articles

New research overturns more than a century of thought about the source of turquoise that ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica used. For more than 150 years, scholars have argued that the Aztec and Mixtec civilizations, which revered the precious, blu

LOS ANGELES - Rubilia Sanchez knew she had to flee her hometown of Tecun Uman after gangs repeatedly threatened to rape and murder her. So she took her four daughters and made the familiar, dangerous trek out of Guatemala, through Mexico and into the

Imagine you’re in an airport boarding lounge, or the waiting room at virtually any train station or bus terminal in the Western world. Maybe you commute to work or school by subway. It doesn’t matter. Look around. Somewhere in there, among hundreds o

I have only one photograph of my father and mother from their courting days. They’re standing on the sidewalk in front of someone’s house, and my father has his arm draped over my mother’s shoulders, a cigar stub clamped between his fingers. The phot

I won’t rehash all the recent debates about cultural appropriation in literature. (A quick flashback montage would show a YA author stripped of her Kirkus star after backlash to a perceived “white savior narrative”; Francine Prose holding aloft an ol