THEY MIGHT NOT know his name, but millions of video gamers have encountered narrative designer Evan Narcisse's handiwork in Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which showcases more Black and Brown characters in its first few minutes than most popular games do in their entirety. The action-packed 2020 release opens on a Harlem street scene where our biracial Gen-Z hero (Miles is half Black, half Puerto Rican) makes the rounds before donning his Spidey suit and heading out with Peter Parker to protect locals against the evil Roxxon Corporation and its minions. "I definitely brought my own lived experience and philosophical energy to that game, where they're fighting corporate encroachment," Narcisse told me. But his coup de grâce was the emotional ending: Amid apocalyptic rubble, an exhausted, near-dead Miles has lost his mask, revealing his identity-his Blackness-to some grateful residents who then band together to shield him from the view of a prying TV news crew. "Who is he?" the reporter asks a muralist Miles knows from around. "That guy?" the muralist says, pausing a long beat. "He's our Spider-Man."
The line is classic Narcisse, whose writings have always struck me as bold, Black, and sincere-with personal touches that resonate because, as a fellow Haitian American nerd who revels in his roots, I see myself in them. "Every morning, I run a pick through my hair. It's important that I do this when it's still spongy and damp from the shower," he wrote in a 2015 essay for the gaming blog Kotaku. "After the picking out, patting down, and shaping are done, I always think to myself, 'Goddamn, I love being black."
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May/June 2024 من Mother Jones.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May/June 2024 من Mother Jones.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
In the Name of the Mother - How Shyamala Gopalan Harris raised a presidential contender
Shyamala Gopalan Harris did not believe in coddling. Pay her daughters, Kamala and Maya, an allowance for doing chores? “If you do the dishes, you should get two dollars,” scoffed the woman who this past summer, almost two decades after we spoke, would launch a million coconut memes. “You ate from the damn dishes!” Reward the future vice president of the United States—and possible future president—for good grades? Ridiculous. “What does that tell you?” her mother chided. “It says, ‘You know, I really thought you were stupid. Oh, you surprised Mommy!’ No.”
Kill the Messenger - The anti-disinformation field is retreating under attack.
A few months ago, a man crawling along a rooftop in Pennsylvania tried to murder Donald Trump at a campaign rally. Hours later, press releases started to circulate, from analysts, think tanks, politicians, and pundits, all offering to cut through the swell of confusion and misinformation.
Food + Health / Global Warning - Why Project 2025 is an environmental catastrophe in the making
When President Joe Biden took office, Democrats held a slim majority in the House of Representatives and a single-vote edge in the Senate. Despite the monumental odds, he has presided over the most productive presidential term for climate action in American history. Under Biden’s direction, the federal government took up the arduous task of incorporating climate considerations into scores of administrative operations and procedures. The epa cracked down on superpollutants and issued stricter emissions regulations for passenger vehicles. The Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate spending bill Congress has ever passed, brings the nation closer to its goal of slashing carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Trumpnesia - To get a second chance, Trump needs voters to forget his disastrous presidency.
One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.
WHEN IN DROUGHT
This obscure yet adaptable grain could be a healthy staple for a warming planet.
BAD HABITS
A spate of recent horror movies recycle tired tropes about nuns-and reveal society's ongoing discomfort with independent women.
Taking the Fifth For a glimpse of the Supreme Court after a second Trump term, look at the radical circuit court that's already driving America to the right.
Imagine obamacare is dead and millions of Americans have lost health coverage.
THE ARCHITECT
TRUMP WANTS TO BE KING. RUSS VOUGHT HAS A PLAN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Losing Faith
As an evangelical leader, I enticed lawmakers and federal judges to adopt a conservative Christian agenda. Donald Trump’s rise proved how wrong I was.
GOD'S COUNTRY
These Christian nationalists have a plan to take over Americafrom small towns to the highest court in the land.
