All posts tagged: narrative

The Work of Feeling | Raven Leilani

The Work of Feeling | Raven Leilani

Published by Jenni Sidey

In Love, two women fight until they understand their fighting as a pretense to touch. The fighting is a kind of intimacy, an annual rite of slapping, biting, and hair-pulling that eventually gives way to a “realization that the fights did nothing other than allow them to hold each other.” The epiphany that they are longing to hold each other is eclipsed by a more creative violence. In lieu of brawling, there are stolen rings and invocations of traumatic history that divert them away from the need to be held. For decades they live and age alongside each other in this way, hurting each other more inventively, unable to transcend the poor contact of fighting in favor of real, tender contact until the last pages, when they are allowed the full epiphany of an embrace. As Toni Morrison put it in an interview about this novel, an epiphany amounts to a happy ending for her characters because “they’re not stupid anymore.” It’s funny, but also a generous conception of closure, and also of narrative, which …

Milken-adjacent Power100 aims to reclaim the finance DEI narrative

Milken-adjacent Power100 aims to reclaim the finance DEI narrative

Published by Sam Flores

CEO Jacob Walthour, Kourtney Gibson and The 49th Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris onstage at the 2026 Power100 Honoree Dinner at Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel on May 3, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. Arnold Turner | Getty Images The Power100 gathering on the sidelines of the Milken Institute Global Conference took on a different tone this year as its diverse leaders in finance attendees fight to reclaim the narrative about people of color and women. “We are trying to show the world what success looks like,” said Jacob Walthour, co-founder of Power100 and founder and CEO of Blueprint Capital. “And over the course of the last year, what success looks like has been redefined in a way that has not been respectful and not truthful about the contributions of women and people of color.” President Donald Trump, who campaigned on and speaks often about rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion measures in both the federal government and the private sector, was not mentioned at the conference, but the impact of …

Archie Rand on Painting, Narrative, and the Influence of Philip Guston

Archie Rand on Painting, Narrative, and the Influence of Philip Guston

Published by José Betancourt

How do you know when a painting is finished? It’s a question asked of so many painters, many of whom struggle to come up with an answer. When I posed it to Archie Rand during a conversation in his Brooklyn studio, he stood up from his lounge chair and walked toward an easel on which sat a half-finished work. In it, a dapper street vendor sells ceramics from a wooden board balanced on his head. Two children watch him from behind while, in one sliver of the background on the top left side of the picture, a blazing red sunset overruns the sky. “You know what the most important part of this painting is?” he asked. “This, right here.” He pointed to the top of left of the picture, where the building that serves as the painting’s background meets the crimson sky.  Related Articles A recently finished painting in Archie Rand’s studio. Photo by Christopher Garcia Vale/ARTnews. Why? “Because I want to go around here and find out what’s around the corner. Where are these …

The deconstruction narrative has a rage problem. Taylor Tomlinson has the antidote.

The deconstruction narrative has a rage problem. Taylor Tomlinson has the antidote.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — In 2006, the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor published “Leaving Church,” a memoir of such quiet, luminous precision that it felt less like a departure than a deeper conversion into the world. It was a mid-life reckoning with a vocation, written by a woman who had stayed in the room long enough to earn the right to turn out the lights. Two decades later, the leaving-church narrative has been downgraded from a high-stakes spiritual crisis to a mandatory merit badge for red-state kids who self-sort into blue metro areas and dream of being writers. New York publishing still handsomely rewards the best versions of this genre. But the sheer volume of lesser entries has created the fantasy that rage pays. It rarely does for long. If you listen to the current crop of “deconstruction” memoirists — many of whom are barely out of their twenties — you would think that a sexually conservative household is a crime scene rather than a typical American Christian upbringing. It’s a trope that validates a certain brand of progressive politics …

Namwali Serpell on Toni Morrison, Criticism, and Narrative Empathy | Namwali Serpell, Jarrett Earnest

Namwali Serpell on Toni Morrison, Criticism, and Narrative Empathy | Namwali Serpell, Jarrett Earnest

Published by Jenni Sidey

In this episode of Private Life, the writer and New York Review contributor Namwali Serpell joins Jarrett Earnest to discuss her new book, On Morrison, a collection of essays about Toni Morrison and her work.  Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. Their conversation covers Morrison’s life as a literary eminence and public intellectual, but the focus is Serpell’s close-readings of her most famous novels—including Jazz (1992), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved(1987), and Tar Baby (1981)—as well as her poetry, criticism, and later books. Earnest also asks Serpell about her essay “The Banality of Empathy,” about the concept of narrative empathy, which was published in the Review’s March 2, 2019, issue.   Namwali Serpell is a professor of English at Harvard University. In addition to On Morrison, she is the author of the novels The Old Drift (2019) and The Furrows (2022) and the essay collection Stranger Faces (2020). She has been a contributor to The New York Review of Books since 2017, when she wrote “Kenya in Another Tongue,” about a new edition of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s 1980 novel Devil on a Cross. Serpell is also a …

A New Narrative for Planetary Health in the Hybrid Era

A New Narrative for Planetary Health in the Hybrid Era

Published by Jenni Sidey

There is a problem with how we talk about the twin crises of our time. We speak of climate change arriving, of artificial intelligence (AI) transforming society, as though these phenomena were storms rolling in from somewhere else. This language is imprecise, and it has consequences for our mental and physical health. It suggests that we are simply recipients of forces beyond our control—forces that are quietly chipping away at our ability to make decisions that science consistently tells us are foundational to well-being and collective resilience. The more accurate—and more demanding—framing is this: Climate change and AI are not happening to us. They happen with us, among us, and because of us. This is the cornerstone of any credible new story about planetary health in an age where human and artificial intelligence, nature and technology, personal choices and global consequences are becoming impossible to separate. The Psychological Cost of Misattribution When people perceive a crisis as something outside their control, a familiar pattern follows: They feel helpless; they disengage. A paralysing form of grief …

Hollywood’s Narrative on UFOs and ETs Reaches Back Many Decades

Hollywood’s Narrative on UFOs and ETs Reaches Back Many Decades

Published by Sam Flores

Before zombies shambled about, ghoulishly feasting on the flesh of those too slow to flee, aliens from outer space ruled movie theaters, drive-ins and late Saturday night creature features on television. Even as Hollywood still drives how Americans envision little green men with big eyes and bigger heads, fiction soon could be separated from — or revealed as — fact if government agencies release secret files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs as called for in February by President Donald Trump. The science fiction genre has shaped how people think about intelligent life elsewhere in the universe — “whether it’s invasion narratives or aliens coming to warn us that we’re on the wrong track or aliens just trying to come and make contact and help us with things or just say ‘hi,’” says Duke University professor Priscilla Wald, who teaches a class on science fiction and film. Trump’s announcement on social media followed former President Barack Obama suggesting in a podcast interview that aliens were real. Obama later clarified that he had not seen evidence that …

Kent says FBI probe meant to ‘steal a narrative’ from true intentions of Iran war

Kent says FBI probe meant to ‘steal a narrative’ from true intentions of Iran war

Published by Sam Flores

Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCC), said an FBI probe investigating him for leaking classified information is a mechanism to “steal a narrative” to cover the Trump administration’s true intentions for entering war with Iran.  “If you’ve been in MAGA circles for this long, you kind of understand what this… Source link

Commentary: The global narrative is shifting in favour of China – don’t misread it

Commentary: The global narrative is shifting in favour of China – don’t misread it

Published by Sam Flores

LOW-KEY INVOLVEMENT IN REGIONAL CONFLICTS China’s reluctance was evident in several regional conflicts.  Mr Trump has claimed he “ended 8 wars in just 8 months”. Whatever the debate on whether to give him credit, his claim included three conflicts at China’s doorstep: between Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Pakistan and India. Notably, Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia are very close to China, while Armenia and Azerbaijan seek closer ties with the SCO. China’s interests would have been well-served by leading mediation, but its efforts proved limited and low-key compared to Mr Trump’s actions. Tensions between China and Japan have escalated significantly over Taiwan following remarks in November 2025 by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. She described a Chinese attack on Taiwan as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, opening the door to potential military intervention. Beijing responded with intense diplomatic and economic pressure.  The timing, shortly after the Busan summit between Mr Xi and Mr Trump where Taiwan was not mentioned, suggests Ms Takaichi may have deliberately ratcheted up tensions to draw the US back …

Trump administration offers shifting narrative for U.S. war in Iran

Trump administration offers shifting narrative for U.S. war in Iran

Published by Sam Flores

President Donald Trump says combat will continue in Iran until U.S. “objectives” are complete. Those objectives and the justification for the war have remained fluid more than 48 hours into the conflict.  Trump and his proxies have not been aligned on their narrative, leading to confusion about how Trump and his advisors are defining the endgame for ending the escalating conflict. Trump began a military buildup near Iran after promising dissidents “help is on its way” when protests against its government rocked the country in January. The stated justification since the attack began Saturday has whipsawed among preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, deposing the Iranian regime that brutally represses dissent, stopping an imminent attack from Iran on U.S. interests and following Israel’s lead. The muddied messaging underscores a broader question of whether Trump is pursuing solely a military objective or full-blown regime change. The changing justification and growing list of objectives raise questions about the administration’s motives and the extent to which the U.S. will be entangled in Iran, a more urgent question …