Welcome back to our weekly reading roundup. Before you see what we’re loving elsewhere, don’t miss E. Young’s review of Orfeu negro.
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A Critic for All Seasons (Korsha Wilson for Eater)
I did not feel any of the delight that most of the critics felt. Instead, I felt embarrassed by this nostalgia, and the fact that I had just participated in it. I wondered why, in New York City, one of the most diverse places in the country, I was one of two black patrons in a dining room at one of the best-reviewed restaurants of the past year on a Friday night; I imagined how those reviews might have been different if any of them had been written by a person of color.
When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online (Taylor Lorenz for The Atlantic)
Allie was in fourth grade the first time she Googled herself. Like Ellen, she wasn’t expecting to find anything, since she doesn’t yet have her own social-media accounts. Google turned up just a few photos, but she was shocked that there was anything at all. She immediately became hyperaware of the image her mother was building for her on Instagram and Facebook. “My parents have always posted about me,” she said. “I was basically fine with it … then I realized I was making an impression and I was an actual person online too, through her page.”
The Missing Black Millennial (Reniqua Allen for The New Republic)
The black millennial, then, is composed of contradictions and ambiguity; her journey of tentative steps forward and horrific setbacks. In this, young blacks are not so different from their ancestors, complicating the whole notion of generational change that we are used to ascribing to non-black people, in which a particular cohort is perceived as being fundamentally different from its predecessors. In many ways, the story of the black millennial is as much about consistency as it is about change—which is to say that the story of the black millennial is the story of what it means to be black, period.
Beaten, then silenced (Lisa Gartner for the Philadelphia Inquirer)
To keep teens quiet, counselors and supervisors threaten the boys with longer sentences, claiming that if they went to another placement, their time would restart. Other Glen Mills staffers have hidden students until their bruises disappear.
THe Disappeared Children of Israel (Malin Fezehai for the New York Times)
A few months after submitting her DNA, Ms. Mazor received the call she’d been waiting for: A match had been found. Last January, the sisters were reunited. Varda Fuchs had been adopted by a German-Jewish couple in Israel. She was told at a young age that she was adopted. The sisters are part of a community of Israelis of Yemenite descent who for decades have been seeking answers about their lost kin.
Photo: kevin_lavorgna