opinion
MARCH SADNESS

Canceling athletics is the right call, in the public interest. But the absence of sports leaves a void in our lives that will be hard to fill.

25th Anniversary

It’s banned books week, and also the 25th anniversary of the publication of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a classic that explores the legacy of slavery not with reductive moralizing but with psychological and narrative depth and complexity. But its frankness with race, violence and sex has made it a controversial choice in school curricula. Anna Clark looks at how the seminal novel is being taught to students.

Why does the literature of the Midwest not get the attention it deserves? The creation of a Kurt Vonnegut library spurred Anna Clark to come up with 13 essential novels of that mythic region.