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Fields of Dreams Deferred
Photos from the farmers’ market in the Greek coastal city of Kalamata, where veteran farmers sell vegetables alongside college graduates. Young Greeks like Demetra Psonis (above left) had no luck...
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Digging in the Dustbins of History
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yannis Lubovicki left Poland and came to Athens in search of work. He lost his job during the Greek economic crisis and now lives on the streets. In the Athenian...
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Send These, the Homeless, Tempest-Tost
Daniel Okator lives on the streets of Athens. Fearful of Boko Haram, he left Nigeria in 2013 and crossed the Mediterranean on a rickety boat. Two of his fellow migrants drowned when the boat capsized....
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My Worst Best Friend
Photo by Daniela Vladimirova, via Flickr I had no friend quite like Ed. We also hated each other. He was with me all the time. He knew all my secrets. When I was in high school, all I wanted was to be...
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Today, Tell Your Family That Black Lives Matter
Each year I go through the motions of Christmas, rarely ever feeling fully present. I spend the days leading up to the holiday cooking for my family and baking for my neighbors. I send out Christmas...
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Best of In The Fray 2014
The following are the best pieces published in In The Fray this year, as chosen by the editors: Commentary: Unearthing Another War, by Michael Long News: The White Death, Revived, by Octavio Raygoza...
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Fresh and Fetid: Remembrance of Lunches Past
In search of Lunchables. Eddie Huang (Hudson Yang) and his mom Jessica (Constance Wu) journey to the supermarket. “Ugh, what is that? Gross!” About seven minutes into the pilot episode of ABC’s new...
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Foraging for Bits of Home
Photo by elzinga alexander, via Flickr When I was growing up in suburban Maryland, every fall would bring a familiar sound. Thud, thud, thud!—chestnuts falling in their hardy armor. My mom and I would...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Free Speech
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | March-April 2015: Free Speech The massacre of twelve people at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo provoked outrage around the...
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A Half-Sentence
The Church of S. Giovanni Battista in Tiedoli. The musty aroma of mushrooms was everywhere. It was the Fiera del Fungo, a festival of porcini mushrooms held every year in the northern mountain town of...
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The Big Picture of Baltimore, Ferguson, and North Charleston
“Seasons Greetings, from Ferguson,” November 29, 2014. Mike Tigas, via Flickr Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute says we need to remember the big picture of race relations in Baltimore:...
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Debunking the Myth of Self-Made Success
Image by Libby Levi, via opensource.com Here is a short piece I wrote recently for a Zócalo Public Square discussion on the question “Is Rising Inequality Slowly Poisoning Our Democracy?” The...
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The War within the War
A camp in Suruç for refugees fleeing Kobani, a nearby Kurdish city under assault from the Islamic State. We stand on an empty highway in South Turkey, twenty kilometers from the Syrian border. The...
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America: A Country without a Cuisine
A cornfield in Nebraska. Jan Tik, via Flickr I celebrated every birthday under my mother’s roof with a bowl of miyeokguk, or seaweed soup. I ate it for breakfast and had the leftovers for dinner the...
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Strays: Street People and Their Dogs
I first noticed them in Paris: dogs accompanying homeless street people. I saw a man in a heavy winter coat sitting on the stone ground of a bridge while his dog—a rust-colored lab puppy—rested,...
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Futures for the Middle Class
Chicago Board of Trade corn pit, 1993. Jeremy Kemp, via Wikimedia This week, after 167 years, the futures trading pits in Chicago closed down. Computers now handle the work that shouting traders...
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Cold Peace
Twelfth of July, Donegall Street, Belfast, 2013. Dominic Bryan, via Flickr A few years ago, I found myself in a very Protestant part of Belfast trying to convince neighborhood kids that they should be...
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Lost and Found: A Conversation with Writer Philip Connors
Earlier this year, forest-fire lookout and nonfiction writer Philip Connors came out with his second book, All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found. It’s a beautifully wrought memoir about his...
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Op-Ed on the Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage
Newsday has published an essay of mine that puts the fight for a $15 minimum wage within the big-picture context of my new book, Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy: Amid all the...
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Page 99 of My New Book on Unemployment
I participated in Marshal Zeringue’s Page 99 Test at the Campaign for the American Reader. The blog is based on a quote by the writer Ford Madox Ford: “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and...
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