HELLO and welcome to the 238th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about waterparks! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

A Story of Slavery in Modern America, by Alex Tizon for The Atlantic, June 2017

This is the story everybody was talking about two weeks ago when I read it while waiting in the Subway franchise of a Wisconsin Wal-Mart for my friends to be done shopping — and it’s a very, very complicated one.

ETA: And here is a piece on Broadly featuring Filipina Labor Trafficking Survivors in their own words.

Waterpark, with Occasional Nazis, by Piper Weiss for Hazlitt, April 2017

Well, I hate waterparks and I tell you what, Piper Weiss didn’t really enjoy herself at the water park either.

How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality, by Matthew Desmond for The New York Times, May 2017

I’d never really thought to question the mortgage interest tax deduction, but when it’s all laid out like this, damn, the way this deduction plays out does not make a lot of sense.

He Was a Crook, by Hunter S. Thompson for The Atlantic, July 1994

This obituary for Richard Nixon by Hunter S. Thompson is very cathartic and I recommend it highly. It will help you with your Donald Trump feelings. I mean nothing can, really, but this could maybe start some level of healing.

Sympathy for the White Devil: Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s “The Perils of ‘Privilege,” by Jacqui Shine for the Los Angeles Review of Books, April 2017

This was a really reasoned and historically fascinating review of a book that argues a “privilege framework” does more harm than good but fails to make said argument outside of an online context.

The Teenage Dreamland of ‘Twin Peaks’, by A.N. Devers for Longreads, May 2017

Y’all NOT ONLY is this about Twin Peaks but it’s also about the ’90s and being a teenager in the ’90s and grief and shock and teen culture and Sassy magazine. It’s like this whole thing got born IN MY WHEELHOUSE.

White Women Drive Me Crazy, by Aisha Mirza for Buzzfeed, May 2017

FUCK THIS IS SO GOOD and also the author is queer and I want her to write for us.

The ‘Artwashing’ of America: The Battle for the Soul of Los Angeles Against Gentrification, by Alexander Nazaryan for Newsweek, May 2017

This is how the people of Boyle Heights are fighting back against being driven out of their neighborhood by gentrification, one gallery at a time,.

Nightmare on Elm Drive, by Dominick Dunne for Vanity Fair, October 1990

You know there are so many murders that I know SO MUCH about and I realized that I haven’t really read much about the Menendez Brothers murder since the trial happened, and what a treat it is to realize there’s another big murder you could read about for an hour on a Friday morning, you know? Plus this was written before the trial, so there’s so much more reading on this topic in my future. What a world.

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