Molly Crabapple

In the Shadow of Invasion

Across Ukraine, people fight, grieve, sing, skateboard, selfie. “We will think of our pain after victory.”

The Joy of Yiddish Books

The language sustained a Jewish diasporan secular culture, from Vilna to the Lower East Side. Today, that heritage survives in a gritty corner of Queens to be claimed by a new generation.

Ten Years After Occupy

“Since then, taking part in protests has felt like the rent I pay for living in this world.”

Occupy Memory

A decade ago, a grassroots anticapitalist movement burst on the scene, galvanizing people with its slogan “We are the 99 percent.” It changed me, and many others, but how much did it change the world?

A Miniaturist Goes Large

The Pakistani-American painter Shahzia Sikander’s retrospective showcases the way she has turned a traditional form into an exuberant medium for overthrowing empires.

David Graeber, 1961–2020

David Graeber, the anthropologist and activist, died aged fifty-nine on September 2, 2020. The New York Review, to which he began contributing last year, is collecting tributes from his friends and colleagues.

In NYC, Protesters’ Pride Beats Police Brutality

Every few days, a new video of misconduct surfaced on social media. Yet the officers involved suffered no real consequences. Nor did they show any shame, let alone contrition.

A Nation in Search of Justice

What has been lost in all the shocking images of fires, police barricades, and looting is that an overwhelming majority of protesters have condemned the violence and have sought to bring the community together. 

Passover 2020: A Virtual Seder

As Covid-19 took hold in New York City, I started receiving emails from the rabbi at my local shul. The barrage of newsletters cracked open my claustrophobic anxieties.

Trump’s Other Family Separation Policy

This week, on August 14, a federal appeals court will hear oral argument from attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security, on the one hand, and Temporary Protected Status holders, on the other, as to whether the terminations should occur as originally scheduled. For Maribel Hernández Rivera, the litigation is personal.

A Dispatch from Puerto Rico

The protesters had done more than boot Rosselló from office. They wanted the head of every politician that had cheated and mocked the island, whether or not they had taken part in the recently leaked texts and chat messages between the governor and senior officials.

It’s Not About Sex

American sex workers are today more organized, and more oppressed, than they have been in years.

Sex Workers Rally for Reform

There have been a few local initiatives to decriminalize sex work, including a D.C. bill that has been pending since 2017. But until now, even leftist politicians have tended to stay far away from the issue, fearing pushback from some feminist groups.

Waiting with Immigrants

To be an immigrant in America is to wait. This goes double for the millions of immigrants who have found themselves at the sour end of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureaucracy—and triple in the age of Trump.

India’s Farmers on the March

Agriculture in India relies heavily on rain and temperature in the growing season; farmers here are highly sensitive to climate. They have already felt the beginning of the apocalypse in the form of dried-up wells, declining yields, and mass migrations of people.

Where Else Can They Go?

My Great-Grandfather the Bundist

Family paintings led me to the Bund, a revolutionary society of which my mother’s Grandpa Sam had been a member, whose story was interwoven with the agonies and triumphs of Jews in Eastern Europe, and whose name has all but been erased.

Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rico’s Greatest Poet

Puerto Rico’s most famous poet and greatest literary figure, Julia de Burgos is as significant a cultural figure for the island commonwealth as the artist Frida Kahlo is for Mexico.

Turkey’s New Front in Syria

After the looting of Afrin and its ethnic cleansing of Kurds by Turkish-backed militias, Turkey’s intent to resettle refugees in territory it has seized from Syrian Kurdish forces is one of the Syrian civil war’s more cynical attempts to reshape the country’s demography, using desperate civilians as pawns.

Puerto Rico’s DIY Disaster Relief

Natural disasters have a way of clarifying things. They sweep away once-sturdy delusions, to reveal old treasures and scars.