Portside

At a time when much of the culinary world believes in farming like pioneer settlers and looking its meat in the eyes, This wants us to abandon peas and carrots (“Middle Ages!”) for their constituent parts—glucose, sucrose, cellulose, amino acids, and more.

New WGN America series brings story of Underground Railroad to the small screen.

The Mexican-born Texas poet Hugo Esteban Rodriguez Castañeda suggests a Latino identity based on hardship, danger, fear, but also an enduring spirit of survival that is as indigenous as el huizache--the acacia tree--which also happens to be the name of "The Magazine of Latino Literature."

While Camus was a vocal advocate of Arab rights since the 1930s, his fictional universe seemed blind to their existence. . In 1957 Albert Camus uttered a widely misquoted criticism of terrorism. What he meant to say, what he in fact said, is that a policy of killing innocent civilians - whether his own mother or the mother of his adversary - is not properly named "justice."

In this review, Jill Leovy looks at two new studies of contemporary US poverty.

"In the eyes of the Senate, it was about [Clarence Thomas'] gender. It was about male privilege. Who do you believe? You believe the guy who is a guy like you. Even the public -- 70 percent of the public when polled after the hearings, believed Clarence Thomas. They were willing to dismiss my experience as insignificant, both racially and in terms of gender... We've got to make the decision that we're going to reject people who behave badly, who are sexually abusive."

Instead of seeking out farms growing delicious fruits and vegetables, chefs look one step deeper into the food production system—to the plant breeders who provide farmers with seeds.

According to data from the Center for Disease Control, black women have long faced high rates of depression and low rates of treatment. “Scandal” has been so groundbreaking in many ways; it’s curious that it hasn’t seized a really ripe, low-hanging opportunity to be more progressive in its depiction of black women’s struggles to safeguard their mental health.

The Palestine poet Jehan Bseiso depicts the desperation of refugees, pushed from home by war--"barrel bombs and Kalashnikovs"--and lured toward a dubious safety by "a little bit of hope."

Writer and activist Sarah Schulman, whose new novel, The Cosmopolitans, tackles race and ageing, explains focus on LGBT lives and how gentrification isn't as simple as it seems. The Cosmopolitans is a beautifully written, page-turning novel about friendship, love, and revenge set in the disappeared world of 1950s New York.