Fiction Pick of the Week: "People"
Growing up indigenous in Detroit.
Growing up indigenous in Detroit.
Ron Riekki jmww Journal May 2020 20min Permalink
Wanders through the emptied post-American landscape.
Rebecca Solnit Harper's Jun 2007 Permalink
Was one of Detroit’s most notorious criminals also one of the FBI’s most valuable informants?
Evan Hughes The Atavist Sep 2014 1h15min Permalink
An investigation into a social media-fueled gang war in Detroit.
The Red Zone is part pharmacy, part killing field and part music studio where gang members peddled drugs, fought rivals and shot rap videos on street corners.
Robert Snell The Detroit News Apr 2018 Permalink
Detroit, 1987.
The article that became New Jack City.
Barry Michael Cooper Village Voice Dec 1987 20min Permalink
“Love you when you hate us,” Rock proclaims with arms spread. “Welcome to the greatest fuckin’ show on Earth.”
Jerilyn Jordan Detroit Metro Times Sep 2017 25min Permalink
The personal and professional troubles of a Detroit waitress.
Kai Harris Rabble Lit May 2017 20min Permalink
On the public schools of Detroit.
Alexandria Neason Harper's Oct 2016 25min Permalink
Ardelia Ali was raped in 1995. Twenty years later, her attacker was convicted.
Anna Clark Elle Jun 2016 Permalink
Riding through Detroit with the author of The Turner House.
Doree Shafrir Buzzfeed Apr 2016 20min Permalink
Shakiya Robertson thought she had found a way get her family a home. She moved in, fixed the place up, made all the payments. Then she, like thousands of others in Detroit, was told that the house she thought she had purchased wasn’t actually hers.
Allie Gross Metro Times Nov 2015 25min Permalink
“This is a story about the most magical, mystical sport on earth, and the Detroit lifer who improbably became its king. Also, it’s about an art heist.”
Chris Koentges ESPN the Magazine Jun 2015 15min Permalink
A group buys the city of Detroit with lottery winnings.
"We stayed on our street all day for a couple of weeks, doing all the work we needed to do to convince people we weren’t a problem. We never got around to telling anyone that we’d bought the city, because we weren’t having the kinds of conversations where you’d bring that up. We told people we’d lost our jobs instead, that Detroit was cheap. They’d nod. We smoked up a lot and drank plenty of the lemonade stuff, which was yellow Crystal Light mixed with water and vodka."
Kashana Cauley The Common Apr 2015 15min Permalink
How the new store is—and isn’t—changing Detroit.
Tracie McMillan Slate Nov 2014 30min Permalink
The inside story of how the city, broke and bleak and nearing the edge, saved itself.
Nathan Bomey, John Gallagher, Mark Stryker Detroit Free Press Nov 2014 30min Permalink
A woman's involvement in an unstable Detroit activist movement.
"The houses we set out to destroy had already been inscribed by the city. The city had earmarked them as tear-downs during the first stage of a larger urban planning initiative – a large ‘D’ for Demolition had been written in white chalk on the front doors of the dilapidated multi-family structures, veterans of a time when Detroit was still a factory town, a place where the music of Motown fumed larger than the gusts of exhaust unleashed from the chains of cars which tumbled off the assembly lines at the auto factories and straight onto those glistening American freeways. The electric streetcar line along Woodward Avenue had been replaced by gas-powered buses. There’d been the great race wars. Even still, at the time those houses had been erected on that tender Northern riverbed which skirted the Canada border, the word future seemed more a promise than an urgency."
Ann DeWitt Granta Oct 2014 20min Permalink
How an honors student became a hired killer.
Nadya Labi New Yorker Oct 2012 35min Permalink
Tom Monaghan started Domino’s. Mike Ilitch started Little Caesers. Both became billionaires, both live in Detroit, both are now over 75. They’ve made very different decisions about how to spend their fortunes.
Bryan Gruley Businessweek Jul 2014 10min Permalink
A punk heroin addict navigates 1980s Detroit.
"About an hour later, Harwell and Rollo were squatting (literal) in their squat (figurative) on Broadville, about a mile from the convenience store that had just fallen victim to their considerable wrath. They hadn’t said a word longer than four letters to each other since sprinting away from the Quality Dairy, and for the last thirty minutes they’d been listening for any movement outside, not sure if they’d been followed, or if Chavo and the night manager had enough information about them gathered from their several months of patronage to know where they hung their heads."
Matt Sailor The Collapsar Mar 2014 40min Permalink
On the “queer roots” of Disco, House, and beyond.
Luis-Manuel Garcia Resident Advisor Jan 2014 1h Permalink
“After college, as my friends left Michigan for better opportunities, I was determined to help fix this broken, chaotic city by building my own home in the middle of it. I was 23 years old.”
Drew Philp Buzzfeed Jan 2014 25min Permalink
Auditing a bankrupt city.
Nathan Bomey, John Gallagher Detroit Free Press Sep 2013 25min Permalink
Wandering a Detroit reduced to “crackhouses and churches” with “outlaw biker Jesus” Pastor Steve.
Mark Binelli The Morning News May 2013 20min Permalink
A first-person account of an arrest:
I stared at the yellow walls and listened to a few officers talk about the overtime they were racking up, and I decided that I hated country music. I hated speedboats and shitty beer in coozies and fat bellies and rednecks. I thought about Abu Ghraib and the horror to which those prisoners were exposed. I thought about my dad and his prescience. I was glad he wasn’t alive to know about what was happening to me. I thought about my kids, and what would have happened if they had been there when I got taken away. I contemplated never flying again. I thought about the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars in conducting an operation like this. I wondered what my rights were, if I had any at all. Mostly, I could not believe I was sitting in some jail cell in some cold, undisclosed building surrounded by “the authorities.”
Shoshana Hebshi Stories from the Heartland Sep 2011 15min Permalink
A ride-along with the guys tasked with demolishing the city’s 10,000 “abandoned, godforsaken homes.”
Howie Kahn GQ May 2011 20min Permalink