Sign up for The New York Times Magazine Newsletter The best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week, including exclusive feature stories, photography, columns and more. Ran-kan-kan: Long before I could name the source of my…

Carina del Valle Schorske writes on Eddie Palmieri, the pianist, bandleader, and Jazz Master.

In a series of conversations with Merve Emre at Wesleyan University, some of today’s sharpest working critics discuss their careers and methodology, and are then asked to close-read a text that they haven’t seen before. The Review is collaborating…

Todos los años paso uno o dos meses en Puerto Rico, de donde es la familia de mi madre. Suelo ir en invierno, con los otros turistas estacionales o “snowbirds”, en busca de consuelo entre las palmeras. Pero la verdad es que no soy una turista, no en…

Why had immigrants, seekers and pilgrims been drawn for centuries to the treacherous shores of Mona Island? I set off to find out. Every year, I spend a month or two in Puerto Rico, where my mother’s family is from. Often I go in winter, with the…

HarryBelafonte B. 1927 He understood the power of celebrity to help force change for Black Americans. By Reginald Dwayne Betts In the middle of a school day in 1943, Harry Belafonte walked into a Harlem movie theater and sat for a showing of the…

When I was growing up in California, my mother would often describe a film that it was impossible for me to see: the great Carmen de Lavallade dancing to Odetta, dressed all in white like a priestess. She’d seen the footage a long time ago — 1974? —…

I came to therapy as most people do: in desperation. After a sexual assault triggered my latent depression, I dropped out of college a semester before graduating. Over the next year, I grappled my way to the diploma. I knew I wasn’t well, but I still…

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. When Cecilia Vicuña came to Manhattan in 1980, she had no plans to stay — but for Vicuña, an artist in exile from Pinochet’s Chile, plans…

Cuando Cecilia Vicuña llegó a Manhattan en 1980, no tenía planes de quedarse, pero para Vicuña, una artista exiliada del Chile gobernado por Pinochet, los planes no importaban mucho. Llevaba menos de una semana en la ciudad cuando se cruzó con un…

By Hanif Abdurraqib / Illustration by Lennard Kok I have spent a lot of time these last two years managing small collisions of feeling: sadness laid over pleasure, heartbreak laid over some unnamed desire. This was a result of prolonged pandemic…

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. For most of 2020, I passed the pandemic alone in my studio apartment. I turned 33, then 34, and my body seemed to grow old without bringing my…

Profile by Carina del Valle Schorske / Photographs by John Edmonds / Profile by Carina del Valle Schorske / Photographs by John Edmonds / Profile by Carina del Valle Schorske / Photographs by John Edmonds / Profile by Carina del Valle Schorske /…

It might have pleased Diane di Prima that we can’t get our hands on her “Revolutionary Letters” by capitulating to the rapacity of Amazon Prime. The book is out of print. Instead, after her death, individual poems from her lifelong series pop up on…

Filmmaker “History is all there: I just dig it up, unearth it, make it available.” Carina del Valle Schorske I spoke with the legendary director Julie Dash by phone in March 2020, during her spring break from teaching at Spelman College, when both of…

A Restless History of Washington Heights

A Restless History of Washington Heights

The Puerto Rican reggaetonero has come to dominate global pop on his own terms. By Carina del Valle Schorske Photographs and videos by Mara Corsino On Jan. 31, 2020, I could hear fireworks from my friend’s terrace in Santurce. All around Puerto Rico,…

El reguetonero puertorriqueño ha llegado a dominar el pop mundial en sus propios términos. Por Carina del Valle Schorske Fotografías y videos de Mara Corsino El 31 de enero de 2020, pude escuchar los fuegos artificiales desde la terraza de mi amiga…

DISCUSSED Aretha Franklin & Smokey Robinson, Listening in Detail, Bits of History That Get Skipped Over or Left Unattended, Fred Moten, Soul Train, Deep Cuts, Belmont and Oakley, Boston Boulevard, What a Price to Pay, A Love Story Compressed, Aborted…