Please click here to be directed to the PDF of “Making a Marriage Work,” Carolina Alumni Review, January/February 2019.
The Hidden Resilience of “Food Desert” Neighborhoods
Anthropologists and other scholars are delving into the plight of urban communities where people struggle to meet their nutritional needs. In the process, these researchers are discovering the power, and limits, of self-reliance. Originally published in Sapiens and reprinted in Civil Eats. EVEN BEFORE ASHANTÉ REESE AND I REACH THE FRONT GATE, retired schoolteacher Alice […]
Shutdown
Click here for “Shutdown,” Carolina Alumni Review, January 2018. Opens as a PDF.
Coverage of the World Bank Group in Gujarat, India
Click here for “The Uncounted,” part of the Evicted & Abanadoned series, HuffPost and International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, May 2015. Click here for a follow-up (with a shared byline), “World Bank Fails To Stop Attacks, Arrests Of Villagers Protesting Big Projects,”HuffPost and International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, September 2015. Click here for another follow-up, “Is the World […]
Reports from Moral Monday
During 2014, I reported on North Carolina’s Moral Monday movement, a faith-based organizing effort that is becoming a national model. The movement is spearheaded by the state NAACP with broad support from churches and issue-based organizations, including women’s, immigrant, environmental, LGBT, and labor groups. Most of the articles were published online by The American Prospect, illustrated by […]
The Death and Life of Detroit
Neighborhood groups are bringing the blighted city back, one block at a time. Will City Hall stand in their way? Originally published in The American Prospect. A SHIVERING KNOT OF COLLEGE STUDENTS stands outside Motor City Java House as John George unlocks the front door. It’s 15 degrees in Detroit on a February morning, and […]
Map Quest
Marie Lynn Miranda, head of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative at Duke, uses sophisticated modeling to tackle stubborn public-health problems. Originally published in Duke Magazine. LAST FALL, DURHAM COUNTY HEALTH DIRECTOR Gayle Harris faced a thorny question: How do you get a confused and suspicious public inoculated against H1N1 influenza? The much-feared flu strain had […]
Living on the Edge
Millions of older Americans don’t have enough money to put food on the table, but the government doesn’t count them as poor. How did this happen—and what’s being done about it? Coming soon: a segment on Prime Time Radio profiling three family matriachs struggling to pay the bills.
Leap of Faith
Can academic rigor, firm discipline, and a daily dose of religion turn boys from poor families into scholars? An intimate look at one such attempt. Originally published in Duke Magazine. AS AN AUGUST DRIZZLE falls outside, thirty-one middle-schoolers sit at long tables in a North Carolina mountain lodge. It’s the end of summer vacation: Next week […]
Foreign Service
Originally published in the AARP Bulletin. ED MAHONEY GAPED AT THE SPECTACLE. On the edge of the Guatemala City dump, a fetid ravine swarming with vultures, dozens of human scavengers intercepted garbage trucks. They picked through the refuse for anything of value-bottles, cardboard, string-to sell to recyclers. Mothers carried their babies in boxes while older children played […]
