The Best American Magazine Writing 2016
Page 31
O maybe no one really does care. Maybe it is humiliating to attempt anything.
I sincerely don’t know why poetry can be mortifying but tattoos can be cool.
I think everyone wants to make something touchable, but most of us don’t out of fear of being laughable. I’m not saying I’m fearless.
My mom used to ask her mom to touch her earlobes so she could fall asleep. When she immigrated to New York and could no longer fall asleep at her mother’s house in Shanghai, she started asking me and my father. I remember one time I said, I don’t get it, why do you like that? Let me show you, she said, and she rubbed my earlobes until I couldn’t help but close my eyes. I started to see differently. I think we were spooning. Or I had my head in her lap and she was sitting upright against the bed. “Do you see how good it feels to be touched there?” she asked me. I did.
Permissions
“Fixing the System: An Interview with President Obama on Prison Reform,” by Shane Smith, originally published in Vice magazine. Copyright © 2015 by VICE magazine/VICE on HBO. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“What Is Code: If You Don’t Know, You Need to Read This,” by Paul Ford, originally published in Bloomberg Businessweek. Copyright © 2015 by Bloomberg Businessweek. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“The New American Slavery,” by Ken Bensinger, Jessica Garrison, and Jeremy Singer-Vine, originally published in BuzzFeed News. Copyright © 2015 by BuzzFeed News. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“‘All You Americans Are Fired,’” by Ken Bensinger, Jessica Garrison, and Jeremy Singer-Vine, originally published in BuzzFeed News. Copyright © 2015 by BuzzFeed News. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“‘Pregnant? Scared? Need Options? Too Bad,’” by Meaghan Winter, originally published in Cosmopolitan. Copyright © 2015 by Meaghan Winter. Reprinted by permission of Meaghan Winter.
“‘My Nurses Are Dead, and I Don’t Know If I’m Already Infected,’” by Joshua Hammer, originally published in Matter. Copyright © 2015 by Joshua Hammer. Reprinted by permission of Joshua Hammer.
“Purgatory,” by Luke Mogelson, originally published in the New York Times Magazine, December 13, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.
“The Really Big One,” by Kathryn Schulz, originally published in The New Yorker. Copyright © 2015 by Kathryn Schulz. Reprinted by permission of Kathryn Schulz.
“An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller, originally published by The Marshall Project and ProPublica. Copyright © 2015 by The Marshall Project and ProPublica. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“A Visit to the Sweat Lodge,” by Barrett Brown, originally published in The Intercept. Copyright © 2015 by The Intercept. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“Santa Muerte, Full of Grace,” by Barrett Brown, originally published in The Intercept. Copyright © 2015 by The Intercept. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“Stop Sending Me Jonathan Franzen Novels,” by Barrett Brown, originally published in The Intercept. Copyright © 2015 by The Intercept. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“Down for the Count,” by Howard Bryant, originally published in ESPN the Magazine. Copyright © 2015 by ESPN the Magazine. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“The King Has Spoken,” by Howard Bryant, originally published in ESPN the Magazine. Copyright © 2015 by ESPN the Magazine. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“The Power of Sight,” by Howard Bryant, originally published in ESPN the Magazine. Copyright © 2015 by ESPN the Magazine. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“The Friend,” by Matthew Teague, originally published in Esquire. Copyright © 2015 by Matthew Teague. Reprinted by permission of Matthew Teague.
“How It Feels,” by Jenny Zhang, originally published in Poetry. Copyright © 2015 by Jenny Zhang. Reprinted by permission of Jenny Zhang.
Contributors
KEN ARMSTRONG is a staff writer at the Marshall Project, where he specializes in investigative reporting and narrative writing. His story “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” which was reported with T. Christian Miller, was awarded the Polk Award for Justice Reporting. A graduate of Purdue University, Armstrong lives in Seattle with his wife, Ramona Hattendorf, and their two children, Emmett and Meghan.
KEN BENSINGER is an investigative reporter based in Los Angeles for BuzzFeed News, where he has covered topics including the federal H-2 guest-worker program and insurance regulation of ride-hailing companies. Bensinger previously worked at the Los Angeles Times, where he primarily covered the auto industry. He has been honored with numerous journalism awards and has also worked at the Wall Street Journal and SmartMoney magazine. Bensinger is currently writing a book on the FIFA soccer scandal to be published by Simon & Schuster.
BARRETT BROWN is an imprisoned U.S. journalist and the founder of Project PM, a crowd-sourced investigation into the cyber-industrial complex. In 2012 the FBI raided his house; later that year Barrett was indicted on twelve federal charges relating to the 2011 Stratfor hack. The most controversial charge, linking to the hacked data, was dropped, but in 2015 Brown was sentenced to sixty-three months in prison. For more information about his case, and to contribute to his legal defense fund, please visit freebarrettbrown.org.
HOWARD BRYANT is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine. He has also served as the sports correspondent for National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday since 2006. Before joining ESPN in 2007, Mr. Bryant spent two years at the Washington Post. He has also worked at the Bergen Record, Boston Herald, the Oakland Tribune, and the San Jose Mercury News. A native of Boston, Bryant is the author of several books, including Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball; The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron; and Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston.
PAUL FORD is a writer, programmer, and cofounder of Postlight, a New York City agency that makes big, beautiful technology things like websites and apps. He has been an editor, essayist, novelist, and radio commentator for places like Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, and All Things Considered and is often found building content-management systems for fun. He has a column in The New Republic about databases called “Big Data.” In addition to managing Postlight, he is writing a book about webpages for the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, to be published in 2016.
JESSICA GARRISON is a reporter and editor for BuzzFeed News based in San Francisco. She joined BuzzFeed News in May 2014 after fourteen years at the Los Angeles Times, where she served as a reporter covering topics ranging from toxic waste to the fight for gay marriage in California.
JOSHUA HAMMER was born in New York and educated at Horace Mann School and Princeton University. In August 1988, he became a staff writer at Newsweek, covering business and the media and serving for several months as television critic. Four years later Hammer became Nairobi Bureau Chief, arriving in Africa during a time of war, genocide and revolution. He covered the unraveling of Somalia, the tragedy in Rwanda, South Africa’s first democratic election and other compelling events during his four years on the continent. Since 2006, Hammer has been an independent journalist and author based with his family in Berlin. He contributes regularly to Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic, The New York Review of Books, Outside, and Smithsonian, as well as the New York Times. His next book, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts, will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2016.
ROGER HODGE is national editor of The Intercept. He is the author of The Mendacity of Hope and former editor of the Oxford American and Harper’s Magazine. His new book, Texas Blood, is forthcoming from Knop
f.
T. CHRISTIAN MILLER joined ProPublica in 2008 as a senior reporter. He spent the previous eleven years reporting for the Los Angeles Times. His work included coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign and three years as a bureau chief for the Times, responsible for ten countries in South and Central America. Earlier in his career he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle and the St. Petersburg Times. Miller has previously received the George Polk Award for Radio Reporting, the Dart Award for Coverage of Trauma, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for Online Reporting, two Overseas Press Club awards, a Livingston Award for Young Journalists, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Reporting, and a special certificate of recognition from the Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. In addition, Miller was given a yearlong Knight Fellowship in 2011 to study at Stanford University. Miller is the author of Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq. He is currently based in Berkeley, California.
LUKE MOGELSON is the author of the short-story collection These Heroic, Happy Dead. He lives in Paris.
JEREMY SINGER-VINE is the data editor for the BuzzFeed News investigative unit and is based in New York. Singer-Vine’s award-winning work has contributed to some of BuzzFeed News’s most impactful investigations, including the organization’s investigation into the H-2 guest-worker program. Singer-Vine came to BuzzFeed from the Wall Street Journal, where he worked as a reporter and computer programmer. Singer-Vine is also the publisher of Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter that highlights useful and curious datasets.
KATHRYN SCHULZ is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.
SHANE SMITH is the founder and CEO of Vice, the global youth media brand. One of the industry’s most respected visionaries, Smith is also a critically acclaimed journalist and the host and executive producer for the Emmy-winning news series Vice on HBO. Under Smith’s guidance, Vice, initially launched in 1994 as a punk magazine, has expanded and diversified to become the world’s leading youth media company. Smith has reported from the world’s most isolated and difficult places, including Afghanistan, Iran, Kashmir, Liberia, Greenland and North Korea. Smith has been awarded numerous journalism and media awards, including the 2014 Knight Innovation Award, two Environmental Media Awards, and the Frank Stanton Award for Excellence. Vice has also won scores of awards for its groundbreaking reporting, including an Emmy Award for Best Information Series or Special, two Peabody Awards, the PEN Center 2014 Award of Honor and the Television Academy Honors for Socially Conscious Programming. Smith graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa with a BA in English literature and political science.
MATTHEW TEAGUE writes from around the world for The Atlantic and National Geographic and covers the American South for the Guardian. His work has been included in several anthologies, including Best American Travel Writing, Best American Crime Writing, Best American Sports Writing, and Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.
MEAGHAN WINTER is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in a range of publications, including Bloomberg Businessweek, New York, The Believer and The Kenyon Review. She reported on crisis pregnancy centers for Cosmopolitan in partnership with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.
JENNY ZHANG is a poet and fiction and nonfiction writer based in New York. She is the author of the poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and the nonfiction chapbook Hags. Her forthcoming collection of short stories will be published by Random House in 2017. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.