‣ Calling all haters! This critical, refreshing review of a dance piece in London by Louise Levene in the Financial Times may renew your faith in performance criticism:
The weakest of the four finalists was Larsen C, by Athens-based Christos Papadopoulos, which consisted of six black-clad dancers on a black stage lit with obvious reluctance by what may have been an old bicycle lamp. The key movement motif was a clever gliding step borrowed from folk dance that made the performers seem to float in the space. A nice effect but not really enough to sustain our interest for 60 soul-sapping minutes. I’ve been reviewing dance for nearly 40 years but I’ve never heard a grown critic boo before (his guest, in some distress, was literally bored to tears).
‣ Amid Trump’s plan to push Palestinians out of Gaza and build over the land — aka neocolonialism 101 — poet Mosab Abu Toha takes to the New Yorker to reassert Palestinians’ right to rebuild their homes and communities:
I know Gazans who would like to leave. My friend Waleed, from the Jabalia camp, has been dreaming of going somewhere else “since the first month of the war, whether Trump had said anything or not.” Yet the border crossing is still closed in both directions. According to Gaza’s director of field hospitals, in a recent three-week period, thirty-five thousand patients needed to leave Gaza for treatment. Only a hundred and twenty of them made it out. Meanwhile, many of the people who left after October 7th are stuck in Egypt, waiting to return so they can be reunited with their families. My mother and sister, who went to Doha so that my sister could get medical treatment, have been unable to get back to my father and siblings.
For someone like me, the question of when to go back to Gaza is a difficult one. My wife and I have three children, and we often think about returning to our homeland, but we cannot do so until we Palestinians are in full control of the Rafah crossing—when to open it and when to close it. The crossing has not been opened to returnees since the end of 2023, and it has not been open to anyone departing since May, 2024, when Israel occupied and largely destroyed the Gazan side. I don’t want to go back to Gaza and find myself locked in.
Since Trump’s press conference, many people I know in Gaza have been afraid of the opposite—leaving and being locked out. My friend Saber called Trump’s comments terrifying. “Most of the people refuse to move an inch and are willing to live in tents all their lives,” he wrote to me. “Especially after they realized that leaving might mean no return.” My mother-in-law has a different fear. What if our family rebuilds, only to be forced to leave? She worries that all of the work will be wasted.
‣ Chappell Roan, being the outspoken icon that she is, donated $25k to dropped artists after a music industry insider criticized her Grammy speech calling on labels to provide artists with fair wages and healthcare. Now, other wealthy celebrities are following suit, according to Variety‘s Thania Garcia:
“Fans, y’all don’t have to donate a damn penny,” Roan wrote on Instagram on Feb. 9. “This is one of many opportunities for the industry powers to show up for artists. There is much more work to be done.”
Referencing a line Roan highlighted from Rahab’s piece, both Kahan and Charli ended their social media posts stating, “Money where my mouth is!”
“I’m inspired by you,” Kahan wrote in an Instagram story. “Happy to help get the ball rolling. Money where my mouth is!”
Charli wrote, “Hey @chappellroan I am going to match your $25k to support artist’s access to healthcare. I saw @noahkahanmusic say that [he] would do the same and so I [thought] I’d follow suit. You speech at the Grammys was inspiring and thoughtful and from a genuine place of care. Happy to help get the ball rolling too. Money where my mouth is.”
‣ University of Chicago PhD student Harley Pomper writes in the Nation about authoritarianism in American academic institutions, which have already cleared the way for Trump’s repressive approach to education and free speech:
We do not need to wait for Trump to retaliate against student protesters—universities are acting out his whims already within their borders. Less than a month after receiving an anonymous 100 million dollar gift to support “free expression,” our administration demonstrated exactly who is and is not included in that freedom. In 2024, the University of Chicago alone arrested 29 students, two faculty, and even more community members, evicted two students, withheld five diplomas, pepper sprayed dozens, and took disciplinary action against more.
“The language of free speech is used by the university to stifle any movement for actual change. It is a method of silencing and control,” said Emily. “The university is sending its police to monitor people in their dorms, is surveilling people across campus, is sanctioning them with no process for standing up against genocide.”
‣ And offering another historical perspective on this moment, Clay Risen looks back at the Red Scare and the consequences of previous bureaucratic purges for Politico:
The widespread political purges of the early 1950s echo clearly today. Seventy years ago, the reasonable pretext of hunting Soviet agents opened the way to a yearslong, paranoid campaign, motivated by outlandish conspiracy theories, that destroyed countless careers but did nothing to improve America’s security.
Today, a stated desire to check the excesses of diversity, equity and inclusion programs has already been used to justify whirlwind firings and closures of entire federal offices. So it may be wise to consider the consequences of that previous era of purges, part of what came to be known as the “Red Scare.”
At a time of intense geopolitical competition, the United States kneecapped itself, removing thousands of valuable employees and forcing those who remained into unhappy conformity. It is hard not to see the same mistake being repeated today.
‣ Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead is a witty, deeply painful narration of addiction in Appalachia, but unlike many literary luminaries, the author used the proceeds to fund a rehab center. Alexandra Alter reports for the New York Times:
Kingsolver decided to use her royalties from “Demon Copperhead” to fund a recovery program for people battling addiction. In a social media post this week, Kingsolver announced that she has founded a recovery house for women in Lee County, where the novel is set.
The center, “Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence,” will house between eight and 12 women recovering from drug addiction, offering them a place to stay, for a small fee, for up to two years, as well as counseling and other forms of support, like free community college classes.
Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and lives on a farm in Virginia. As someone raised in the region, she said, she felt she couldn’t ignore the opioid epidemic in her fiction. But she struggled for years with how to write about the issue in a way that would make readers pay attention.
While on a book tour in England, Kingsolver stayed in a bed-and-breakfast where Charles Dickens had worked on his novel “David Copperfield,” and found inspiration in the story and its resilient young narrator.
‣ Pakistani-American DJ and activist Armana Khan tells the Cut about her facial feminization surgery, and why she specifically chose to keep her nose:
I started my search online: Reddit threads, YouTube videos, Instagram. But I was disappointed. I didn’t see any South Asian dolls sharing their post-FFS looks. The “after” photos I found were of non-white sisters leaving FFS with smaller, dainty Western features. Endless Kim Kardashians with cinched noses. Social-media glam filters copied and pasted. Gorgeous but not me.
Talking to my Black and brown trans sisters, I heard regrets. Some felt their surgeons had made them more womanly in ways that echoed whiteness: smaller noses, pointed chins, almond-shaped eyes. I wondered, what does femininity look like outside of whiteness? When I imagined my own femininity, I saw women like Abida Parveen and Noor Jehan: distinctive Pakistani faces with smaller chins, lower hairlines, and higher lips, but big noses.
‣ Rupi Kaur’s first book turned just 10, and I fear she will never live down those early Instagram poems. Vrinda Jagota revisits milk and honey for the Los Angeles Review of Books:
Kaur’s emphasis on neatness—sorting people into these prescriptive categories, finding a clean, quippy ending to every thought or narrative—does a real disservice to the captivating messiness of life while also overlooking the tireless work that both personal growth and resistance require. She sees hurting and healing as distinct life stages that you can jump between and generally glosses over the process of working through trauma or of changing oppressive systems.
I found myself intrigued by the whispers of vulnerability and confusion introduced in the poem “belonging”—“i have no idea where i’m going / most days i’m a stranger to myself”—only to have the uncertainty squashed before it could be properly explored. By the end of the poem, just a few lines later, she writes, “i’m exactly where i’m supposed to be,” mirroring word choice that can be found, almost verbatim, in a song from the 2008 Disney Channel Original Movie Camp Rock.
‣ New Gulf of Mexico name just dropped!
‣ The perfect video doesn’t exi—
Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.
