Svetlana Alexievich records the words of a soldier’s mother
A mother
I walk alone … I’ll be walking alone for a long time now. He killed someone … My son … With a kitchen axe – I used to trim and beat meat with it. He came back from the war and killed someone here. He brought the axe back in the morning an... Read more
Last winter I got an email inviting me to a dinner party. Let’s say the host’s name was Barry Johnson. I’ve known him and his wife casually over the years, but ... Read more
We are now deep in the era of Trump. As a magazine, we’ve accepted our role. We don’t employ an investigative team. Our contributors’ page lacks a platoon of re... Read more
In the face of this kind of misplaced hysteria, good rappers don’t back down. They defend the right to use words in the same way any novelist or filmmaker is free to do. They tell their personal truths.
He started right in yelling, ‘Not my president! Not my president!’ His voice was high and clear and loud. He was fearless. Whenever he said, ‘Not my president!’ the people near them smiled coldly and said, ‘Yes, he is. He is now.’
It’s a painstaking process, a learned performance. I spent years making small, conscious modifications to my character, to be more British when I was in London, more Brazilian in Rio.
Every summer we were ordered out into the garden with machetes to chop down the grass, which grew above our heads. We loathed having to spend summer days in manual labour, but we never dared question our father’s authority.
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