Best of 2021: Features

Since we started the #longreads hashtag in 2009 to share great reads on Twitter, curation has been the beating heart of Longreads.

自从我们于 2009 年开始使用 #longreads 标签在 Twitter 上分享精彩读物以来，策展一直是 Longreads 的核心。

We highlight our favorite stories in our weekly Longreads Top 5, and at year’s end — in what is now a decade-long tradition — we revisit and reflect on the pieces we loved most.

我们在每周的长读前 5 名中突出显示我们最喜欢的故事，并在年底——按照现在长达十年的传统——我们重新审视并反思我们最喜欢的作品。

Today, we’re celebrating our favorite longform features: stories that blend deep reportage, inventive structure, and deft writing to leave an impact like few others do.

今天，我们正在庆祝我们最喜欢的长篇故事：融合了深刻的报告文学、创造性的结构和灵巧的写作的故事，留下了很少有其他人能做到的影响。

## A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall, New York Review of Books, March 19, 2021

## Abed Salama 的一天，Nathan Thrall，《纽约书评》，2021 年 3 月 19 日

This isn’t just the best feature I read this year.

这不仅仅是我今年读到的最好的专题。

It’s one of the best I’ve ever read, period.

这是我读过的最好的书之一。

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.

内森·萨尔（Nathan Thrall）讲述了一位父亲在儿子的校车与拖拉机拖车相撞后，为了查明儿子遭遇的绝望旅程，而以色列几十年来一直在努力让巴勒斯坦人的生活变得几乎无法居住的巨大而丑陋的背景。

In search of basic answers — is his son hurt?

寻找基本答案——他的儿子受伤了吗？

is he even alive?

他还活着吗？

— 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.

阿贝德·萨拉马必须应对“分裂”所带来的毁灭性后果，以色列的政策是让“巴勒斯坦社区彼此隔离，并被栅栏、围墙、检查站、关闭的大门、路障、战壕和绕行道路包围”。经过专业研究和精彩讲述，萨尔的故事片堪称一部杰作。

—Seyward Darby

——西沃德·达比

Author Nathan Thrall’s pick for the most impactful story of the year:

作者内森·萨尔选出的年度最具影响力的故事：

Carlos Lozada’s Washington Post omnibus review of 21 books, “9/11 was a test.

卡洛斯·洛萨达 (Carlos Lozada) 的《华盛顿邮报》对 21 本书的综合评论称，“9/11 是一次考验。

The books of the last two decades show how America failed,” is a piece ​one hopes will stay with American voters and policymakers.

过去二十年的书籍展示了美国是如何失败的”，人们希望美国选民和政策制定者能够留下这样的文章。

“Washington fantasized about remaking the world in its image,” Lozada writes, “only to reveal an ugly image of itself to the world.”

洛萨达写道：“华盛顿幻想着按照自己的形象重塑世界，结果却向世界展示了自己丑陋的形象。”

## Revolt of the Delivery Workers, Josh Dzieza, New York/The Verge, September 13, 2021

## 送货工人的反抗，Josh Dzieza，纽约/The Verge，2021 年 9 月 13 日

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.

当大流行首次袭来时，纽约比任何地方都更依赖于其重要工作人员：在流行病海啸中奋战的医疗保健专业人员，以及穿梭于各个行政区的庞大骑车送货社区，为有幸就地避难的人们提供食物。

The end of lockdown, however, meant a new era of troubles for Postmates and Seamless contractors.

然而，封锁的结束对 Postmates 和 Seamless 承包商来说意味着一个新的麻烦时代。

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.

自行车窃贼抢走了骑车人的赚钱能力；应用程序要求更高的生产力，但回报却越来越低；负责保护工人的人似乎并不关心。

“[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.

“[他们]称其为“守护者幻想”，即“幽灵老板”，”乔什·齐扎写道，“总是在注视着你，并会因为你迟到而迅速惩罚你，但当你需要 10 美元来修理自行车或当你进门必须去医院时却找不到你。”有些东西必须打破。

Something did.

有事发生了。

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.

Dzieza 的显着特征是与骑手一起争取保护和自治——游说立法者、纠缠纽约警察局，甚至执行治安回购任务，追回被盗自行车。

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.

这并不是一幅圆滑、统一的集体行动的写照；而是一幅关于集体行动的画面。它探讨了工人的斗争如何能够取得成功，即使它像一件被冬天蹂躏的羊毛夹克一样毛茸茸的、磨损的。

—Peter Rubin

——彼得·鲁宾

Author Josh Dzieza on the story he wishes he’d written this year:

作家 Josh Dzieza 谈到他希望今年写的故事：

Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ New Yorker story “How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously” answered a question I’d wondered about and never really thought to answer: Why, seemingly all of a sudden a couple years ago, did government officials and serious journalists start talking about UFOs with a straight face?

吉迪恩·刘易斯·克劳斯（Gideon Lewis-Kraus）在《纽约客》的文章《五角大楼如何开始认真对待不明飞行物》回答了一个我一直想知道但从未真正想过回答的问题：为什么政府官员和严肃的记者在几年前突然开始板着脸谈论不明飞行物？

The answer runs through Cold War history, a straight-up CIA plot to make aliens a laughable idea, military contractors turned paranormal investigators, and an independent researcher attempting to bring rigor to a topic shrouded in kookiness and taboos.

答案贯穿于冷战历史、中央情报局让外星人成为可笑想法的直接阴谋、军事承包商变身超自然现象调查员、以及一名试图对一个充满古怪和禁忌的话题进行严谨研究的独立研究人员。

It’s a fascinating story about epistemology and the institutional forces that determine which ideas get treated as matters of serious inquiry and which do not.

这是一个关于认识论和制度力量的引人入胜的故事，这些力量决定哪些想法被视为严肃探究的问题，哪些则不然。

## The Other Afghan Women, Anand Gopal, The New Yorker, September 6, 2021

## 《其他阿富汗妇女》，阿南德·戈帕尔，《纽约客》，2021 年 9 月 6 日

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.

今年夏天，阿南德·戈帕尔前往阿富汗，与数十名生活在乡村的妇女交谈，在那里，美军对平民的无休无止的杀戮让阿富汗人开始反对那些声称帮助他们的人。

“On average, I found, each family lost ten to twelve civilians in what locals call the American War,” Gopal writes.

“我发现，平均每个家庭在当地人所说的美国战争中失去了十到十二名平民，”戈帕尔写道。

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.

这是一部非凡的作品，通过夏奇拉（Shakira）等女性的视角，讲述了阿富汗危险的乡村地区的战时生活。夏奇拉是一位在桑金山谷长大的 40 多岁女性。

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.

戈帕尔为理解数十年的暴力和腐败造成的后果提供了必要的背景，他对阿富汗城市以外的日常生活进行了令人难以置信的报道和精彩的叙述。

—Cheri Lucas Rowlands

——切里·卢卡斯·罗兰兹

Author Anand Gopal’s pick for best feature of the year:

作者阿南德·戈帕尔评选的年度最佳影片：

Rozina Ali’s “The ‘Herald Square Bomber’ Who Wasn’t,” for the New York Times Magazine, was a searing look at the men spending decades in prison under terrorism charges despite never having committed an act of violence.

罗齐娜·阿里 (Rozina Ali) 为《纽约时报》杂志撰写的《谁不是‘先驱广场炸弹客’》一文，对那些因恐怖主义指控而在监狱里度过了数十年、尽管从未实施过暴力行为的人进行了尖锐的审视。

Reading Ali’s moving, nuanced profile of Matin Siraj, a bookstore employee who was entrapped by the NYPD, brings home the fact that the roots of the crisis in our democracy go back much further than Trump.

阅读阿里对被纽约警察局陷害的书店员工马丁·西拉吉 (Matin Siraj) 的感人而细致的描述，你会发现我们民主危机的根源可以追溯到特朗普之前。

It’s one of the most important works of longform storytelling I read this year.

这是我今年读过的最重要的长篇故事作品之一。

## The Lives of Others, Lindsay Jones, The Atavist, March 2021

## 《他人的生活》，Lindsay Jones，《返祖者》，2021 年 3 月

“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.

用“温暖”和“亲密”来形容婴儿出生时互换的特征似乎很奇怪——但林赛·琼斯以如此深情的方式描绘了她故事中的纽芬兰背景，让我情不自禁地产生了一种亲近感。

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.

虽然两个孩子在错误的家庭长大，但他们都被爱包围，住在一个相隔一湾的温馨之地，那里的城镇被称为“心之欲”、“痒痒痒”和“假阳具”。

It is this small community that made the story possible, with the children meeting as adults and eventually uncovering the truth about their births.

正是这个小社区让这个故事成为可能，孩子们成年后相遇，并最终揭开了他们出生的真相。

“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.

“这样的遭遇只能发生在像纽芬兰这样的地方，”琼斯写道，“在那里，你的邻居和更广泛的社区，正因为它从来没有那么宽广，所以往往非常熟悉；在那里你可以看到某人并知道他们的亲属是谁。”当两个家庭度过困难时期时，琼斯对独特而美丽的文化提供了深思熟虑的见解。

—Carolyn Wells

——卡罗琳·威尔斯

Author Lindsay Jones’ picks for the most impactful stories of 2021:

作者 Lindsay Jones 精选的 2021 年最具影响力的故事：

I’ve been thinking about Elizabeth Weil’s ProPublica story “The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine,” about the mental health of a climate scientist and his family, for months.

几个月来，我一直在思考伊丽莎白·韦尔 (Elizabeth Weil) 的 ProPublica 故事《气候危机比你想象的更糟糕》，该故事讲述了一位气候科学家及其家人的心理健康问题。

It stretched the bounds of what I thought was possible in a climate narrative.

它扩展了我认为气候叙事可能的范围。

It was deep documentary journalism written with so much empathy that I carry this family with me still, nearly a full year later.

这是一部深刻的纪实新闻，充满了同理心，以至于近一年后，我仍然带着这个家庭。

To me, that is impactful.

对我来说，这很有影响力。

Sarah Stillman’s New Yorker story “The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters” also resonates.

莎拉·斯蒂尔曼（Sarah Stillman）的《纽约客》故事《追随气候灾难的移民工人》也引起了共鸣。

This story is a one-two punch: It reveals the exploitation and death that migrant workers face while cleaning up after the disasters caused by the ever-increasing effects of climate change.

这个故事是一拳两拳：它揭示了移民工人在气候变化造成的日益严重的灾难后进行清理工作时所面临的剥削和死亡。

## The Marathon Men Who Can’t Go Home, David Alm, GQ, May 21, 2021

## 《无法回家的马拉松男子》，David Alm，《GQ》，2021 年 5 月 21 日

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.

对于塔德斯·耶·达比（Tadesse Yae Dabi）这样的埃塞俄比亚精英马拉松运动员来说，美国提供了他在祖国从未有过的机会：参加比赛的机会、赢得改变生活的奖金的机会，以及支持他身后的亲人的机会。

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.

但随着比赛取消，大流行夺走了他的主要收入来源，他的选择受到限制，而返回（或被驱逐出境）饱受内战和种族暴力困扰的祖国也不是一个选择。

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.

大卫·阿尔姆花了六个月的时间报道这个故事，介绍了塔德斯和他的三个室友，他们是布朗克斯西区跑步者俱乐部的成员——这个训练小组之所以能够持续运转，主要归功于 81 岁的前和平队志愿者比尔·斯塔布的善意和支持。

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.

这个俱乐部是运动员的生命线和锚点，阿尔姆的作品是希望和毅力、社区和友情的动人写照。

—Cheri Lucas Rowlands

——切里·卢卡斯·罗兰兹

## What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind, Jennifer Senior, The Atlantic, August 9, 2021

## Bobby McIlvaine 留下了什么，Jennifer Senior，《大西洋月刊》，2021 年 8 月 9 日

Do you know that feeling, that need to savor every word when you’re reading an exceptional piece of writing?

当你阅读一篇杰出的作品时，你知道那种需要细细品味每一个字的感觉吗？

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.

在西尼尔杰作的第一句台词结束后，我开始慢动作：“当鲍比·麦克尔文于 2001 年 9 月 11 日去世时，他家里的桌子上摆满了一堆堆不断移动的皮革装订日记和黄色便笺簿，研究板块构造学。”为了写这篇文章，西尼尔在麦克尔文去世时会见了他的母亲、父亲、兄弟和女友。

In speaking with those closest to McIlvaine, she witnesses very different modes of grief, and how that grief has evolved over time.

在与麦克尔文最亲近的人交谈时，她目睹了截然不同的悲伤模式，以及这种悲伤如何随着时间的推移而演变。

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.

通过一个家庭在 9/11 事件及其之后所付出的极其个人的代价，西尼尔强调了这一天对整个美国造成的损失。

—Krista Stevens

—克里斯塔·史蒂文斯

Author David Alm on “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind”:

作者大卫·阿尔姆 (David Alm) 在《鲍比·麦克伊尔文留下了什么》中写道：

Senior’s story is not just beautifully and deftly told, but is also an empathic, compassionate examination of the magnitude and vagaries of grief.

西尼尔的故事不仅讲述得优美而巧妙，而且也是对悲伤的严重性和变幻莫测的同情和富有同情心的审视。

I read this piece on a plane, and when I finished it, I just sat there for several minutes looking at the final sentence.

我在飞机上读了这篇文章，读完后，我坐在那里看了几分钟，看着最后一句话。

I anticipated precisely such an ending early in the piece, when Senior very subtly intimated it, but its impact was even greater than I expected.

我在文章一开始就预料到了这样的结局，前辈也很微妙地暗示过，但它的影响力比我预想的还要大。