This Week’s Issue: When Black History Is Unearthed, Who Speaks for the Dead?

Also in the Fall Books Issue: Hilton Als on Gayl Jones; Kathryn Schulz on Jonathan Franzen; and the diaries of Patricia Highsmith.  View in browser | Update your preferences     American Chronicles When Black History Is Unearthed, Who Gets to Speak for the Dead? Efforts to rescue African American burial grounds and remains have exposed deep conflicts over inheritance and representation. By Jill Lepore Listen to this story Have a world-class narrator read this to you.     A Critic at Large Gayl Jones's Novels of Oppression In the author's work, colonization and racial hatred turn mother against child, Black against white, man against woman. By Hilton Als     Life and Letters A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Woman Patricia Highsmith's diaries and notebooks chart her early work and love life. By Patricia Highsmith     Profiles Neo Rauch's Antagonistic Art German painting's arch-traditionalist has a brush with controversy. By Thomas Meaney     Books The Church of Jonathan Franzen In "Crossroads," bad decisions and bad faith weigh down the characters—and propel the novel to startling heights. By Kathryn Schulz     Comment The Supply-Chain Mystery Why, more than a year and a half into the pandemic, do strange shortages keep popping up in so many corners of American life? By Amy Davidson Sorkin     Books We're Shaped By Our Sexual Desires. Can We Shape Them? What we want may be more socially conditioned than we realize. By Alexandra Schwartz     Pop Music The Unexpected Introspection of Lil Nas X Fans may have thought that the artist's début album would be a bawdy romp. Instead, it takes a turn toward the self-searching. By Carrie Battan     Georgia Postcard Wrongful Conviction, the Game! Two exonerated convicts visit the escape room run by Cobb County, in Georgia, which was conceived as a prison-break scenario, with visitors playing the role of innocent inmates. Can they get out in time? By Charles Bethea   Humor from The New Yorker     Shouts & Murmurs The Age of Monsters The people banged their chamber pots at sundown to thank the brave chirurgeons who were attending to the bitten. By Teddy Wayne     Cartoons from the Issue Cartoons from the Issue Drawings and drollery from this week's magazine.   You're receiving this e-mail because you signed up for This Week's Issue from The New Yorker. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up.   Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our privacy policy    Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.