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The Common Reader Project 2020/21: Common Reader Essay Finalists

Common Reader Essay Finalists for 2020

"A Letter to My Mother that She Will Never Read"  by Ocean Vuong, The New Yorker (2017)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/a-letter-to-my-mother-that-she-will-never-read
 
"The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic (2014)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
 
"Who Gets to be Afraid in America?" by Ibram X. Kendi, The Atlantic (May 2020)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/ahmaud-arbery/611539/
 
"Who Gets to be Angry?" by Roxane Gay, New York Times (2016)
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/opinion/sunday/who-gets-to-be-angry.html
 
"America's Enduring Caste System" by Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times Magazine (July 2020)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/magazine/isabel-wilkerson-caste.html
 
"Climate Signs" by Emily Raboteau, The New York Review of Books Daily (2019)
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/01/climate-signs/
 
"What Is Owed" by Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York Times (June 2020)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html
 
"Can Slavery Reenactments Set Us Free" by Julian Lucas, The New Yorker (2020)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/17/can-slavery-reenactments-set-us-free
 
"Walking While Black" by Garnette Cadogan, Lithub (2016)
https://lithub.com/walking-while-black/