Patrick Zachmann / Magnum
This week, kids and teachers across the United States went back to school, after a year and a half of remote learning and Zoom fatigue. This school year is likely to be a mess—again—and among all of the pandemic considerations, teachers are also contending with keeping students engaged in and out of the classroom.
As this year’s Juneteenth celebrations begin—commemorating when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were told that the Civil War had ended and they were now technically free—thinking about place can be illuminating. America has a long history of denying and violating the basic rights of Black people, leading many of these citizens to carve out spaces that celebrate and recognize their full humanity.
As this year’s Juneteenth celebrations begin—commemorating when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were told that the Civil War had ended and they were now technically free—thinking about place can be illuminating. America has a long history of denying and violating the basic rights of Black people, leading many of these citizens to carve out spaces that celebrate and recognize their full humanity.
It’s been more than a year of big grocery-store hauls in preparation for cooking, and more cooking, and … more cooking. During the pandemic, whether you were lovingly tending to your sourdough starter or simply boiling some water for another box of mac and cheese, many of us became intimately familiar with our kitchens.
When there’s so much going wrong in the real world, it can feel like a relief to escape into the wrongs of another world. Why else would crime fiction be having a moment right now? The Netflix series Lupin is on track to be watched more than 70 million times, and many viewers will likely follow up their bingeing with a dive into the show’s literary origins.
Writers have already begun responding to the uncertainty of this pandemic era in their work, but sometimes we need to turn to the past to help make sense of the present. Recently, we’ve been publishing poetry from archival issues of The Atlantic, short pieces that can serve as lyrical salves on a lazy Sunday morning or as miniature escapes from the steady pace of weekday caretaking, work, stress, and worry.
Awards of any kind are weighted with subjectivity and competition, two qualities that can make them seem unilluminating, corrupting, or just plain useless. Yet the public is still drawn to what critics and judges deem the best of the best: We closely watch the Oscars and the Emmys, and pore over Pulitzer Prize–winning works.