Sounding

My mom, like most Indigenous women of her time, didn’t really value Western education. It was my dad, an Italian son of immigrants, who pushed me to go to university.…

"Journalism became a vehicle to pursue the kinds of narratives that first got me interested in history: those that question the official story and defy power"

"Journalism became a vehicle to pursue the kinds of narratives that first got me interested in history: those that question the official story and defy power"

As a reporter, I have written numerous stories about people. I hope I got as many stories right as I could, but I’m sure I missed many, too. The one…

It’s odd that we forget people in our reporting. We’re people. Everyone around us is a person, however annoying their habits might be. People want to know about people; gossip…

I didn’t always know I wanted to be a reporter. I came at it sideways, in college, after deciding to major in creative writing. There’s no career path for writing…

I came into journalism in a roundabout way. I was a voracious reader as a child, growing up in middle-class Nairobi, partly as a retreat from a difficult home situation…

The very first time I viewed a William H. Johnson painting, the work moved me so deeply, I immediately declared him my favorite artist.I was barely a teenager. I didn’t…

While on assignment in Somalia a few years back, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of the Mogadishu mayor’s office alongside a dozen Somali men—some in white robes,…

My grandmother was well known for telling extraordinary tales. One in particular has stuck with me since the summer I was dispatched alone to her in Delhi. At the time…