Here’s a collection of the year’s best longreads published by the papers of Voice Media Group — the nation’s largest group of alternative weeklies — as selected by Executive Associate Editor Andy Van De Voorde.
“If there’s any legacy of ’60s Black Nationalism I find ennobling and empowering, it’s that movement’s Pan-Afrikanist embrace of Black folk everywhere as brother and sister.”
“For almost 20 years, Sylvester has been an icon of San Francisco nightlife: outrageous, bold, proud. Today, he is a symbol of a totally different San Francisco — a gay man struggling to stay alive”
“For the first five years that I was writing for The New Yorker,” says a longtime contributor, “the closest I ever got to a person of color was a young white fact-checker with dreads.”
“The day that federal troops rode into Galveston with orders to release those kept as slaves has been celebrated, in Texas and beyond, for 127 years, as Emancipation Day, as Jubilation Day, as Juneteenth.”
“The sophisticated audience that had turned out to put down the art that was not on display provided a chilling touch of surrealism worthy of Buñuel or Fellini”
“It is a party, and Václav is The Good King: relaxed, smothered in kisses and well-wishes ... the only president in living history who, in one breath, can quote John Lennon, Samuel Beckett, and Immanuel Kant”
