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Now, the links you’re here for:
Confessions of a slaughterhouse worker (Ashitha Nagesh, BBC)
Soon, though, I realised there was no point pretending that it was just another job. I’m sure not all abattoirs are the same but mine was a brutal, dangerous place to work. There were countless occasions when, despite following all of the procedures for stunning, slaughterers would get kicked by a massive, spasming cow as they hoisted it up to the machine for slaughter. Similarly, cows being brought in would get scared and panic, which was pretty terrifying for all of us too. You’ll know if you’ve ever stood next to one that they are huge animals.
Personally, I didn’t suffer physical injuries, but the place affected my mind.
Infatuation (Deena ElGenaidi, Longreads)
I wasn’t allowed to go, and that was the end of the conversation. My mom’s parenting style changed for my brother 10 years later, as she allowed him to go to dances and prom and hang out with girls. It was probably because he was a boy, but also maybe her values had just changed with time. But when I was growing up, my parents maintained their outrage at what they deemed “American” culture, with its loose morals. That attitude, combined with their strict rules, ingrained in me a sense of deeply internalized shame at even the slightest tinge of desire, or the thought of sex. For that reason, Jesse McCartney remained inside my closet.
A translation crisis at the border (Rachel Nolan, The New Yorker)
The U.S. government claims to provide proper translation at all points in the immigration process, but, in practice, it rarely offers Mayan-language translation at the border or in holding cells. (A spokesperson from Customs and Border Protection said, “We use a third-party translation service via telephone when we are unable to communicate due to language barriers. We do our best to make sure we can communicate accurately, with everyone, throughout their time in our custody.”) Until just a few years ago, there was a tendency to treat Mayan languages as “dialects.” A former immigration judge told me that all her Mayan-language cases, when they came from Customs and Border Protection, were “listed on the court docket as Spanish.” When Mayan-language asylum seekers can manage some Spanish, it is often not enough to navigate credible-fear interviews—in which migrants must explain why they are afraid of returning to their home countries.
The gay horizon (Alicia Mountain, The Georgia Review)
I think that’s what got me. There was an absence, and the absence was gay. At that point, in the New Jersey suburbs, I knew about gay people as a concept, but not as a lived experience. I knew that Elton John was gay, but he wasn’t in my line of vision. Despite Ellen, I didn’t know how to be a gay girl, though I was. The only gay person I knew was the organist at our church, who sat frail and birdlike in the folds of his white robe and sang to his god and made the brass pipes sing to his god.
The rise and fall of Delia’s, the catalog that ruled America (Evan Nicole Brown, Fast Company)
For a time, Delia’s was the voice of popular fashion, speaking in a way no heritage mall brand ever had. “It was the very start of the girl power movement, especially for that younger generation . . . at that time, there was no one else speaking to that group of kids, especially [a clothing brand] being sent directly to their home in catalog form where they could kind of express themselves and see themselves, and not just what they’d be seeing at the mall,” says Jim Trzaska, a photo producer who also assisted with buying and merchandising at Delia’s, who was hired during the brand’s infancy in the mid-’90s. “Delia’s put a spin on things that was a little more individualized and counter-culture, if you will. That’s why it was so successful back then, because there was nothing else like it at that time.”
Image credit: Marcel van Schooten