Portside

This holiday season is truly different. Alongside the festivities, battle lines have been drawn. The survival of democracy is at stake. We ask readers for their support once a year. If you like what we do, this is the time to support Portside.

The first three seasons of The Expanse are largely concerned with how class structures and oppressive politics replicate themselves, even in the far reaches of space.

The great exiled Persian poet Majid Naficy exposes the continuing pain of Iranian people.

Frankfurt School critical theorist Theodor Adorno wrote a number of controversial essays on jazz. This new book assesses that writing. Reviewer Brar offers an assessment.

Despite a bumpy execution, this Black Christmas works in the way it summons the anxieties of women and how they’re attuned to the danger of men lashing out against “persecution” that undermines their privileges and reputations.

A handful of middle-aged men think they invented the everything bagel. We talked to four of them.

Superstore illustrates the precarious nature of unions in a retail environment with an episode that takes on the vagaries of organizing and negotiations.

The poet MEH describes a classroom moment, someone hijacking “communal grief,” and a good teacher’s response.

Objectivity may be tricky; fairness in reporting is not. The book author blasts the media for using a rhetoric of neutrality to marginalize insurgent POVs. Truth may be contingent on time and place, but leading news venues only serve power.

The FX network TV drama, Pose, dramatizes New York City's 1980-1990s black and Latino LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming ballroom culture scene. This book, on the ballroom culture in Detroit, describes a community of affirmation and resistance.