The author on being broke, inventing one’s own language, and being “good” at Twitter.

The sociologist speaks on owning her authority, taking black women seriously, and how she shaped her trenchant new essay collection, Thick

I thought: I would never write a fictional scene like this, because it was too obvious—the art butting up against reality, as though my story held some kind of portentous power.

They warned us we’d be wide open. No electricity or security. No uplink to connect us, and anyway our devices would soon lose their power and turn to scrap.

I didn’t tell G that the Corporation hardly ever brings back the corpses of employees who’ve died in space; that they just collect them up for a while then thrust a batch out through an atmosphere to incinerate them.

I am destined to infuse / survival with meaning, like honey clotting in syringes.

I remembered that I’d learned Swahili, that I spoke French and German fluently. Was I a spy? I also knew Russian, Arabic, and Spanish. It was obvious that languages came easily to me. Who is this man? I kept asking myself. Who is Abby?

Rivalry, longing, practical jokes, and unrecognized genius in a 1980s children’s theater.

Innumerable buffalo have the temerity to appear at a distance just as he is solving the problem of the design of a steam carriage. Link them together! he shouts to his horse.

As demographics shift, Latinos in Texas are claiming the majority and seeing themselves in the center of the national story.