paper trail

Nicole Chung on storytelling and adoption

Nicole Chung. Photo: Erica B. Tappis

Victoria Namkung talks to Nicole Chung about transracial adoption, motherhood, and her new book, All You Can Ever Know. “Even though it wasn’t the whole truth, I was so comforted and so attached to this origin story I was given. I remember how difficult it was to start challenging that in my own head and reconsidering my own adoption story,” Chung said. “The story I had was never enough and I’ve just been telling it ever since, mostly within my family and to my kids, and now it’s changing with this book about to be out there.”

The Washington Post has relaunched its magazine.

GQ’s Joel Pavelski details the newfound expectation that political print journalists be camera-ready. “Journalists from old-guard print publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post who once toiled in relative obscurity—working the phones and appearing in public mostly through their bylines or Twitter profile pictures—have vaulted to nationwide prominence as on-call talking heads for networks like CNN and MSNBC,” he writes.

“When Republicans say ‘elite,’ they don’t mean ‘rich.’ They love rich people. They mean ‘smart,’” Fran Lebowitz tells The Believer.“There has always been a real strain of anti-intellectualism in this country, but I’m not even talking about intellectualism. I’m talking about normal intelligence and lack of ignorance.”

Rebecca Traister lists the books she read while writing Good and Mad.

“Who in the world is only waking up to their anger now?” asks Jessa Crispin as she reviews two recent books on women’s anger. “I wonder how long we’re going to have books like this for women, books in which we sing only a song of our own oppression and tell ourselves we are special and brave for having suffered for so long.”