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I was twenty-six, working full time at the Bagelry in suburban Chicago, avoiding the future. The future did not seem like anything you could count on. Even in suburban Chicago, where Public Works employees smiled while scraping up roadkill, people were unhappy, desperate to convince themselves of something good. Desperate.
By Kelly LuceSeptember 2017When my father died, he left two letters in separate envelopes, both marked “To be opened at my death.” One is addressed to my brother and me. The other is to his wife.
By Corvin ThomasSeptember 2017You believed that everything is a form of prayer, including laughter, including tears. Yes, you were a reverential man, but you weren’t stiff or boring or preachy or dour. Your essays were both concise — often just a page in length — and lush, your sentences as intricate and twisty as plants in a terrarium. You combined prose and poem (and prayer, you said) to bear witness to the miracles around us.
By Brian DoyleSeptember 2017I spread out your charts, your ledgers, your bug-eaten accounts, the ones cataloged and filed in acid-free folders. The room where I sit, Mr. Stites, is not far from the room where you yourself must have sat, sweat-stained, surrounded by your law books, sleeves rolled up, face sopping wet, bent over your volumes. Adding, subtracting, calculating, measuring, devising. Not far from where your slaves stood in pens waiting to be sold.
By Leslie StaintonSeptember 2017Most black evangelicals didn’t vote for him. Most Latino evangelicals didn’t vote for him. But 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.
By Amanda AbramsSeptember 2017This is the 500th issue of The Sun. In recognition of the milestone, we’ve devoted more than half our pages to a special section titled “One Nation, Indivisible,” which features excerpts from the magazine going back to the first issue in 1974. Rather than celebrate the magazine’s history, we wanted to address the current political moment by giving readers perspective on the past and courage to face the present.
By The SunAugust 2017August 2017I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
James Baldwin
A persistent writer, a naked encounter, a reason to get up
By Our ReadersAugust 2017— from “Better Than Expected” | Things were not as bad as I had thought. / The scrape in the fender of the rented car / could be hidden with a little white paint / before I returned it to the agency.
By Tony HoaglandAugust 2017I imagine Warren and Adrianne as little archaeologists, trying to unearth the bones of their father’s life, holding up shoes and hats they’ve disinterred, old letters, a college ring inside a carved wooden box from Afghanistan.
By Wendy HillAugust 2017Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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