IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair. We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Eric Larson meets Rebekah Gregory (26), who was badly injured in the Boston bombing. At the beginning of the story, she is faced with the decision of whether to have her leg amputated – just as her wedding is approaching.
(Mashable, approx 12 minutes reading time, 2527 words)
She tried to stand up, fell, then looked down at her legs. For a second, she thought they were both gone — she couldn’t see or feel anything. Rivers of blood snaked through the charred asphalt from every direction, merging in a dark red pool beneath the black smoke. Bones lay next to her head on the sidewalk. She didn’t know if they were hers.
Rookie writers of different ages gather to talk about class, what it means and what they understand ‘class privilege’ to be. It’s a frank, honest, and revealing discussion.
(Rookie, approx 50 minutes reading time, 10,000 words)
My parents moved to this country as immigrants in 1970, and for a long time my family was probably in the lower half of the middle-class, but they were both doctors, so pretty soon they were making good money and we had all the trappings of an upper-middle-class life. That’s where we were for most of my upbringing, and it gave me a sense of (material) safety and freedom and expectation that I think still defines me as upper-middle-class
John D Sutter writes about the most trafficked mammal youve never heard of: the Pangolin, a scaly creature that looks like a modern-day dinosaur. What is its appeal?
(CNN, approx 54 minutes reading time, 10855 words)
It’s hard to overstate the amount of stress that trafficking routes put on pangolins. They’re not happy travelers. Often they haven’t had food or water for days and are perilously dehydrated. Forty percent die within a day or two of arriving at the center, Phuong told me. The rest are injected with hydrating fluids and kept in quarantine until they can be moved to a larger cage.
4. The right to bear a raccoon
Todd C Frankel introduces us to Mark ‘Coonrippy’ Brown, who became a YouTube hit thanks to videos of him with his pet raccoon Rebekah. However, after the raccoon was taken from him, he decided to run for Governor in order to find out what happened to her.
(Politico, approx 12 minutes reading time, 2465 words)
Brown’s bid certainly feels like a no-shot, odd-ball affair. The loads of press attention so far have centered on the campaign’s novelty. Suspicions about his true intentions don’t soften when you learn that before he lost the raccoon, he snagged a deal for a reality TV show based on his country ways. But Brown insists his political ambitions have nothing to do with that.
Syreeta McFadden began taking photos as a child, but realised that photographic film struggled to capture the true tones of black skin – and the manufacturers knew this.
(Buzzfeed, approx 12 minutes reading time, 2538 words)
Photography is balancing an equation between light and documentary. Beauty and storytelling. Honesty and fantasy. The frame says how the photographer sees you. I couldn’t help but feel that what that photographer saw was so wildly different from how I saw myself.
Steven Godfrey meets the ‘bag man’ the agent who signs up amateur athletes. The only problem is, this isn’t allowed, and his job is shrouded in secrecy.
(SBS Nation, approx 27 minutes reading time, 5596 words)
This is the arrangement in high-stakes college football, though of course not every player is paid for. Providing cash and benefits to players is not a scandal or a scheme, merely a function. And when you start listening to the stories, you understand the function can never be stopped.
…AND A CLASSIC READ FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Angela Davis was – and is – a pivotal person in the story of civil rights in the USA. Her work challenges and illuminates, and her life story shows that she has never been afraid to challenge authority. Back in 1970, James Baldwin wrote an open letter to her about her arrest.
(New York Review of Books, approx 10 minutes reading time, 2070 words)
Black people were killing each other every Saturday night out on Lenox Avenue, when I was growing up; and no one explained to them, or to me, that it was intended that they should; that they were penned where they were, like animals, in order that they should consider themselves no better than animals.
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