Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Solange Knowles talks to her sister Beyonce for Interview Magazine. Photo: Unknown
Solange, by Beyonce, Interview
“It was very intentional that I sang as a woman who was very in control, a woman who could have this conversation without yelling and screaming, because I still often feel that when black women try to have these conversations, we are not portrayed as in control, emotionally intact women, capable of having the hard conversations without losing that control.”
The Concussion Diaries: One High School Football Player’s Secret Struggle with CTE, by Reid Forgrave, GQ
“Something had shifted inside of him. No longer did he worry that he might be going crazy; now he was certain of it. Fatalism swept over him. He told his mother he'd made a bucket list: Things to Do Before CTE Takes Away My Mind. Travel overseas. Camp in the timber in winter. Hike across the country, or at least through Colorado. Go rattlesnake hunting on the family's land.”
Silly Old Sausage: Why the Mad Butcher’s Waiheke Comment Matters, by Annabelle Lee, The Spinoff
“Leitch’s supporters who try to justify what he said would be doing him more of a favour if they took him aside and had a candid chat. After all, real friends tell you when you’re being a dick.
And in that spirit of friendship, to those newspapers and media outlets who didn’t bother to ask any Māori to write about the issues raised by this story – you’re being a dick.”
I Grew Up In The Rust Belt, But I’m Not In Any Of The Stories About It, by Alia Hanna Habib, Buzzfeed
“Overlooking families like mine, making the mistake of believing (or suggesting) that people of color don’t share working- and middle-class struggles, only reinforces their political and economic marginality. And reading all these stories about my own “forgotten,” “unhappy” hometown, a place my family lived in for generations and which I’ve spent the past two decades trying to explain to my friends in New York, only makes me feel more invisible.”
How Movies and TV Address Rape and Revenge, by Amanda Hess, New York Times
“In the news, powerful accounts from victims of the trauma of rape — from the woman whose courtroom statement against the Stanford student Brock Turner went viral last spring to those who took to social media to speak of their own experiences with sexual assault this fall — compete with dismissive statements from authority figures, like the judge who sentenced Mr. Turner to just six months in jail or the police captain who said recently that he’s “not too worried” about a recent spate of acquaintance rapes in New York City. In a world where the civilized path to retribution — cops, courts, campus tribunals — seems to often fail victims, vigilante justice reigns again in TV and film.”
Breaking Bad meets The Wire in Auckland, by Jared Savage, The New Zealand Herald
"More code: "Felix is taking five friends to yum cha," Hoo said to someone later identified as Van Thanh Tran, who gave his blessing to the deal. This was the police "working their way up the tree", according to David Johnstone, Crown prosecutor in the first trial to result from the operation. "Peter" Tran was at the top of this particular tree but was not the only big player in town, as Taskforce Ghost would uncover later. A deal was struck. Arama would pay $46,500 for five sets of ContacNT, so Lim drove him to Baldy Mark's home in Ellerslie where the cash and drugs were exchanged. "Clearly, they were not talking about yum cha," said Johnstone."