimore, Maryland.
Curbside produce vendors often help communities that lack a grocery store to maintain access to healthy, inexpensive food. But long before the pandemic, many cities made it difficult for mobile produce sellers and other street food vendors to operate

Nomadland Turns American Iconography Inside Out

Alissa Wilkinson Vox
Nomadland is a piercing look into a country that’s becoming less and less inhabitable for its older men and women, and more stingy about who gets to dream. And, fundamentally, it’s a poignant portrait of a broken heart.

High School Production of Les Miserables

Connie Post Ovenbird Poetry
Connie Post’s remarkable poem illuminates how our culture programs us to grieve for soldiers but accept exploitation of young women.

Cedric Robinson and the Origins of Race

Minkah Makalami Boston Review
As more of Robinson’s books come back into print, the reviewer argues that reading them with his seminal work Black Marxism can enrich our understanding of racial capitalism and offer additional tools for fighting our present political impasse.

Barbara Dane’s Life of Defiance and Song

Jenn Pelly New York Times
The 93-year-old musician, co-founder of the political label Paredon Records, looks back on a history of resistance. If you see your country “making horrible mistakes, you have to speak up,” she said. “You’re colluding with it if you don’t speak up.”

Introducing ‘Food Grammar,’ the Unspoken Rules of Every Cuisine

Emily Monaco Atlas Obscura
Much like language, cuisine obeys grammatical rules that vary from country to country; a cuisine’s grammar can be reflected in the order in which a meal is served, and a grammar can dictate which foods can (or cannot) be paired.