World Views

Nick Licata interviews  Professor Jelani Cobb, a staff writer for the New Yorker, who has authored three groundbreaking books on race in America. The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker, which he co-authored with David Remnick, came out this fall. It collects many of the most thoughtful writers portraying Black life in America over the last century.

I met Love 22 during my senior year at the University of Rhode Island. Love 22 slid unannounced into my life on a blustery day in November. He looked like he had been blown like a tumbleweed across the campus quadrangle. The sun was hidden behind a blank slate of sky. Wind sheared through the tops of plain grey trees that had shed their leaves.