For half a century, she has taken the things we know best— our bodies, our rituals, our nation — and shown us how strange they really are.

On those rare instances when I would think about having a child, I assumed her life would be less complicated than my own. The stubborn optimism of the immigrant dictates that while your own life often shows just how quickly things can get catastrophically worse, American progress remains immutable.

Art often draws inspiration from life—but what happens when it’s your life?

What happens when trying to escape poverty means separating from your family at 13?

Increasingly worn down by the pandemic, a dad goes to a baseball game.

How India disenfranchises Muslims.

During the brief moment when the pandemic was receding and we could be together again, all we wanted to do was move our bodies.

A profile of the comedian, who died Tuesday.

Outdated textbooks, not enough teachers, no ventilation — for millions of kids like Harvey Ellington, the public-education system has failed them their whole lives.

Terry Albury, an idealistic F.B.I. agent, grew so disillusioned by the war on terror that he was willing to leak classified documents—and go to prison for doing it.

Eric Coomer had an election-security job at Dominion Voting Systems. He also had posted anti-Trump messages on Facebook. What happened next ruined his life.

“A quarantine facial-hair experiment led me to a deep consideration of my Blackness.”

It seemed like an easy crime to stop: protected Indonesian rainforest, cut for coffee farms. But a globalized economy can undermine even the best-laid plans.

In Taipei, young people like Nancy Tao Chen Ying watched as the Hong Kong protests were brutally extinguished. Now they wonder what’s in their future.

The enduring career of the megastar no one really knows.

A nation’s uncertain future.

A profile of a new icon.

All of Janicza Bravo’s previous movies were playing in the place where humor and trauma meet. Zola was a natural fit.

My dad was a riddle to me, even more so after he disappeared. For a long time, who he was—and by extension who I was—seemed to be a puzzle I would never solve.

The city is beating the pandemic. Can it also recover from decades of division and neglect?

More than a decade ago, a prominent academic was exposed for having faked her Cherokee ancestry. Why has her career continued to thrive?

More than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, New York’s schools remain separate and unequal.

A group of high school students try desperately to make it through an isolated and dire year.

Deana Lawson’s regal, loving, unburdened photographs imagine a world in which Black people are free from the distortions of history.

New research is intensifying the debate — with profound implications for the future of the planet.