Portside

In “No Good Read Goes Unpunished,” the 633rd episode of The Simpsons, the longest-running scripted series in TV history finally acknowledged that there is something problematic about the way it has portrayed Apu Nahasapeemapetilon for the past three decades.

Is this the country where George Washington slept? Mississippi poet Philip C Kolin has his doubts.

Mitch Landrieu writes about how a conversation with jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis helped him confront his city's racist history and what he did about that history.

Medicine has grown so powerful and so profitable procedures go unquestioned. Many tests detect something worthy of follow-up -- procedures sometimes dubious, all to the point of extending life without regard to its quality. Stealing a march on every medical vulnerability as you age can boomerang.

Actor who starred in popular 1980s film advocates critical stance towards art of past.

Tacos de Canasta are sold everywhere in Mexico, created primarily by the drift of population between town and country that defined Mexico City in the 20th century. They are not merely a way of celebrating Mexico’s singular culinary heritage, but also a way of staking a claim to part of that heritage

Packing in as much raw emotion and as many twists and turns as a feature-length thriller, “Teddy Perkins” is a gothic funhouse of an Atlanta episode, filled with warped mirrors reflecting different aspects of American and African-American experience.

The Kansas poet H. C. Palmer, a battalion surgeon in the American War in Vietnam, addresses the effects of trauma on our war veterans.

A deft telling of a Wisconsin town and its people who lost their largest employer, a General Motors auto plant, typifying the collapse of much American manufacturing over the past quarter-century. Janesville is also--ironically or not-- the home of Paul Ryan, the U.S. House GOP speaker.

The March 18 killing of 22-year old Stephon Clark by Sacramento Police once again calls our attention to the racist aspect of the problem of civilians murdered by law enforcement. Angie Thomas's award-winning Young Adult novel is among the most recent literary responses to this crisis.