#380: The Mental Health of Teachers & Students

Plus: There’s still time to sign up for our discussion of “Saying Goodbye To My Chest”

I’m back working in a school again this year, and I’m liking every minute. (Well, maybe not every minute.) One thing’s for certain: The work isn’t easy. It’s never been, of course. But in my experience, what they’re saying out there — that schools right now are challenging — is undeniably true.

Today’s issue is dedicated to the mental health of teachers and students. There are three pieces: one about teachers, one about students, and one about the barriers to healing. If you’re a teacher or a parent, I hope you’re getting the support you need. If you know someone who is a teacher or a parent, please extend them a kind, affirming word. Or call them up and listen.

💬 ARTICLE CLUB: I invite you to join Article Club this month. We’re discussing “Saying Goodbye to My Chest,” by Naomi Gordon-Loebl. If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time. Click the big button below!

Sign up for our discussion!

🎉 There are only 4 tickets left to Highlighter Happy Hour in Oakland next Thursday. (Yes, it’s a popular event.) Get your free ticket here. I’m really excited to see you all.

1️⃣ The Mental Health Challenges Facing Teachers Now

Most of the conversations I’m in, we’re talking about the mental health of our young people. And we should definitely be having those conversations. But what I appreciated about this article is that it focuses on the challenges teachers are facing in the classroom and how it’s affecting them. This well-written piece by Marianna McMurdock follows a science teacher in New York who is experiencing vicarious trauma and empathetic distress. “You need therapy when you have trauma exposure,” says Prof. Tish Jennings, an expert in teacher stress. Unfortunately, very few districts offer any meaningful emotional support for teachers. (9 min)

➡️ Read the article

Malala, who belongs to loyal reader Pauline, loves tennis balls, ham, and cheese. She enjoys the snow in Colorado Springs and meeting deer in the backyard. Her 2023 goal is to pass the Canine Good Citizen evaluation and training. Malala’s love language is physical touch. Want your pet to be featured here? hltr.co/pets

2️⃣ The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic

No, the kids are not all right. That’s the conclusion of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who argues that the rise of social media (especially the like button) over the last 10 years has correlated with an unprecedented crisis among young people. Teenagers are experiencing record levels of depression, mental illness, self-harm, and suicide. The graphs in this piece are startling. Here’s an example:

Also compelling is a comprehensive Google Doc that includes more than 100 pages of research studies that corroborate Prof. Haidt’s claims. (13 min)

➡️ Read the article

3️⃣ There Is No Healing In An Anti-Black World

Da’Shaun L. Harrison:

healing is erratic, indiscriminate, chaotic, and arbitrary. it knows no bounds and follows no rules. and in its wake, i've found that it often puts your heart up as collateral—leaving one unwilling to feel as deeply as they once did, or love as earnestly as they once did, or exist as vulnerably as they once did. at least, that's true for me.

This piece is meant to be read slowly, and several times. I took time to look closely at how Harrison uses capitalization and how they problematize the common refrain, “Healing isn’t linear.” I’d love to hear what you think. (6 min)

➡️ Read the article

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 4 new subscribers – including Jakob – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Unique! Ulises! Ursula!), you’re pretty great. Loyal reader Nancy, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Christine and Erik (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (The hoodie is next!)

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

Share

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#379: It’s February! Let’s read and discuss “Saying Goodbye To My Chest”

Join us on Sunday, Feb. 26 to discuss Naomi Gordon-Loebl’s outstanding essay

Happy Thursday, Loyal Readers. I need to get one thing off my chest before launching into today’s issue. David Coleman of College Board is a very silly man. Caving in to political pressure and watering down AP African American Studies is not exactly the best way to start Black History Month.

I could go on (and on) about Mr. Coleman. But let’s not distract ourselves from the task at hand: reading and discussing this month’s Article of the Month, “Saying Goodbye To My Chest,” by Naomi Gordon-Loebl. It’s a powerful piece.

In particular I recommend it if you identify as cisgender or have not had much experience with trans people or trans issues. As we’ve established over and over again, reading is never enough when we’re on a journey of learning and understanding. But it’s a good step toward empathy.

⭐️ HHH #19 is Thursday, Feb. 16, 5:30 - 8:00 pm PT. We’ll gather at our usual spot, Room 389 in Oakland. Hope to see you there. Get your free ticket here.

The author post-surgery. C Jess T. Dugan; “Naomi at Sunset,” 2022, Courtesy of the artist and CLAMP, New York

Saying Goodbye To My Chest

Naomi Gordon-Loebl put on a binder for the first time when she was 14 years old. She liked how the white T-shirt fell against her flat chest. She loved the way she looked and felt. But only seven months ago, fully 20 years later, did Ms. Gordon-Loebl make the appointment for her top surgery. She explains:

I never hated my chest. It’s a perfectly fine chest; a good one, and I’m fond of it, even. It’s been with me for some 21 years. Everywhere my body has traveled, it has come along. Everything I have done, it has done too. It has been a part of me, and in some ways, it always will be. It needs to go now, not because it is wrong, or something worth despising, but simply because it is standing in the way of a life I can no longer postpone.

In this beautifully written account, Ms. Gordon-Loebl shares her journey and explains how she has felt being trans. It’s like “moving through a world where there are invisible rules” that she is always breaking. She writes about washing her hands quickly in the bathroom, getting patted down in the airport security line, and wanting desperately to sleep shirtless. “Sometimes I find myself idly imagining that what I am doing is returning my body to its rightful state,” she writes. (18 min)

Read the article

This month, I warmly invite you to read, annotate, and discuss “Saying Goodbye To My Chest” as part of Article Club.

If you’re interested, this how things will go:

  • This week, we’ll read the article

  • Next week, we’ll annotate the article as a group

  • The following week, we’ll listen to our interview with Ms. Gordon-Loebl

  • On Sunday, Feb. 26, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT, we’ll discuss the article

Sign up for the discussion!

If this will be your first time participating in Article Club, I’m 100% sure you’ll find that you’ll feel welcome. We’re a kind, thoughtful reading community. Feel free to reach out with all of your questions.

Thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Highlighter Article Club. Hope you liked it. Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback. I’d love to hear from you.

To our 5 new subscribers – including Ann and Ken – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Taylor! Tyler! Tien!), you’re pretty great, too. VIPs Molly and Jared, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow.

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

Share

❤️ Become a paid subscriber for $3 a month, like Katie and Rachel (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes, including exclusive audio letters from me to you.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#378: What Guns Did To My Childhood

I’ll say it again: Mitchell S. Jackson knows how to write

Happy Thursday, loyal readers. Thank you for your kind words about last week’s interview with E. Alex Jung, author of “The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler.” I look forward to seeing many of you this Sunday for our discussion of his great article.

This week, I’m featuring another brilliant piece by one of my favorite writers, Mitchell S. Jackson. Before I reveal it, it’s important to note that Mr. Jackson is no stranger to The Highlighter. Some evidence:

In that interview, we asked Mr. Mitchell what separates his writing, what makes his writing special. His answer began with a humble preamble. Then he said he likes the challenge: that if he’s going to spend months on a feature story, he wants to push himself, he wants to break convention, he wants to do something new with form.

But then he got specific. The truth is, he doesn’t think of himself as a journalist. Rather, he came up from fiction. He has two master’s degrees in creative writing. He thinks of nonfiction with a fiction writer’s mindset. And that means he cares about writing at the sentence level.

I’m very much concerned with the sentence. I’m almost concerned with the sentence over the story. And so the benefit of writing nonfiction is that, You don’t have to invent the scenes, but the kind of ethos of wanting to make beautiful sentences, that’s really what I want to do.

This sentence-level attention to detail is abundantly clear in this week’s selection, “What Guns Did To My Childhood.” I highly recommend that you read it.

Read the article

Mr. Jackson as a high school sophomore in Portland in 1991.

I don’t want to spoil your experience reading the piece, but I do want to call out a couple passages to explain what I’m talking about when I say that Mr. Mitchell cares about sentences. Here’s one:

I’m not some fancy teacher of writing, but I can identify great writing when I read it. Mr. Mitchell could have written another “guns steal young people’s innocence” piece. But because he cares about sentences, we feel the slumped shoulders and the dimmed eyes. We feel the nullification of childhood grace.

If you read the article, I also invite you to notice how Mr. Mitchell plays with words. His word choice is precise: He switches between isn’t and ain’t based on his purpose. He throws in a comcomitant right after a hella.

I’m convinced he does this to mess with his reader — in particular: his white liberal college-educated New York Times-subscribing reader. Mr. Mitchell doesn’t let his reader rest. He doesn’t want them (you?) to be comfortable. He did it in his Ahmaud Arbery profile, and he does it again here. In one example, he interrupts his narrative to remind his reader:

Later, when presenting a list of startling statistics about gun violence, he again pauses to make sure we are listening to him. “Do you hear me?” he asks. In other words, Mr. Mitchell is not letting us go about our day.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there for now. Except one last thing: If you are a teacher (many of you are), this is a piece I’d recommend that you read with your students — not only because of the content, but also because of all the writerly moves Mr. Mitchell makes. Please enjoy (and tell me about it!).

⭐️ The 1619 Project docuseries premieres today. Many of you participated in our six-month book study of The 1619 Project last year. Anyone want to organize a watch party of the six-part docuseries? Let me know.

Y'all, after two years working on this, tomorrow is premiere day for the greatest story never told, #1619hulu #1619project six-part docuseries on @hulu. The first 2 eps DEMOCRACY & RACE drop. I'm so excited & nervous. Who's hosting a watch party? Please let a sister know! 🖤✊🏽

8:59 PM ∙ Jan 25, 2023

2,938Likes 491Retweets

Thank you for listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 7 new subscribers — including Silvia, Bobby, Fay, and Carolyn – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Sara! Sarah! Sarrah!), you’re pretty great. Loyal reader Elisabeth, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Telannia and Steven (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (The hoodie is next!)

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

Share

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#377: An interview with E. Alex Jung, author of “The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler”

Please come join our discussion on Sunday, January 29

Happy Thursday, loyal readers. This month at Article Club, we’ve been focusing on “The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler,” by the talented writer E. Alex Jung.

If you haven’t read the article yet, I urge you to do so. It’s excellent. Even if you are a newbie to Ms. Butler’s work, you’ll appreciate how Mr. Jung honors her and her impact. There aren’t many great profiles out there about Ms. Butler. Now, thanks to Mr. Jung, we have one.

Also: I hope you’ll join us to discuss the article on January 29, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT on Zoom. There’s still time to sign up! Article Clubbers are kind and thoughtful and welcoming. Our conversations are always in small, intimate, facilitated groups.

Sign up for the discussion!

I’m excited to share that Sarai and I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Jung a couple weeks ago about his brilliant article. Sarai took the lead this time – which I was very happy about, given that she’s an expert of Ms. Butler’s work. We talked about a number of topics, including:

  • why Mr. Jung decided to focus on Ms. Butler as a subject

  • how reading her personal journals influenced Mr. Jung’s approach to the piece

  • why contracts (professional and personal) were so important to Ms. Butler

  • manifesting (of course)

  • how Ms. Butler pushes us to imagine a better world

I hope you take a listen and let me know what you think.

E. Alex Jung

Thank you for listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 3 new subscribers — James, Rachel, and Bria – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Ronald! Reginald! Ryan!), you’re pretty great. VIP Camille, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Rachel and Helene (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (The hoodie is next!)

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

Share

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#376: The Capitalism Issue

Animals, vegans, artificial intelligence, the elderly, and inheritance

Hi there, Loyal Readers. Today’s issue includes four outstanding articles around the theme of capitalism. I hope you read one or more of them and then share your thoughts in the comments. This week’s lead article, “Our Animals, Ourselves,” blew my mind by connecting the aims of capitalism with the subjugation of women and animals. If you like your fresh eggs for breakfast, or your Greek yogurt (my favorite), or if you question veganism, this is the article to read this week. The other three pieces are also intriguing. If you’re scared of artificial intelligence, read “HUMAN_FALLBACK.” If you want to tear up, read “The Sunset.” And if you want to be sad that you don’t own a house yet, read “Why Inheritance Is The Dirty Secret Of The Middle Class.” Please enjoy!

💬 ARTICLE CLUB: Like Octavia Butler? If so, I invite you to join Article Club this month. We’re discussing “The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler,” by E. Alex Jung. (Paywall? Try this.) This week we’re annotating this version of the article. If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time. Click the big button below!

Sign up for our discussion!

1️⃣ Our Animals, Ourselves

“Capitalism turns bodies into machines,” argue Astra and Sanaura Taylor in this outstanding essay about capitalism, animal rights, reproductive justice, and veganism. It’s common for progressive people to decry the ills of capitalism and to fight for the rights of working people. But it’s uncommon to do the same for the rights of animals. Doesn’t the process of mechanization affect not only the bodies of human laborers but also the bodies of cows, chickens, and pigs? What’s the difference?

What’s getting in the way, the authors argue, is our assumption that women (and animals that provide milk and eggs) are somehow separate from an analysis of capitalism. Dobbs allows the state to require human women to “give up” their children. Hens “give up” their eggs. Cows “give” milk. Meanwhile, most progressives regard vegans as quirky or needlessly extreme.

It’s tough to summarize this piece — as you can tell from this blurb — but one thing is for certain: I was challenged. Not only did I gain an opportunity to take on a socialist-feminist critique of capitalism, but I also got a deeper appreciation for veganism. The authors write, “Refusing to consume animal products is not an act of negation, but a proactive commitment to working to usher in a more emancipatory, egalitarian, and ecologically sustainable society.” (26 min)

➡️ Read the article

Tucker, who belongs to VIPs Tony and Ziba, enjoys pouncing in the snow and chewing on just about everything. He loves his “mom” Maya and older brother Primo. Want your pet to be featured herein? hltr.co/pets

2️⃣ HUMAN_FALLBACK

Ever felt you were chatting with a bot? It could have been Laura Preston. She’s a 29-year-old graduate student whose job is to help a conversational AI named Brenda lease apartments to people who think they’re talking to a human being. Usually Brenda does fine, but if prospective tenants get too personal, she surrenders, calling for “human fallback.” That’s when Ms. Preston takes over. She has three minutes to craft the perfect reply, or else the humans might get suspicious (and her boss angry). The job (which pays better than teaching, by the way) is nonetheless mind-numbing. “The only way to keep pace with the inbox was to go into a state of focus so intense that at times I felt on the verge of astral projection. I heard nothing and felt nothing, not even the cues of my body.” (26 min)

➡️ Read the article

3️⃣ The Sunset

Young people are scared of old people, which is to say all people are scared of old people, which is to say all people are scared of death.

Because we’re scared of death, our society doesn’t care about old people, unless they’re our grandparents. So when Lisa Bubert chooses to work as an aide in a Texas nursing home as a 19-year-old college student, making $7.25 an hour, her friends are confused. Even before COVID, the annual turnover rate was 60 percent – not surprising, given the understaffing and underfunding. Despite the horrendous working conditions, Ms. Bubert finds purpose and meaning in her work. It helps to think of her Granny K when connecting with residents who feel isolated and lonely. She recognizes that death is a vulnerable act: “There is no act of love greater than to sit with someone as they face their deepest moment of vulnerability.” (13 min)

➡️ Read the article

4️⃣ Why Inheritance Is The Dirty Secret Of The Middle Class

Everyone knows that if your parents pay for college (thanks, Mom!), you have a huge head start in life. An even larger boost, of course, is if they help you buy a home. This article explores the guilt that Millennials face when receiving family money, either through a gift or an inheritance. After all, they know that intergenerational wealth is a leading cause of inequality. They see their friends struggling. But instead of acknowledging their privilege, or refusing the cash, it’s easier to hedge — to emphasize that their parents came from a working class background, or to stress that their grandparents worked hard to squeak by. Journalist Gaby Hinsliff does a good job reminding us that our capitalist system has made it pretty much impossible to buy a home without assistance. (19 min)

➡️ Read the article

✍🏼 READER ANNOTATIONS: Several of you shared your appreciation for last week’s lead article, “The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler.” Loyal reader and Article Clubber Kati wrote, “This was a fantastic article. I read it on my Thanksgiving break and was riveted. I am not a sci-fi person, but I love Butler’s worlds she has created, and her wonderful manifestation notes. E. Alex Jung also really helps you get to know the inner world of Butler, and how her environment and life experience influenced everything (for better or worse). I found myself many times wishing she was born 30 years later, and would have gotten the recognition she deserved (much of it seems to be posthumous). I look forward to your interview with the author!”

Thank you, Kati, for reading the article and sharing your thoughts. If one of this week’s articles resonated with you, please leave a comment. Let’s get the conversation going!

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 7 new subscribers – including Sally, Joyce, Amy, and Anna – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Penelope! Patty! Phillip!), you’re pretty great. Loyal reader Margaret, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Anna and Jimmy (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (The hoodie is next!)

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

Share

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#375: HNY! This month, let’s read and discuss “The Spectacular Life of Octavia E. Butler”

Join us on Sunday, January 29 to discuss E. Alex Jung’s outstanding profile

Happy New Year, Loyal Readers! 🎉

I’m wishing you a warm, dry, and peaceful day as I write this from cold, wet, and stormy California. To those of you in the Bay Area, I’m hoping you’re staying safe, and to the loyal readers across the country, my apologies for the weather you might be experiencing soon. ☔️ 🌨 ☃

Let’s kick off the eighth year of The Highlighter with January’s Article of the month, “The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler,” by E. Alex Jung. Even if you’re not a fan of Ms. Butler (which you should be!), you’ll appreciate this well-written profile.

The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler

Octavia E. Butler wanted to be a famous writer. So she manifested it into existence. “I shall be a bestselling writer,” she wrote in her journal. “This is my life. I write bestselling novels. My novels each travel up to the top of the bestseller lists and they reach the top and they stay on top. So be it! See to it!” In this beautifully written profile, the result of extensive research at The Huntington Library, E. Alex Jung reveals enchanting details of Ms. Butler’s extraordinary life. “I never bought into my invisibility or non-existence as a Black person,” she wrote in her journal. “As a female and as an African-American, I wrote myself into the world. I wrote myself into the present, the future, and the past.” (33 min)

For Butler, writing was a way to manifest a person powerful enough to overcome the circumstances of her birth and what she saw as her own personal failings. Her characters were brazen when she felt timid, leaders when she felt she lacked charisma. They were blueprints for her own existence. “I can write about ideal me’s,” she wrote on the cusp of turning 29. “I can write about the women I wish I was or the women I sometimes feel like.”

Read the article

This month, I warmly invite you to read, annotate, and discuss “The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler” as part of Article Club.

If you’re interested, this how things will go:

  • This week, we’ll read the article

  • Next week, we’ll annotate the article as a group

  • The following week, we’ll listen to our interview with Mr. Jung

  • On Sunday, Jan. 29, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT, we’ll discuss the article

Sign up for the discussion!

If this will be your first time participating in Article Club, I’m 100% sure you’ll find that you’ll feel welcome. We’re a kind, thoughtful reading community. Feel free to reach out with all of your questions.

Thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Highlighter Article Club. Hope you liked it. Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback. I’d love to hear from you.

To our 14 new subscribers – including George, Paul, Naomi, Karen, Mandi, Neal, Samuel, Dave, and Ivan – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Omar! Olala! Olga!), you’re pretty great, too. VIPs Camille and Gail, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are some ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

☕️ Buy me a coffee to express your appreciation of the newsletter

❤️ Become a paid subscriber for $3 a month, like Abby and Sara (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes, including exclusive audio letters from me to you.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#374: The Best Of 2022

My favorite three articles and my favorite interview of the year

Loyal Readers, it’s that time of year again. Let’s reveal the best articles and interviews of the past year, shall we? But before the unveiling, two quick things:

  1. Thank you for another great year. Together we discussed 10 phenomenal articles, interviewed 10 talented authors, and published 50 issues that included more than 150 oustanding pieces on race, education, and culture. ⭐️

  2. Want to be inducted into The Highlighter Hall of Fame? Here are my favorite articles over the past five years. Several went on to win Pulitzers and Kirkus awards. One became the title essay of The 1619 Project. I challenge you to read all of them and then tell me which one is your all-time favorite.

OK, are you ready for this year’s winners? (And: Can you predict them?)

Here we go: I’m really pleased with this year’s winners. The selection process was rigorous. After scanning all 150 pieces, I chose 11 semifinalists, reread them all, and then narrowed the list down to the best of the best. They’re outstanding, and I hope you enjoy (re)reading them. If you’re moved, I’d love to hear which one is your favorite.

A happy break and holiday to you. See you in the New Year! I’m taking two weeks off, back Jan. 5. And one more time: Thank you for your readership.

1️⃣ A Kingdom From Dust

Ever had a Cutie? 🍊 Or a bottle of Fiji water? Or a glass of pomegranate juice?

Maybe you prefer nuts — like maybe almonds? Or pistachios, perhaps?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you support the empire of billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the king and queen of California agriculture, who control not only hundreds of thousands of acres of land, but also billions of gallons of water every year, not to mention the livelihoods of thousands of mostly undocumented people who work in their vast fields and live in their company town.

I deeply appreciated this article (and so did many of you) because of what I learned about my home state – namely, how much power its big farmers wield, how little power its farmworkers possess, how messed up its water policies are, and how our desire for delicious produce in the supermarket is influencing climate change, contributing to wildfires, and literally making the land underneath our feet sink.

This article has it all. Not only will you meet the Resnicks, but you’ll also learn about how they schemed their way to the top, stealing water to protect themselves from drought; how they built a company town, keeping their laborers dependent on philanthropy; and how they destroyed the environment, planting trees where they don’t grow and ripping out trees where they do.

And if you step back, as Mr. Arax encourages us to do, you’ll realize how fragile California is, and how dire our situation is — how we’ve managed to construct an enormous agricultural apparatus because of people’s ambitions for fortune, one that the country depends on, but one that fundamentally does not work, and one that will inevitably fail sooner rather than later.

After all, no matter how strong California dreaming is, there’s just no escaping the reality that 40 million people are living in a desert that’s getting drier.

➡️ Click here to read the article (89 mins)

2️⃣ Monuments To The Unthinkable

Clint Smith: “It is impossible for any memorial to slavery to capture its full horror, or for any memorial to the Holocaust to express the full humanity of the victims. No stone in the ground can make up for a life. No museum can bring back millions of people. It cannot be done, and yet we must try to honor those lives, and to account for this history, as best we can. It is the very act of attempting to remember that becomes the most powerful memorial of all.”

I deeply appreciated this article for a number of reasons, including:

  • Dr. Smith acknowledges that Germany did not immediately build monuments after World War II and explores the current debate among Germans that their accounting of the past is merely performative.

  • When Dr. Smith takes you to Berlin’s Grunewald Station or walks past a Stolperstein or visits the Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe, he makes sure to pause, reflect, and bring his experience to you.

  • He emphasizes that people, not governments, construct memory and memorials. He writes, “Germany’s most powerful monuments did not begin as state-sanctioned projects, but emerged — and are still emerging — from ordinary people outside the government who pushed the country to be honest about its past. Americans do not have to, and should not, wait for the government to find its conscience.” (55 min)

➡️ Read the article

3️⃣ Unspeakable Pain: What Doctors Don’t Hear

When Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas goes to serve as a volunteer medical interpreter in a free clinic in Chicago, her trainer says, “Remember, you are not really there. Never, ever, add a single word to what is said. That is not your job.” Prof. Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas wants to follow the rules. But an interaction between an insensitive doctor and a frightened patient (who looks “just like and nothing like me”) prompts her to go off script. (14 min)

Some articles shout out “Pick me for best-of!” This one was quieter, more subtle. The writing’s power and the piece’s nuance deepened with each re-read.

+ Content warning: This article includes a discussion of a suicide attempt.

➡️ Read the article

4️⃣ An interview with Mitchell S. Jackson, author of “Looking for Clarence Thomas”

I never forget how lucky I am to be doing Article Club. Not only have I met so many of you, and built a thoughtful reading community together, but I’ve also had the opportunity to interview the most talented authors out there. One of them is Mitchell S. Jackson — the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Twelve Minutes and a Life” (last year’s Article of the Year). The interview that Sarai and I got to do with Mr. Mitchell was my favorite one of the year.

Mr. Jackson was kind and gracious from the start. He laughed that I insisted on calling him Mr. Jackson. And right from the first question, everything felt natural, like we were talking to a friend rather than to a famous writer whose prose is changing the canon (Sarai’s words, and I agree!) of longform nonfiction.

We talked about a number of topics, including:

  • how he didn’t want to write about Clarence Thomas at first

  • how his trip to Pin Point inspired the piece’s opening

  • how James Baldwin’s writing helped him understand Mr. Thomas, and

  • how Mr. Thomas is a man of deep contradictions, whose time on the Supreme Court has caused “dramatically malevolent things to wide swaths of Americans”

Most of all, though, Mr. Jackson talked about the craft of writing, how if he’s going to spend months on a feature story, he wants to push himself, he wants to break convention, he wants to do something new with form.

I’m very much concerned with the sentence. I’m almost concerned with the sentence over the story. And so the benefit of writing nonfiction is that, You don’t have to invent the scenes, but the kind of ethos of wanting to make beautiful sentences, that’s really what I want to do.

Thank you for another great year of The Highlighter Article Club. Hope you appreciated the journey. Feel free to share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.

To our new subscriber Janet, I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Niowan! Nolan! Neelan!), you’re pretty great. Loyal reader Mik, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Tammy and Jason (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (The hoodie is next!)

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next in the New Year on Thursday, Jan. 5, at 9:10 am PT!

#373: Why The Future Is Analog

Also: Wordle, T-Shirts, and can you predict the Article of the Year?

Hi there, Loyal Readers. Let’s get right to it by announcing the lucky winner of last week’s giveaway: The Highlighter T-shirt. It’s VIP Michele, not a stranger to prizes, but always gracious when she wins. Here’s her acceptance speech, which features her dog Licki Minaj. Congratulations Michele!

Let’s continue this season of giving with another prize: a 6-month digital subscription to the New York Times (for you or a friend to enjoy, after their strike is over). All you need to do is guess this year’s Article of the Year (which I’ve chosen already, stored in a lockbox, and will reveal next Thursday). Leave a comment with your guess. (Don’t let Michele win again.)

Leave a comment

All right, that’s enough with the festivities. Today’s a simple issue with just two recommendations. They’re on the shorter and lighter side this time, so feel free to read both in between holiday card writing and desperation gift shopping. The first, an ode to the analog world, comes at the perfect time — as ChatGPT mesmerizes us with its ability to write college essays. The second, a mathematical analysis of the game Wordle, will either pique your competitive interests or cause you to snub your nose at science. Please enjoy this week’s articles, and thank you again for being part of our reading community. ⭐️

1️⃣ Why The Future Is Analog

The pandemic ruined us for many reasons, argues author David Sax, in this excerpt from his new book, The Future Is Analog: How To Create a More Human World. Not only did it harm our mental health, and keep us cooped up in our homes, and dislodge our ability to interact with people. It also let digital win. We all know this, of course, as we say, over and over again, that we’re going to delete Twitter from our phones, or put our phone in another room when we’re sleeping, or stop checking texts when we’re hanging out with our kids. But what we don’t know, Mr. Sax argues, is that we will experience a shift back to the analog.

Look at a picture of a beautiful sunset on Instagram and you think “pretty.” Stand in front of it and watch the sun descend, feeling its rays on your face, and you get a sense of something bigger—your place in this universe.

I’m not sure I buy his argument, actually. Or maybe I’m just a cynic who thinks that AI will make us all cyborgs soon. But I’d rather wish for a world where people enjoy each other’s company in real time and space, rather than wonder what’s waiting for them, what’s buzzing for them, and what’s sending them notifications on a device that keeps them always halfway somewhere else. (12 min)

➡️ Read the article

Here’s loyal reader Len enjoying a warm beverage at his home in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Reading is always better when you’re near a good mug.

2️⃣ The Math Behind Wordle Guesses

I try not to tell anyone that I play Wordle every morning at 5:35 am. But alas, I do. Ever since VIP Abby divulged her secret first word (no, I’m not going to tell you), I’ve been using it religiously, to mostly marvelous results. But Wordle statisticians would likely sneer at my first guess, suggesting that I go with “raise,” or the fan favorite, “adieu.” It turns out, though, that vowels matter less than well-placed consonants. This analysis of Wordle — which asks four questions, then provides mathematical answers — is my favorite write-up of the game I’ve read so far. If you’re a fan, you might pick up some tips. But I assure you, you won’t challenge my recent streak of birdies. (15 min)

➡️ Read the article

✍🏼 READER ANNOTATIONS: Several of you wrote in with appreciation for last week’s lead article, “Moments To The Unthinkable.” Loyal reader Xuan-Vu compared author Clint Smith’s writing with two of her favorites, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner. “I’m so glad you chose his work,” she wrote, and recommended Dr. Smith’s interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. Xuan-Vu adds, “[The podcast offered] so many thoughts for me to ponder on this topic, both inspiring and upsetting.” Thank you for sharing your perspective, Xuan-Vu. I invite all of you to reach out whenever an article moves you. All you need to do is hit reply or click here.

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. Feel free to share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.

To our 17 new subscribers – including John, Alina, and Lisa – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Mike! Manuel! Molly!), you’re pretty great. Loyal reader Liona, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Joey and Kayla (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (The hoodie is next!)

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#372: Monuments To The Unthinkable

Remembering the past, reporting the reading wars, and saving your cat’s life

Welcome to December, loyal readers! Before anything else, I’d like to say happy birthday to my aunt Bernice, who turns 84 today. 🎂 An elementary school teacher for more than 40 years, she got me into teaching and reading, sharing with me her favorite book, Charlotte’s Web, when I was a kid. She’s been an inspiration to me all my life and a big supporter of all my reading-related pursuits, including this newsletter.

⭐️ Also: A warm welcome to our 24 new subscribers, including Sam, Irene and Kevin and Lindsey and Greg. I hope you find our reading community kind, thoughtful, and filled with tons of good articles to read and discuss. Loyal readers, if you like what we do here, please share The Highlighter Article Club with a friend. Thank you!

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All right, let’s get to this week’s selections. I’m leading today’s issue with “Monuments To The Unthinkable,” by Clint Smith. This is an exquisitely written, powerful essay about how Germany memorializes the sins of the Holocaust and what we can learn as Americans to come to terms with slavery and our shameful past. This piece is so good, you might be seeing it again in a couple weeks, when I reveal the four best articles of the year. I hope you make time to read it.

If history and public memory are not your thing, scroll down to find great articles on the latest salvo in the reading wars and whether you should get your pet cat a kidney transplant. Please enjoy!

1️⃣ Monuments To The Unthinkable

Clint Smith: “It is impossible for any memorial to slavery to capture its full horror, or for any memorial to the Holocaust to express the full humanity of the victims. No stone in the ground can make up for a life. No museum can bring back millions of people. It cannot be done, and yet we must try to honor those lives, and to account for this history, as best we can. It is the very act of attempting to remember that becomes the most powerful memorial of all.”

I deeply appreciated this article for a number of reasons, including:

  • Dr. Smith acknowledges that Germany did not immediately build monuments after World War II and explores the current debate among Germans that their accounting of the past is merely performative.

  • When Dr. Smith takes you to Berlin’s Grunewald Station or walks past a Stolperstein or visits the Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe, he makes sure to pause, reflect, and bring his experience to you.

  • He emphasizes that people, not governments, construct memory and memorials. He writes, “Germany’s most powerful monuments did not begin as state-sanctioned projects, but emerged — and are still emerging — from ordinary people outside the government who pushed the country to be honest about its past. Americans do not have to, and should not, wait for the government to find its conscience.”

➡️ Read the article

2️⃣ The Science Of Reading: Is The Reporting Biased?

I’ll be honest: Ever since the release of “Sold a Story,” Emily Hanford’s six-part podcast series about reading instruction, I’ve been turned off by the back-and-forth bashing between the phonics-first “Science of Reading” devotees and their many impassioned detractors. There have been Twitter fights; there have been open letters; there have been blog posts; there have been speeches. It’s the Reading Wars all over again. It’s tiring. Even though I care deeply about how to teach young people how to read, I’m steering clear of this fray. But I did find this critique by Prof. Maren Aukerman of the reporting on reading instruction very helpful. She doesn’t excoriate Ms. Hanford and Dana Goldstein (author of The Teacher Wars – she likes wars), but rather identifies how education journalists are exhibiting bias and sensationalizing a protagonist / antagonist conflict among adults when maybe we should be caring more about the kids. (13 min)

➡️ Read the article

3️⃣ How Much Would You Pay To Save Your Cat’s Life?

I’m personally more a dog person, and think Arlo is delightful, but I know many cat people (not necessarily “Cat People”), and one benefit of being a cat person is that you can prolong your cat’s life with a $15,000 kidney transplant. But should you? That’s the question Sarah Zhang answers in this funny-yet-serious article on the American trend of loving our pets (and investing in them) like our human children — especially among those of us who don’t have human children, an ever-growing group. Where’s the line between being a caring cat owner and doing too much? Is it maybe when you force another cat to give up their kidney for yours? (29 min)

➡️ Read the article

✍🏼 READER ANNOTATIONS: Loyal reader Jason generously shared his thoughts after reading “A Kingdom from Dust” and listening to my interview with author Mark Arax. Jason writes, “That article is beautiful in its multifaceted take on such a complex history and such a convoluted situation. The writing gets at the complexity of water politics and power in California, and extends that to acknowledging the complexity in people and in life. Beautiful stuff.” Jason, thank you very much for reading, listening, and sharing your perspective. It makes me happy that so many of you carve out time to go deep into these great articles on race, education, and culture.

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. Feel free to share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.

To our long-time subscribers (Len! Larry! Lester!), you’re pretty great. Loyal reader Kathleen, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Linda and Cheryl (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (The hoodie is next!)

📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#371: The Reading Mind

On this Thanksgiving: An ode to reading, Octavia E. Butler, and the pain of feedback

Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for supporting me and this newsletter. Most of all, thank you for being loyal readers and for being part of our reading community.

Over the years, I’ve said many times: Reading by itself is not going to make our world a better place. But I do believe that reading is part of the journey. It’s a powerful act of introspection, compassion, and connection. Especially now, when corporations and institutions vie for every fraction of our attention, demanding that we scroll and click and reply with rage, the practice of reading teaches us stillness and reminds us to remain open to ideas and possibilities.

That’s what I’m hoping for here: that we take a few minutes each week to get away from the bustle, to read something beautiful and thought provoking, to reflect on how it resonates with us – and if we feel moved, to share our experience with a friend.

⭐️ I’d love to hear from you: What does reading do for you?

Leave a comment

1️⃣ The Reading Mind

“We were never meant to read,” says Prof. Maryanne Wolf in this fascinating conversation with Ezra Klein. There is nothing natural or genetic about it. But the invention of text 6,000 years ago, alongside the brain’s capacity to create novel neural networks, has fundamentally transformed the human experience.

But most of us, she argues, are no longer practicing the kind of deep reading that expands our minds. Instead, we’re skimming for information, usually on screens, rather than taking the time to allow for reading to achieve insight and epiphany.

Many of us have, if you will, regressed to that earliest form of reading in which we are barely skimming the surface of what we read, barely consolidating it in memory, and we are in fact reading less of what is there as a result.

The reason we have regressed, Prof. Wolf argues, is that how we read – and therefore, what we discern, what we comprehend – is determined by the medium on which text is delivered. On the one hand, the affordances of the digital medium support the consumption of voluminous amounts of information. Skimming and scrolling are effective defense mechanisms to help us get through the day. But they also limit our ability to infer, to take on perspectives, and to deduce truth.

The answer is not to flee from the digital world and abscond to a cabin in the woods of Montana where print books and newspapers and typewriters abound. Prof. Wolf suggests a more practical approach: carve out time for mindful reading, read differently based on our goals for the text, and make screens work for us (69 min).

➡️ Listen to the conversation & read the transcript | Listen on Apple Podcasts

2️⃣ The Spectacular Life Of Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler wanted to be a famous writer. So she manifested it into existence. “I shall be a bestselling writer,” she wrote in her journal. “This is my life. I write bestselling novels. My novels each travel up to the top of the bestseller lists and they reach the top and they stay on top. So be it! See to it!” In this beautifully written profile, the result of extensive research at The Huntington Library, E. Alex Jung reveals enchanting details of Ms. Butler’s extraordinary life. “I never bought into my invisibility or non-existence as a Black person,” she wrote in her journal. “As a female and as an African-American, I wrote myself into the world. I wrote myself into the present, the future, and the past.” (33 min)

➡️ Read the article

3️⃣ Thank You For Your Feedback

My last job had a culture of continuous improvement. When you did a thing, you had to ask for feedback, even if you didn’t want to hear it, and even if people didn’t want to give it. Sometimes the feedback was helpful. Other times it was not. I still remember the workshop I led about best practices for encouraging student inquiry in the classroom. “This event would have been better with hot cocoa,” one person wrote. This well-written article expands on the theme, exploring how requirements to include community input on government projects actually make our communities less equitable and less democratic. Author Aaron Gordon argues that if we really want to build housing and improve transportation, we should either limit input or change the format of public comment, eliminating shouting matches and finger pointing. (29 min)

➡️ Read the article

“One Yawn,” a triptych featuring Arlo, who belongs to me and loyal reader Peter. Want your pet to be highlighted here? hltr.co/pets

Thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Highlighter Article Club. Hope you liked it. Feel free to share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.

To our three new subscribers – including Bella and Hannah – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Kiara! Ken! Korey!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Joren, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Lisa and Daniel (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. (A new T-shirt is coming at HHH.)






📬 Invite your friends. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? Share with them today’s issue and urge them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you very much for spreading the word.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!