Body & Mind Archives - Page 3 of 16

Health care

Standing Up for the Health of Black Americans

Trump’s proposed budget cuts are definitely cuts to Medicaid—and will be felt hardest by Black Americans

April 4, 2025 • by Eric T. Jones

On March 4, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was censured by his Congressional peers for interrupting President Trump’s joint address to Congress. What was lost in the media coverage of Green’s censure is the content of his comments—he was condemning Trump for projected cuts to Medicaid, which are certain to exacerbate ...

Standing Up for the Health of Black Americans

History

The Rare Beauty of Folkstyle Wrestling

Has the American wrestling community made a Faustian bargain for Olympic gold—at the expense of its own heritage?

March 13, 2025 • by Justin Muchnick

To an outsider, the sport of wrestling might seem like a monolith—a muscular clump of writhing barbarity. But on January 17, when the members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) made the landmark decision to add women’s wrestling as an official championship sport, they faced a procedural question with ...

Artificial Intelligence

Who Does My Algorithm Think I Am?

A portrait of the author according to her apps

March 11, 2025 • by Marisol Aveline Delarosa

My phone thinks I might have a dopamine addiction. While scrolling social media recently, I paused on a video advertisement depicting a woman scrolling on her phone, lounging on the couch, and slamming down her laptop in frustration. It may as well have been security footage from my own apartment, except ...

Literature

When Is It Time to Leave?

In her new novel, Overstaying, Ariane Koch plays with the comforts of home

January 30, 2025 • by Mary Karmelek

The places we’ve lived are sites of memory, places we can revisit time and again without using a door. I’ve often gone back and visited the home I grew up in, though I haven’t set foot inside since my family left it three decades ago. Instead, I can feel the ...

Kinships

Family Values or Family Exclusion?

How right-wing policies fail working mothers

January 22, 2025 • by Elide Vincenti

Parental entitlement policies represent a complex interplay of cultural, social, and economic priorities for far-right leaders in both Italy and the United States. On the one hand, many religiously minded conservatives uphold traditional family values, which would seem to support policies that promote marriage and the growth of families. At ...

Body & Mind

Downward Mobility as a Relative Loss in Economic Security

How economic anxiety explains voting patterns

December 19, 2024 • by Teresa Ghilarducci and Ludovica Tursini

In 2016 formerly unionized parts of the country, the "Arsenal of Democracy," now called the Rust Belt (to the dismay of people who live there), switched from voting for the Democratic Party candidate Obama (both in 2008 and 2012) to the Republican Trump. Teresa Ghilarducci and Siavash Radpour (2016) show long-term stagnation ...

Downward Mobility as a Relative Loss in Economic Security

Interviews

Generations of Women in The Witches of El Paso

“The rules are going to be broken”

December 11, 2024 • by Marisol Aveline Delarosa and Luis Jaramillo

In his debut novel, The Witches of El Paso (Primero Sueño Press and Atria Books, 2024), Luis Jaramillo provides readers a sweeping multi-generational story about Nena, a woman living in World War II–era El Paso who begs for a new life and finds herself transported to colonial Mexico, where she ...

Kinships

The Witches of El Paso

An excerpt from a new novel on the supernatural power of family

December 11, 2024 • by Luis Jaramillo

On the bridge to Juárez, Marta peers down at the Rio Grande trickling along its concrete ditch. The air is heavy with diesel exhaust. People walk across the bridge carrying bright blue and red plastic bags, pushing granny carts toward El Paso. Marta thinks back to when she was a girl, ...

Body & Mind

The Fashion for Baiting, Brainwashing, and Bullying

How does Brandy Melville continue to tap into the most desperate impulses of being a teenage girl?

December 10, 2024 • by Hannah McIntyre

“From the beginning of the supply chain to the end, we’re all being exploited by the same system” says Chloe Asaam, who represents the Or Foundation. She’s speaking in Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion, an HBO documentary that explores the toxicity of the international brand Brandy Melville. The ...

The Fashion for Baiting, Brainwashing, and Bullying

Literature

A Termination

An excerpt from A Termination by Honor Moore: a memoir about choice, loss, and identity

December 9, 2024 • by Honor Moore

He bends to look in.It comes to me now that right then, the gynecologist asks again if I want to do this, and I say yes. Did you waver? asks a voice in my head. I want to say no, and that is correct. I did not waver.Are you sure?Yes. ...

Health care

Her Choice

Honor Moore discusses the decision that shaped her life as a woman and a writer

December 9, 2024 • by Honor Moore and Elide Vincenti

In 1969, Honor Moore was a 23-year-old graduate student at Yale School of Drama when she made the profound decision to end an unintended pregnancy—an experience that would shape her life and work. In her memoir A Termination (Public Space Books), Moore reflects on this pivotal moment while embarking on ...

Feminism

Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot

Girlhood and spectacle in a gutsy debut novel

October 8, 2024 • by Madeleine Adams

In her debut novel, Rita Bullwinkel portrays girlhood as a full-throttle battle, fought out over the course of a high school girls’ boxing tournament. Duking out their identities in the male-dominated space of the boxing ring, the protagonists of Headshot (Viking, 2024) both enact and undermine the familiar spectacle of ...