52 篇
Features
The Other Afghan Women
Over the summer, Anand Gopal traveled to Afghanistan to speak with dozens of women living in the countryside, where the endless killing of civilians by U.S. forces turned Afghans against the very people who claimed to be helping them. “On average, I found, each family lost ten to twelve civilians in what locals call the American War,” Gopal writes. This is an extraordinary piece on wartime life across Afghanistan’s dangerous rural terrain, seen through the eyes of women like Shakira, a woman in her 40s who grew up in the Sangin Valley. Gopal provides essential context for understanding what decades of violence and corruption have wrought, and he weaves an incredibly reported and beautifully told account of everyday life outside of Afghanistan’s cities. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
1. The Notorious Mrs. Mossler臭名昭著的莫斯勒夫人
Candace Mossler, mother of six, was a Houston socialite who lived in a mansion with a steam-heated pool. She loved to throw lavish parties. Charm and philanthropy were the super powers Mossler used to divert attention from rumours of a double life that included sex work, running her own escort service, and a clandestine affair with Mel Powers, her then 22-year-old nephew. The affair was heinous enough, but did Mossler conspire to commit murder — more than once? For this surreal whodunnit — complete with a salacious sideshow trial — Skip Hollandsworth pored over pages of old news clips, court records, and interviewed aging people in Mossler’s orbit to attempt to find out. “Rarely had circumstances converged to produce such a sensational story, one that, as the Houston Chronicle put it, was teeming with ‘love, heat, greed, savage passion, intrigue, incest and perversion.’” —KS
Features
Revolt of the Delivery Workers送货工人的反抗
When the pandemic first hit, New York more than anywhere depended on its essential workers: the health care professionals who stood in the path of an epidemiological tsunami, but also the massive community of delivery cyclists who crisscrossed the boroughs to feed the folks privileged enough to shelter in place. The end of lockdown, however, meant a new era of troubles for Postmates and Seamless contractors. Bike thieves snatched away riders’ earning power; apps demanded ever-higher productivity for ever-lower reward; the very people tasked to protect the workers didn’t seem to care. “[They] call it the patrón fantasma, the phantom boss,” Josh Dzieza writes, “always watching and quick to punish you for being late but nowhere to be found when you need $10 to fix your bike or when you get doored and have to go to the hospital.” Something had to break. Something did. Dzieza’s remarkable feature rides along with the riders as they fight for protection and autonomy — lobbying legislators, pestering the NYPD, even running vigilante repo missions for stolen bikes. This isn’t a portrait of sleek, unified collective action; it’s a look at how a workers’ struggle can succeed even when it’s as shaggy and frayed as a winter-ravaged fleece jacket. —Peter Rubin
The Stories We Missed
Teaching Poetry in the Palestinian Apocalypse
George Abraham · Guernica, September 27, 2021 · September 27, 2021 · 官方页
From the piece: “Maybe it’s not a universal Capital-A-Apocalypse I want to excavate language for, but a lowercase-a-apocalypse that colonialism has imposed on Indigenous and dispossessed peoples since the beginning of the settler project. The tired apocalypse. The assumed apocalypse. An apocalypse that keeps (a notion of) their world alive, at the expense of (a notion of) our own.“
Readers’ Favorites
To Protect Me From America, My Parents Changed My Name Without Telling Me
Leslie Nguyen-Okwu · Harper’s Bazaar, May 2021 · 官方页
I loved this essay's description about “teetering on a tightrope between Asian America and Black America,” and her powerful explanations of coping with the realities of racism and discrimination from a young age.
Investigative Reporting
The Spine Collector
This is a smartly written piece about a thief who has turned the cozy world of books upside down. Hiding behind a computer, their game is to impersonate people in the literary scene via email, in an attempt to obtain unpublished manuscripts. The thief’s portrayals are very convincing: An assistant at WME only “realized her boss was being impersonated because she would never say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’,” and people in the publishing industry have become so twitchy that they are putting NDAs on a “70-page Dutch Novella.” Reeves Wiedeman decided reporting on the thief would be “a fun challenge,” and during lockdown, he attempted to identify the motivation for the crimes, as well as the shadowy figure behind them. It became a thing of obsession, with Wiedeman creating what he calls a “Homeland wall” over the course of a year — and having his very own interactions with the thief. This is both an investigation and a story about how an investigation can consume you. —Carolyn Wells
The Liberty Way“自由之路”：自由大学如何阻止和驳回学生的性侵犯报告 — ProPublica
These investigations into two prominent Christian colleges’ response to sexual abuse and harassment on their campuses are, in a word, damning. Both Liberty University and Moody Bible College routinely sidestep accountability in the name of God, and young women bear the consequences. As Becca Andrews writes, for students steeped in evangelicalism, “it can be hard to recognize harassment when it is at the hands of a brother or a sister in Christ.” It can also be hard to recognize harassment — or worse — when the institution where it occurs uses “purity culture” as an excuse to blame and punish victims. Hannah Dreyfus describes how, when Amanda Stevens reported a rape to Liberty officials, she wasn’t informed that she could make a statement to police, but she was told to sign a notice of her own potential infractions of the school’s honor code, including having premarital sex, being alone with a man, and drinking — though she wasn’t drinking when the assault occurred.
Best of 2021
Readers’ Favorites
The Epic Battle to Break the Mississippi River Canoe Record打破密西西比河独木舟记录的史诗般的战斗
I loved this story so much. It was a good old-fashioned rip-roaring adventure story, done the way it should be: the biggest, baddest river, a race, a record meant to be broken, petty interpersonal conflict, tension, and terror — all with a dose of redemption at the end. And it was reported from the boats, not after the fact. Great stuff.
Profiles
Stop Hustling Black Death
What happens when the worst day of your life animates a social movement over which you have no control? This question is the engine of Imani Perry’s profile of Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, killed by police in 2014. Samaria was anguished, and she wanted justice. But she didn’t want to be told how to act, or to see “leaders” she didn’t know speaking for her — much less making money off her son’s death. In Perry’s hands, Samaria’s story is a window into the growing pains of Black Lives Matter. If readers are uncomfortable with what they see, that’s the point: We can’t look away from the truth, Perry says, just because it’s messy. “We have lost a great deal of history by relying upon a neat consensus narrative,” she writes. “If we’re not careful, we run the risk of letting that become the story of today as well.” —Seyward Darby
The Stories We Missed
Nuclear Cats核猫
Exceptional essays often form around the connections a writer can make from their particular place in the world. In “Nuclear Cats,“ Vivian Blaxell connects life experience in legal and health systems with wild and domestic animals, the function of language, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the nature of consciousness.... And it’s funny. Blaxell’s voice is addictive!
Best of 2021
Features
The Lives of Others他人的生活 - 返祖杂志
“Warm” and “intimate” may seem strange adjectives to describe a feature about babies who are switched at birth — but Lindsay Jones paints her story’s Newfoundland setting with such affection that I couldn’t help but feel an affinity with it. Although two children grew up in the wrong families, they were both surrounded by love, living just a bay apart in a homely place where towns are called Heart’s Desire, Leading Tickles, and Dildo. It is this small community that made the story possible, with the children meeting as adults and eventually uncovering the truth about their births. “Such an encounter could only happen in a place like Newfoundland,” Jones writes, “where your neighbors and the wider community, precisely because it’s never that wide, are often intimately familiar; where it’s possible to look at someone and know who their kin are.” As two families navigate difficult times, Jones provides thoughtful insight into a unique, and beautiful, culture. —Carolyn Wells
All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
The American Prison System’s War on Reading
You’ve almost certainly heard about the disingenuous furor over critical race theory and about attempts by conservative politicians to ban books from school libraries. But what about the war on reading being waged behind bars? States are restricting prisoners’ access to cheap used books, forcing those who wish to read to place full-priced orders with the likes of Barnes & Noble. Authorities have banned “urban” novels and Angela Davis, but seem to have no problem with Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries. Protean is a proudly leftist publication, and Alex Skopic is a proponent of prison abolition, but limiting people’s access to knowledge and ideas should also alarm more politically moderate readers. “Legitimate power does not fear discussion and study,” Skopic writes. “Rather, the prohibition of those things is a tacit acknowledgment of its illegitimacy.” —SD
The Stories We Missed
Call Me a Traitor
Nobody writes more beautifully about the horrors of our world than my New York colleague Kerry Howley. Her story on drone war whistleblower Daniel Hale is the piece I’ll remember most from this year.
Investigative Reporting
All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
“Judge, Lawyer, Help, Case Dismissed”
This is a story of political indifference and a system woefully unequipped to truly help unhoused people with mental illness. It is also the story of Harmony, a woman living on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia in her own filth, in a state that ranks 51st in the U.S. for investment in mental health spending. “Harmony is unique,” writes George Chidi, “And yet there are at least 100 Harmonys on the streets of Atlanta. The county knows each of them by name. There’s a list.” Harmony does not want to be in hospital or incarcerated; she does want her story told. As Chidi grapples with Harmony’s living conditions, he unravels who might be able to help and who should be held accountable. And while various entities and government departments play “hot potato” with her life and liberty, Harmony's wishes go mostly ignored. She would very much like to be left alone. “And yet despite millions in resources, much of which the state cannot figure out how to spend, Harmony remained unhoused at the foot of the iconic Coca-Cola sign above the Walgreens at Five Points — in the heart of Atlanta — as she has on and off for years, in a state of abject human degradation, with all of this misery taking place less than 100 yards from the very steps of Georgia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities headquarters.” —KS
Personal Essays
The Gradual Extinction of Softness
For this category, I'm recommending a moving, lyrical personal essay from Kim Green and Chantha Nguon. Nguon is a co-founder of a women's social enterprise in rural northeastern Cambodia. For 10 years, these two friends have been collaborating on Nguon's life story, through interviews and cooking sessions, which will eventually culminate into Slow Noodles, a memoir on food, loss, and recovered family recipes. This excerpt from the memoir-in-progress is an evocative piece on surviving the Cambodian genocide, and remembering the flavors, the memories, and the past that the Khmer Rouge regime tried to erase. It's also sprinkled with “recipes,” made up of ingredients that reveal details of Nguon's life, particularly of her childhood in Battambang: “Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy French-Catholic-school education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Separate her from home, country, and a reliable source of food.” I've read this gorgeous essay a number of times, and each time I pay attention to new details — aromas, tastes — which make me appreciate it even more. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
The Grief Artist
Traci Brimhall · Guernica Magazine, January 6, 2021 · January 6, 2021 · 官方页
Brimhall's essay explores the influence that art, process, and ritual have on dealing with grief and loss as she mourns her mother's death and the end of her marriage. So many essays deal with grief, but few consider the shape of it through so many disparate lenses. As Brimhall makes art out of the unexpected, she weaves a strand of persistent, insistent hope for the reader. “I love that nothing is wasted,” she writes. “Everything is ripe for transformation.” This essay reminds me that despite the fact that humans struggle with loss and change, maybe we can learn something about ourselves if we choose to lean on process and routine. Maybe too, we can get better at being more human as we deal with things that end, be it a life, a friendship, a marriage, or even just a time in our lives. —Krista Stevens
Reported Essays
Seeing in the Dark在黑暗中看见||布雷伊·梅森-坎贝尔
The centerpiece of Pipe Wrench’s inaugural spring issue, a sermon by Breai Mason-Campbell on race, accountability, and change, is a real stunner (and the fact that this was Mason-Campbell's first-ever published piece makes it all the more impressive). She writes about the layers of Black grief, likening it to a nesting doll, and also reflects on how the pandemic and the racial reckoning of summer 2020 had introduced white people to collective suffering. But the attention span of white people is short, and justice is seasonal, activated in choice moments via performative social posts and GoFundMe donations. Damning and passionate and timely, Mason-Campbell's stirring and powerful words challenge Nice White Folks — and anyone who has the privilege of returning to “business as usual” in times of crisis — to act. To use the armor they've built up over the course of the pandemic. To make different choices. To not retreat back into their homes after a moment passes. Because, she writes, “the price for your return to normal is my life.” —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Best of 2021
Reported Essays
Death Takes the Lagoon死亡占领泻湖
Ariel Saramandi's piece was one of the first I read this year. The egregious neglect and the needless, horrific long-term toll she recounts are things I'll never forget. “Death Takes the Lagoon” describes an ecological disaster unfolding in painfully slow motion after the cargo ship MV Wakashio runs aground off the coast of Mauritius. When the government fails to take decisive action to contain the ensuing oil spill, citizens band together, making homemade booms around the clock to soak up the toxic mess. As they congregate near the site of the spill, their effort is deemed “an illegal gathering” by an embarrassed Mauritian government — one known for imprisoning citizens for “annoyances” which include even the mildest protest and government criticism. “Against all international recommendations, despite our outcry and outrage, the government sank half of the Wakashio in great haste on August 24. Two days later, melon-headed whales washed up around the south-eastern coast. Dead, mutilated, glossy bodies. Fishermen say the ship was sunk in a whale breeding ground, that some of the corpses they found were of pregnant females.” —Krista Stevens
Features
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama斯蒂芬·科尔伯特谈打造自己的深夜秀
This isn’t just the best feature I read this year. It’s one of the best I’ve ever read, period. Nathan Thrall situates one father’s desperate journey to find out what happened to his son after the boy’s school bus collided with a tractor trailer within the vast, ugly context of Israel’s decades-long effort to make Palestinian lives all but unlivable. In search of basic answers — is his son hurt? is he even alive? — Abed Salama must grapple with the devastatingly mundane consequences of “fragmentation,” Israel’s policy of keeping “Palestinian communities isolated from one another and surrounded by fences, walls, checkpoints, closed gates, roadblocks, trenches, and bypass roads.” Expertly researched and brilliantly told, Thrall’s feature is a masterpiece. —Seyward Darby
Best of 2021
Personal Essays
Ghosts
Vauhini Vara · The Believer, August 9, 2021 · August 9, 2021 · 官方页
Even as artificial intelligence creeps across science and technology, bulldozing computational problems, we comfort ourselves in the face of such power by thinking there are some things a program simply can’t do. A program can’t be funny, can’t be fraught, can’t be human. And maybe it can’t. But in Vauhini Vara’s gutpunch of an essay, we begin to see the glimmer of otherwise. Unable to write about her sister’s death of a rare cancer years earlier, Vara began feeding the linguistic engine GPT-3 prompts about her sister — and over the course of nine increasingly stirring attempts, their two voices meld in a way that wipes away any preconceptions you might have brought to the piece. This isn’t a warning klaxon about robot overlords; it’s a bracing exploration of what can happen when we finally hold the mirror at the perfect angle. —Peter Rubin
Best of 2021
Reported Essays
To Be a Field of Poppies
In this beautiful piece, Lisa Wells takes up a classic question: Where do we go when we die? But she is concerned with ethics rather than faith — indeed, she doesn’t once use the word “heaven.” By profiling the natural organic reduction industry, also known as the business of composting dead bodies, Wells considers where human remains should go in the age of climate change. Her essay is a meditation on intention and guilt; grief and fear; life and loss. Above all, it is about our species’ fraught relationship with the planet, and the potential for repair that our literal bodies might hold. —Seyward Darby
Magic Actions
Tobi Haslett · n+1, May 7, 2021 · May 7, 2021 · 官方页
“Police trials are rare,” wrote Tobi Haslett, shortly after Derek Chauvin had been convicted of multiple murder and manslaughter charges in the killing of George Floyd. “So is national uprising.” So begins an incendiary account of how, after Floyd's death, “something massive came hurtling into view and exploded against the surface of daily life in the US.” Over the course of his essay, Haslett gathers a half-century of racial-justice protest in his arms, from MLK's late-career embrace of worker revolt to the growing drumbeat of abolitionist thought that undergirded last summer's national rebellion. But this is no sterile, scholarly disquisition; it's dotted throughout with political critique, artistic context, and the chaos and violence of personal experience. In a year that saw no shortage of brilliant broadsides against the enormity of American racism, you'd be hard-pressed to find another that covers so much ground without ever seeming to flag. —Peter Rubin
Readers’ Favorites
The Depths She’ll Reach
Xan Rice · Long Lead, November 2021 · 官方页
This profile about freediver Alenka Artnik blew me away. Not only is her story of overcoming grief and mental health challenges inspiring, but it is written in such an evocative way. I’ve never seen a story designed like that either. The video of Alenka diving under the story transfixed me.
Profiles
The Girl in the Kent State Photo
Patricia McCormick · The Washington Post Magazine, April 19, 2021 · April 19, 2021 · 官方页
On May 4, 1970, Kent State University students gathered on campus to peacefully rally against President Richard Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia, which would expand U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, a free-spirited teen who hitchhiked around the country to escape a volatile family life in Florida, found herself on the school’s Ohio grounds, drawn to the protests. National Guard troops shot four students dead that day, including a man, Jeffrey Miller, whom Vecchio had been talking to. She dropped to the ground and knelt beside his body — her arms raised, her face full of anguish and horror. McCormick documents her pleas: “‘Doesn’t anyone see what just happened here?’ she remembers crying. ‘Why is no one helping him?’”
Features
The Marathon Men Who Can’t Go Home
For an elite marathoner from Ethiopia like Tadesse Yae Dabi, the U.S. offered opportunities he’d never have in his home country: the chance to run races, to win life-changing prize money, and to support the loved ones he’d left behind. But with races canceled and the pandemic taking away his main source of income, his options have been limited, while returning (or being deported) to a homeland plagued by civil war and ethnic violence is not an option. David Alm spent six months reporting this story, profiling Tadesse and his three roommates, part of the West Side Runners club in the Bronx — a training group that has kept going mainly due to the kindness and support of Bill Staab, an 81-year-old former Peace Corps volunteer. This club is a lifeline and anchor for the athletes, and Alm’s piece is a moving portrait of hope and perseverance, community and camaraderie. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Personal Essays
Contraindications
Alison Criscitiello’s essay about her climbing partner Anna Smith has stayed with me for a long time. It starts off as a rollicking adventure story: Two best friends embarking on a climbing expedition to the Indian Himalayas. The affection and admiration the women share spills out of her words, “opposites in almost every way imaginable, end members constantly bringing one another closer to an elusive center.” It is not just an exquisitely told quest: It is also about true friendship — and the joy found in sharing beautiful experiences.
Best of 2021
Readers’ Favorites
There Has Been Blood
Diana Hubbell · Eater, August 2021 · 官方页
This piece on the Thailand palm oil industry, and the violence and harassment against local farmers, shows the strengths and courage of ordinary people — who, although vulnerable and underprivileged, refuse to give up on insisting their rights are respected.
To Catch a Turtle Thief: Blowing the Lid Off an International Smuggling Operation
Clare Fieseler · The Walrus, November 2021 · 官方页
It's an age-old problem that isn't spotlighted much, and wildlife trafficking interlopes with lots of other types of crimes (e.g., drug trade). This was a great article.
Best of 2021
Investigative Reporting
Highway to Hell: A Trip Down Afghanistan’s Deadliest Road
This gripping story starts out with a local mayor commuting 30 miles to work in an armored vehicle, driven by a man with an AK-47 on National Highway 1 in Afghanistan — a road that reporter Jason Motlagh describes as “a glaring symbol of America’s failures, scarred with bomb-blast craters that snarl traffic and under constant attack from a resurgent Taliban.” Motlagh reports on life in a war zone, a place where everyone has suffered loss. The United States withdrew troops at the end of August, nearly 20 years after invading a country where violent conflict continues. The U.S. and its NATO allies thought a paved road system would “lay the ground work for a functioning state,” one where people and goods could move freely. According to Motlagh, they could not have been more wrong: “Over the course of hundreds of miles — and in meetings with the Taliban, government forces, and civilians caught in the crossfire — a grim truth emerged: The backbone of the U.S.-led nation-building campaign is hopelessly broken, a life-or-death gauntlet where people drive in fear, commerce is stymied, and state forces are targeted with impunity. What was intended to ease the lives of Afghans and cement the U.S. legacy in Afghanistan is, instead, a story of colossal waste and squandered opportunity.” —Krista Stevens
Homegrown and Homeless in Oakland
Kevin Fagan · Sarah Ravani, Lauren Hepler, and J.K. Dineen, San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 2021 · November 3, 2021 · 存稿官方页存档
After five years of covering the epidemic of the unhoused in San Francisco, the Chronicle sent a team of reporters across the Bay Bridge to examine homelessness in Oakland. What they found, unsurprisingly but no less sadly, was that there’s no such thing as a simple cause, let alone a clear solution. The four people profiled in the piece all grew up in Oakland, and had all owned their own home at one time; now they count themselves among the fastest-growing unhoused community in the Bay Area. The time and care invested is on stark display throughout the piece, the deep reporting paired with rich photography and data visualization. “As they long for a place of their own in a city with too many in need and too few resources,” the team writes of the article’s subjects, “they are the city’s reflection staring back at it.” Even if you’ve never set foot in the Golden State, you’ll come away with a grasp of the problem’s scope and scale — and hopefully a new understanding of the humanity that’s crushed when a city loses a battle against loss itself. —Peter Rubin
Readers’ Favorites
Once Upon a Time in Central Florida
Katherine LaGrave · AFAR, February 2021 · 官方页
This is still a story I think about. After two years filled with so much loss and immeasurable lost time, this feature clung to my heart and made me appreciate how much more time I do have, post-pandemic.
The Epic Family Feud Behind an Iconic American Weight-Loss Camp for Kids
Dave Herbert's piece on Camp Shane is incredible work, and deeply meaningful as a survivor of that weight loss camp. As an amateur writer — I also have to say that the author weaved a number of different issues and concepts using a fantastic narrative form, coupled with a unifying thread that would resonate with any reader.
Profiles
Benji Is One Down Dog本吉是一只倒下的狗
This piece brought a smile to my face and delight to my heart. For even in the age of the Instagram-famous pet, it’s not often we get a proper pooch profile. Benji the dog is a George Clooney lookalike who “prefers to greet the world au naturel whenever possible,” writes Madeleine Aggeler. He is “confident that wherever he goes, everyone will be thrilled to meet him,” and he is right — they are: Benji is “one of the most famous dogs in America right now.” A worthy profile subject, indeed. His is an interesting story: His owner, the YouTube yoga instructor Adriene Mishler, was the champion of COVID lockdowns, with her online exercise classes becoming incredibly popular. Benji was a part of this, making cameos on camera that brought joy to Adriene’s viewers. Written with great creativity and humor, Aggeler’s article shows us why Benji is such a scene-stealer. — Carolyn Wells
Readers’ Favorites
When the Techies Took Over Tahoe
Rachel Levin · Outside, April 2021 · 官方页
I am an American expat living in Australia, and this story gave me the most insightful look at how COVID-19 in the U.S. is impacting work, place, real estate, local culture, and nature — and how the socio-economics pervade everything.
Features
What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind
Do you know that feeling, that need to savor every word when you’re reading an exceptional piece of writing? I went into slow motion after the first line of Senior’s tour de force: “When Bobby McIlvaine died on September 11, 2001, his desk at home was a study in plate tectonics, coated in shifting piles of leather-bound diaries and yellow legal pads.” To write the piece, Senior met with McIlvaine’s mother, father, brother, and girlfriend at the time of his death. In speaking with those closest to McIlvaine, she witnesses very different modes of grief, and how that grief has evolved over time. Through the intensely personal price paid by a single family on and after 9/11, Senior underscores the day’s toll on America at large. —Krista Stevens
Personal Essays
Aftermath
In her exquisite piece about the human condition in the age of COVID, climate change, and other calamities, Briohny Doyle challenges readers — and herself — to give up the ghost of renewal. “What is an ideal community, a good life,” Doyle asks, “if nothing is renewed, if we are working in and through catastrophe with only what we have now and in the face of what will be?” This question is more than essay fodder. It's a mantra, an incantation — for us all. —Seyward Darby
The Stories We Missed
High-Rise Syndrome
From the piece: “When cats fall out the windows of tall buildings, the worst injuries result from falling out the first to the sixth stories. Cats that fall from higher stories (i.e. the tenth or twentieth floors) sustain less serious injuries. In other words, the closer you are to the ground, the more you reckon with your death, the less time you have to bend your body against the terminal velocity. This is called high-rise syndrome. It is science, not metaphor.“
Readers’ Favorites
Kevin Durant and (Possibly) the Greatest Basketball Team of All Time凯文·杜兰特和（可能）有史以来最伟大的篮球队
The question of profile writing is: What fascinates me about this person, and what does it say about myself or the world? The other, especially in sports writing these days is: How can I get enough time and access to get to the core of a character? Anderson manages to obtain one of the deepest and — given the insane shield put around sports stars these days — most unlikely portraits of an NBA star. We see the moody, ingenious, unlikely Kevin Durant in a way he's never been shown to us before. It's the piece every sportswriter I know is jealous of.
Best of 2021
Readers’ Favorites
Where There’s Muck There’s Brass: Making Money From Sewage in Kolkata
It’s a story that traverses the very real ecological and sociological issues of our present world — a world at the brink of irreversible damage. Written with poetic articulation, it narrates a well-researched story of the unique wetlands of Kolkata. Despite the imminent urgency of the problems discussed, it still relates an uplifting instance of the human capacity for survival, resourcefulness, and optimism. Beautifully written and moving.
Reported Essays
The Jessica Simulation
Jason Fagone · San Francisco Chronicle, July 23, 2021 · July 23, 2021 · 官方页
Back in 2013, I watched a haunting episode of the Charlie Brooker series Black Mirror called “Be Right Back,” in which a computer chat program uses a deceased person's digital footprint to imitate them, allowing their loved ones to communicate with them after they die. Eight years on, and, terrifyingly, this is no longer science fiction — as Jason Fagone masterfully reports in this essay, introducing us to the bot version of the late Jessica Pereira. When she tragically died at just 23, Jessica left behind her fiance Joshua, who, struggling to manage his grief, eventually sought comfort in an artificial intelligence system that did “something they weren’t designed to do: conduct chat-like conversations with humans.” Fagone cleverly interweaves Joshua’s real transcripts with the Jessica bot into the story, as he details their love, her death, and Joshua’s eight years of grief. While I found this essay disturbing — it provides a glimpse into a future that I find uncomfortable — it is still fascinating. Fagone’s storytelling method also demonstrated something powerful: I got far closer to knowing the real Jessica through his reporting of the memories of her friends and family, rather than from the Jessica bot. As Jessica’s mother says, “I know it’s not her.” —Carolyn Wells
Best of 2021
Investigative Reporting
Beyond Britney: Abuse, Exploitation, and Death Inside America’s Guardianship Industry
Britney Spears is now free of the conservatorship that dictated every part of her life for 13 years. The #FreeBritney movement, which drew international attention to her case, also raised awareness of the guardianship system at large. In this three-part investigation, Heidi Blake and Katie J.M. Baker expose a dangerously unregulated industry — one that is estimated to control more than a million people in the United States. Examining more than 200 guardianships across 30 states and an impressive number of court, mental health, and financial records, they uncovered a rigged system and a network of lawyers, judges, corporations, and professional guardians who abuse and exploit wards (the individuals who are locked into these arrangements). They found evidence of financial corruption in 130 cases, and abuse or neglect in 110. They detailed horrific instances of wards stripped of their rights, stolen from or drained of their money, pulled away from their families, or confined against their will. In some cases, wards have gone missing, or suffered wrongful deaths. Blake and Baker’s investigation is a disturbing but important look at the inner workings of this dark and dehumanizing industry, and one that can hopefully help drive reform nationwide. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Profiles
La Cancion de la Nena
In this beautiful piece, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal offers a haunting portrait of her father, Gilberto Villarreal, a virtuoso guitarist and musician, a man who was a “prodigy at the foot of this country, in a place no one ever expects to find someone extraordinary.“ Villarreal recalls the struggles her father endured as a Mexican immigrant trying to be discovered in a music business dominated by white interests and pernicious racism: “What I experienced as poetry came first through the song my father wrote for me when I was two years old, a song whose melody is a turning helix in my blood, another way of speaking my name. It is the rarest gift I have ever received.“ This is a piece steeped in love and admiration for a man and an artist who, despite his many musical skills and achievements, did not consider himself a success. “You might think from my tone that this is a sad story,“ Villarreal writes. “And maybe it is, but it is also a tribute to an unseen life, a long overdue recognition of ordinary genius worn down by circumstance.“ —Krista Stevens