Is the Last Abortion Haven in the Caribbean Closing?
How U.S. influence has been quietly reshaping access in Puerto Rico
By Susanne Ramirez de Arellano
Dr. Yari Vale's petite frame is no longer weighed down by the nine-pound bulletproof vest she wore when anti-abortion threats increased after the end of Roe v. Wade, but she hasn't gotten rid of it. The security guard at Dr. Vale's Darlington Medical Associates clinic in Río Piedras is no longer at the door; still, she has him on standby. With the return of Donald Trump to the White House and Jenniffer González, a Trump devotee, in the governor’s seat, Dr. Vale is bracing for an escalation in the fight to safeguard reproductive rights in Puerto Rico.
The predominantly Catholic island is “on paper one of the most accessible places in the Western Hemisphere” to obtain an abortion, NPR reported just after Roe was overturned. But with the U.S.'s shift toward right-wing Christian nationalism, that could be changing.
Dr. Vale, an OB/GYN at the Darlington clinic—the only one of the island's four that does late-term abortions—is on the frontline of the fight to keep what’s happening in the United States from happening in Puerto Rico, euphemistically called an unincorporated territory (it's a colony, really). It's a battle that, she says, feels like “throwing a firecracker up in the air, and it's just smoke and no one hears you.” But she persists, knowing that the first line of defense is the clinics.
The Legacy of Pueblo v. Duarte
For years, Puerto Rico has been known for its liberal abortion laws: The right is enshrined in the island’s constitution (which exists separately from the U.S. Constitution) and is protected by the right to intimacy under Puerto Rico’s penal code. Abortion is legal on request if it is performed (or prescribed) by a physician to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health—and health includes mental health. There are no limits (abortion may not be banned before viability; post-viability abortions are permitted for the preservation of the pregnant person), and the procedure doesn't require the consent of partners, ex-partners, or, in the case of minors, parents.
However, these laws have their roots in a dark colonial history. In 1902, four years after invading the island, the U.S. enacted policies to control the population, although abortion was still prohibited without exception. Then, in 1937, colonialists who wanted to further limit the Puerto Rican population passed legislation based on racist neo-Malthusian and eugenic theories, virtually legalizing abortion on the island if it was to protect the life and health of the patient. These changes later facilitated clinical trials of the contraceptive pill and mass coerced sterilizations—a procedure that became so common that it was known among Puerto Rican women as “la operacion.”
In 1980, a case involving a minor and her doctor went even further, and set up modern abortion law in Puerto Rico. In the landmark Pueblo v. Duarte, Dr. Pablo Duarte Mendoza, who had performed an abortion on a 16-year-old girl in her first trimester, was sentenced to four years in prison. He appealed, and the Puerto Rican Supreme Court agreed with him, stating that through the island’s penal code, abortion is legal if it is performed to save the woman's life or health, including mental well-being.
Like many things on an island impacted by colonialism, abortion access is still limited for everyday Puerto Ricans. A surgical abortion costs $250, and a medication abortion between $300 and $350; meanwhile, about 43% of Puerto Ricans live below the poverty line, and insurance plans on the island do not cover abortion. And in addition to cost, religion and social stigma—the “what-will-my-family-say” factor—serve as deterrents for many women.
The Dobbs Effect
When 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision removed the constitutional right to an abortion in the U.S., it didn’t automatically affect rights in Puerto Rico (unlike on the mainland, where “trigger bans” were in place). In fact, some U.S. women began to travel to Puerto Rico from states with restrictive abortion laws, such as Florida. It was the return of the “San Juan holiday.”
But Dobbs did embolden conservative Puerto Rican politicians and pro-life groups, who saw a window of opportunity and seized it. Shortly after the decision, the right-wing religious party Proyecto Dignidad (PD) adopted the U.S. anti-abortion lobby's blueprint and tried to push through several bills to curtail access to abortion, and even criminalize it. They argued that the end of Roe implicitly negated Pueblo v. Duarte. The Senate ultimately defeated the bills; according to many Puerto Rican legal experts, Pueblo v. Duarte rests on the Puerto Rican penal code, which has no analogy in the U.S. Constitution—and should, therefore, not be affected by Dobbs.
An Ascendant Right-Wing Movement
Abortion-rights advocates warn that efforts to criminalize abortion in Puerto Rico are not over. Traditionally, “the issue of abortion in Puerto Rico has not been the overriding controversy that the anti-abortion and ultra-religious politicians want to make it out to be now,” says Senator Maria de Lourdes Santiago, a lawyer and Senator for the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP). But, she says, the anti-abortion campaign orchestrated by Proyecto Dignidad now "magnifies the issue to demonize it."
Founded in 2019, PD has capitalized on its nexus of Catholic and Evangelical churches; the erosion of the traditional duopoly of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP) and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD); and an increasingly ultra-conservative sector of the population urging a return to traditional values. Even though the party got only seven percent of the vote in the 2024 elections, its influence is strong island-wide, with a campaign that now hinges on the abortion issue.
Proyecto Dignidad Senator Joan Rodriguez Veve, a canon lawyer and face of the populist religious right, has vowed to continue fighting to restrict access to abortion. She recently introduced legislation, PS 297, restricting access to abortion for adolescents under the age of 15. The bill is a carbon copy of one that the Puerto Rican House rejected a year ago. It calls for jail time for any doctor or person who assists a minor in getting an abortion, and a slew of other measures, including forensic interviews of minors seeking an abortion.
The Senate approved the bill in February, and almost everyone I spoke to—politicians, legal experts, and abortion doctors—told me they believe it will pass, even though both pro-abortion and some anti-abortion groups have, for different reasons, voiced their opposition to the measure.
A New Generation Stands Up
At the same time that PD is gaining influence, attitudes about abortion are shifting with the younger generation. Rising numbers of people support abortion rights, and young people have galvanized around the issue, taking to the streets in protest and amplifying groups like Aborto Libre Puerto Rico, Profamilias, and Proyecto Matria, among others. It’s a generation that, unlike its mainland counterpart, grew up without a sense of abortion as a wedge issue.
Most recently, health professionals and activists have spoken out against PS 297, warning that the bill puts women and girls in danger. “What's going to happen here is that young women and those most vulnerable will seek out illegal abortions and go to the places where illegal drugs are sold to purchase abortion pills, many cut with fentanyl, in doses that are not recommended,” says Puerto Rican feminist activist Alondra Hernández Quiñones.
As religious and conservative groups gain traction in Puerto Rico, Dr. Vale worries that a girl of 15, whose parents are ultra-conservative and refuse to consent to her abortion (as the new legislation would require), would be forced into motherhood. Clinics like Darlington have stopped seeing patients younger than 15 at all, and Dr. Vale fears a future where abortion, currently a safe and regulated procedure, “will once again be a public health problem…where we don't know how many women end up in emergency rooms due to an [unregulated] abortion gone wrong.”
“This worries me a lot,” says Isharedmie Vazquez, a 17-year-old Puerto Rican student. “It seems incredibly wild to me that instead of guaranteeing secure options [for an abortion], what they are looking for is to criminalize it and force women to assume a responsibility for which they are not prepared. It's unfair that they want to take away the right to decide about our lives.”
Susanne Ramírez de Arellano is an author on race and diversity, opinion writer, and cultural critic. The former news director of Univision, she writes for NBC News Think, Latino Rebels, and Nuestros Stories, among other outlets.
American Moms Are Not Okay
  May 29, 2025 Bonjour, Meteor readers, The French Open is well underway, and my Belarusian princess Aryna Sabalenka is still going strong, as is the people’s champion, Coco Gauff. Gauff’s match is playing in the background as I type, and just watching how she moves across the clay is shredding my old-lady ACLs.  WOW LOOK AT THOSE KNEES. I BET THEY DON'T CRACK JUST FROM TRYING TO WALK UP THE STAIRS. (VIA GETTY) In today’s newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz reveals the reasons behind a sharp decline in moms’ mental health. Plus, your weekend reading list. Serving from my seat, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe primal scream, now backed by data: If you have kids or spend time with people who do, you know that many moms are not okay. But a massive new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association puts data to vibes—and finds that mothers’ mental health is getting significantly worse. The study looks at self-reported survey results from nearly 200,000 parents from 2016 and then again in 2023. Over that time period, the percentage of mothers reporting that their mental health was “fair” or “poor” rose sharply, from one in 20 in 2016 to one in 12 by 2023. (Fathers did worse over time, too, but started in a far better place–in 2016, only one in 42 reported having “fair” or “poor” mental health, with one in 22 reporting the same in 2023.) As a pregnant mother of a young child, these results didn’t exactly shock me. In fact, the one-in-12-mothers-are-struggling felt low! Still, it’s worth asking why there’s been such a startling decline in only eight years (which started with Trump’s first term, jussayin’). Dr. Jamie Daw, assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and the lead author of the study, tells me there are myriad theories that have not yet been untangled–and that this trend pre-dates the parenting black-hole that was the pandemic. She points to economic factors like “inflation and income inequality” (while all socioeconomic groups experienced mental-health declines, single mothers and those with kids on Medicaid fared worst) but also moms’ “existential concerns like climate change, gun safety, and racism.” Dr. Daw also posits that the same “sense of isolation” that has become a national trend is hitting many mothers especially hard. More of them are feeling the impact of “weaker social support networks.” And yes, if you also clocked that 2016 lines up with a certain infamous election, that timing may be relevant: Dr. Daws says “it could be true that political polarization contributes to this reduced sense of community or even divisions among family members. There’s less social cohesion.” One more factor that could be driving these results? Less stigma around admitting that mothering is a Sisyphean task in America. Dr. Daw points out that these results are self-reported, meaning they’re “subjective and very influenced by norms and knowledge about mental health.” This, of course, doesn’t make them any less legit: “People’s own reflections on their mental health matter,” Dr. Daw says. “We want people to have the feeling that they’re thriving.” In any case, the study demonstrates the urgent need for what it calls “evidence-based policy interventions” for mothers (along with, I would add, non-policy interventions like more communal childrearing and dads getting off their asses). Things like free universal childcare, generous mandated maternity leave, and equal partnerships may not raise the birth rate, but they’d sure as hell make mothers’ lives better. —Nona Willis Aronowitz AND:
 CHIURI TAKING ONE FINAL STRUT DOWN A DIOR RUNWAY. (VIA GETTY)  WEEKEND READING 📚On starting motherhood alone: Noor Abdalla, a dentist and first-time mom, has survived her first month as a single parent. Her husband, the detained student activist Mahmoud Khalil, has only been allowed to hold his son once. (The Cut) On following the money: Foundations are pulling funds from reproductive justice groups speaking out for Gaza. Renee Bracey Sherman explains the real cost. (Prism) On paid and unpaid care work: Tracy Clark-Flory spoke with artist Kim Ye on how her work as a Domme helped her create a more equitable domestic dynamic. (Tracy Clark-Flory’s Substack)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Running, Walking, Crawling for Justice
  May 15, 2025 Greetings, Meteor readers, I had a delightful and tear-inducing conversation with a young woman today (read some of it below) that reminded me just how much many of us suffer in silence. If that’s you, please know: We hear you even if you’re whispering. In today’s newsletter, the clock is counting down on the Summer Willis Act, a Texas bill that could reshape the future for sexual assault survivors. Plus, a heartbreaking case in Georgia and your weekend reading list. For the quiet ones, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONCodifying consent: In just about two weeks, the 89th Texas legislature will adjourn and will not return until January of 2027, meaning that any bills that aren’t voted on during this session will remain in limbo for two years. For Summer Willis–a Texas mom of two, endurance athlete, and fierce advocate for an anti-rape bill making its way through the State Senate–that’s two years too long. You may have heard of Summer Willis: She ran the course of the New York City marathon (on International Women’s Day) last year while carrying a mattress to raise awareness about sexual abuse. For her, it was personal: When Willis was a sophomore at University of Texas-Austin in 2014, she says, she was drugged and raped at a frat party. She didn’t go to the police or school at the time. But later, she learned that what had happened to her was not even classified as rape because of the murkiness of Texas’s sexual assault law. Because one person had given her a spiked drink and a different man raped her, she says, the latter could not be tried since he didn’t “voluntarily intoxicate” her. The lack of legal clarity around consent means that many assaults, especially ones committed on college campuses, effectively disappear. “My rape is not considered rape in Texas right now,” Willis says. “Neither are the [rapes of] thousands of Texans.” She tried to bury the trauma until two years ago, shortly after the birth of her second child. In the thick of postpartum, she says she looked her boys in the eyes and said, “I promise y'all I will try to become the woman I used to believe I could be.” She took up running, believing that it would “make me strong and resilient and find all the answers I’ve been seeking for 10 years.” When she began sharing her story of survival with other runners and moms, she was shocked by how many of them relayed similar stories. “I was never planning on being an advocate,” she says. “But I just met too many survivors.”  WILLIS CROSSING TOWER BRIDGE AT THE LONDON MARATHON, WITH MORE JOY THAN ANYONE WOULD EXPECT FROM SOMEONE DOING THIS MUCH RUNNING. SUPER HUMAN. (COURTESY OF SUMMER WILLIS) In February, Willis crawled half the distance of the Austin Marathon and ran the rest, the starting point of her run just across the street from where she was assaulted. (She told Runner’s World that the crawl was a metaphor for the difficulty survivors face in the search for justice.) Afterward, HB 3073’s sponsors informed Willis they would be renaming the bill in her honor. If passed, the law would codify and provide a legal definition of consent, including a stipulation that there can be no consent if a victim is intoxicated or unaware an assault is happening. “I feel the weight of all survivors in Texas on my shoulders,” she says. Although Willis thinks simply defining consent is “not enough,” the bill “will finally tell so many survivors that their rape counts.” Although HB 3073 passed the House earlier this month with overwhelming bipartisan support and is (shockingly) a top priority of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s sexual assault task force, the clock is ticking before the legislative session ends on June 2. So what can we do? Texans can contact their senators, and Willis says the two men who need to really feel the love for this bill are Mike Ward (R-TX) and Pete Flores (R-TX). You can also find resources and follow Willis’ work by supporting her organization, Strength Through Strides. AND:
  WEEKEND READING 📚On going when you need to: One trans man spent a lifetime avoiding public bathrooms, damaging his bladder in the process. But now he’s finally ready to stop holding it all in. (Cosmopolitan) On the “magic pill”: For some–especially pregnant people–the anti-nausea medication Zofran is a lifesaver. So why isn’t this safe, quick, effective drug sold over the counter? (The Cut) On inherited worries: “At thirty-six, I have never been sweeter, smarter, or hotter than I am now.” Angelica Jade Bastién has a message for women already flagellating themselves over aging. (Madwomen & Muses)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Moms Don't Need Jobs, Right?
  May 13, 2025 Hey there, Meteor readers, I don’t know about the rest of y’all New Yorkers, but it has been extremely tense in my house as the Knicks take my entire family on an emotional journey through the playoffs. Peace be with the fans.  YOU JUST KNOW THIS MAN'S BLOOD PRESSURE IS OFF THE CHARTS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In today’s newsletter, we’re taking a look at the GOP's obsession with stay-at-home moms. Plus, three questions on wellness with writer Amy Larocca. Knicks in five, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONFrom WAHM to SAHM: Last month, we wrote about Trump’s pro-natalist plans to solve the declining birth rate in the U.S., which pretty much added up to, Here’s a little extra money and a medal, have some more kids. No, thanks! But, not one to let a bad idea go, the GOP is tackling the issue from an incredibly old angle: encouraging more stay-at-home parents (more than 80 percent of whom are moms). Instead of investing in federally funded childcare, the administration has proposed cuts to Head Start and fired hundreds of workers at the offices of Child Support Services, Child Care, and Family Assistance. Conservatives claim these moves don’t contradict their natalist stance; they merely want to encourage parents to spend more time with their children. Republicans in Congress have proposed expanding child tax credits to help parents afford to stay home, eliminating daycare tax breaks, and offering new credits to families that use relatives as caregivers—all solutions designed to, as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) put it to the New York Times, “give parents the opportunity to…actually raise [their] kids.” So what’s wrong with that? First, Hawley’s assertion that parents who send their children to daycare are not actually raising them would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating. Daycare employees are providing a structural and educational foundation for children that, frankly, many parents don’t feel equipped to offer, even if they were given a $5,000 tax credit. Would that money go a long way toward helping some families? Absolutely. Would it be enough to allow one parent to quit their job? No, and I cannot emphasize this enough, fucking way. And then there’s the basic assumption underlying these policies: that, as conservatives have argued for years, children who stay home with mom flourish more than those who do not. There is no definitive study that proves that to be the case; other factors like poverty and food insecurity are far more relevant to whether kids will thrive. The fact that Republicans aren’t even pretending to address those factors is incredibly telling. They aren’t interested in supporting families’ childcare choices. They’re certainly not interested in making sure impoverished children have access to resources. But they are interested in pressuring mothers–especially ones who can afford it, with or without a tax credit–to get out of the office and go back to being barefoot and pregnant. AND:
 ÖZTÜRK AT A PRESS CONFERENCE FOLLOWING HER RELEASE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 YOU CAN VISIT "GROUNDED IN THE STARS" THROUGH JUNE 17. (GETTY IMAGES)  Three Questions About...WellnessAmy Larocca, author of a big new book on the industry, separates the harmless from the hoaxesBy Cindi Leive  AMY LAROCCA (COURTESY OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE) One of the many developments of the last decade—along with the rise of AI, Trumpism and tradwives—is the vast and varied world known as “wellness,” which includes everything from that meditation app on your phone to billion-dollar biohacking. Journalist Amy Larocca has spent seven years making sense of it all, and her book, How to Be Well: Navigating our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, is out today. Despite its skeptical subtitle, Larocca understands that “wellness culture is too big for us to be either completely for or against it.” So where did she land? I wanted to know. Your book investigates the recent rise of wellness culture. But back in the ‘80s, there were grapefruit diets and aerobics classes and all kinds of physical expectations. What’s different now? A lot of it in the ‘80s was about looking good, or slimness—I can still picture the Dexatrim box! But there wasn't a lot of thought about health in mainstream culture. I really started to notice the rise in wellness culture when I was working as a fashion editor [at New York Magazine in the 00s-10s]. Fashion was becoming more democratic—you could stream the shows, you could shop online. But at the same time, health was becoming more and more expensive and out of reach. Basic healthcare was not being treated as a right in the United States, but as a luxury commodity. And I could see that it was being marketed using all of the same language as the fashion industry that I'd been covering. And how weird is it that the new luxury good is our health, something that isn't extra, right? A handbag or a pair of shoes or a lipstick is something that's extra, but our health shouldn't be extra. You started writing this book seven years ago—when, yes, there were colonics and juice cleanses, but you could still go to the CDC for solid information about what worked or didn’t. Now our top public health leaders are trafficking in disproven myths about vaccines and cancer and birth control and fluoride. Did you see this coming? I feared that it would get as bad as it has gotten. And one of the reasons that wellness culture has been able to rise in the way that it has, especially for women, is there's a real absence of experts. The writer Maya Dusenbery [has] said that it drives her crazy when women seeking wellness care are described as seeking “alternative solutions.” Because these aren't alternatives: We don't really have other choices! Women are going online looking for advice from other women for managing their autoimmune conditions because autoimmune disease and other diseases that have disproportionately affected women have been very underfunded and understudied. So when women are using this relatively new resource called the internet to speak to each other and discuss what has worked for them and how they've managed—that's not alternative. That's just us actually trying to find some relief because the mainstream channels have let us down. [And] given the current political situation, I don't see that getting any better. Your book makes it really clear that progress and bullshit are really intertwined in wellness. Meditation is incredibly helpful to a lot of people and it’s being oversold as a solution. Our health-care system does need to focus more on menopause and there’s now a lot of menopause-related crap being sold to us with cutesy names. So is there a wellness development that you find really promising, and one that feels particularly BS-laden at the moment? For years, there was a conversation about [hormone replacement therapy] being very, very, very dangerous for women, so women stopped taking HRT. Then NAMS re-released its research and talked about HRT being safe for women—that coincided with the rise of telehealth [in COVID] and suddenly you had a number of telehealth startups making HRT very, very, very easily accessible. So you combine all that in a perfect storm and you get a lot of women with very high expectations for what HRT is going to be able to do for them during perimenopause—and all this is doing exactly what wellness culture has the potential to do in the worst possible way: It oversimplifies matters with a profit motive behind it all. The real story of HRT is: Here's a treatment that can help some women with some symptoms some of the time, but the only narratives that seem to gain any traction are “It will kill you!” or “It will save you, hurl down your crutches, Oh Lord, I can walk!” And neither of those stories seem to me to be the correct story of HRT, but no one seems to have any tolerance for anything in the middle. Part of that seems to be driven by how much money there is to be made. Part of it seems to be driven by the appetite for a good story. Part of it seems to be driven by a lack of patience for complexity, and how boring medicine can actually be. But it really started to freak me out—the expectations that people seemed to start having for what HRT was going to do for them, and the amount of money that a number of business people were excited to suddenly make. And that's wellness culture in a nutshell. I’m breaking the rules of this column with a fourth question. Is there one particular wellness habit you've picked up while writing the book that you will keep? Breathing. It’s free. I do 4-7-8 breathing. I'm big on all the free stuff: I walk everywhere, and I sleep. Sleep as much as you possibly can, and never, ever, ever feel guilty for going to bed.  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Three Questions About...Wellness
Amy Larocca, author of a big new book on the industry, separates the harmless from the hoaxes
By Cindi Leive
One of the many developments of the last decade—along with the rise of AI, Trumpism and tradwives—is the vast and varied world known as “wellness,” which includes everything from that meditation app on your phone to billion-dollar biohacking. Journalist Amy Larocca has spent seven years making sense of it all, and her book, How to Be Well: Navigating our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, is out today. Despite its skeptical subtitle, Larocca understands that “wellness culture is too big for us to be either completely for or against it.” So where did she land? I wanted to know.
Your book investigates the recent rise of wellness culture. But back in the ‘80s, there were grapefruit diets and aerobics classes and all kinds of physical expectations. What’s different now?
A lot of it in the 80s was about looking good, or slimness—I can still picture the Dexatrim box! But there wasn't a lot of thought about health in mainstream culture. I really started to notice the rise in wellness culture when I was working as a fashion editor [at New York magazine in the 00s-10s]. Fashion was becoming more democratic—you could stream the shows, you could shop online. But at the same time, health was becoming more and more expensive and out of reach. Basic healthcare was not being treated as a right in the United States, but as a luxury commodity. And I could see that it was being marketed using all of the same language as the fashion industry that I'd been covering. And how weird is it that the new luxury good is our health, something that isn't extra, right? A handbag or a pair of shoes or a lipstick is something that's extra, but our health shouldn't be extra.
You started writing this book seven years ago—when, yes, there were colonics and juice cleanses, but you could still go to the CDC for solid information about what worked or didn’t. Now our top public health leaders are trafficking in disproven myths about vaccines and cancer and birth control and fluoride. Did you see this coming?
I feared that it would get as bad as it has gotten. And one of the reasons that wellness culture has been able to rise in the way that it has, especially for women, is there's a real absence of experts. The writer Maya Dusenbery [has] said that it drives her crazy when women seeking wellness care are described as seeking “alternative solutions.” Because these aren't alternatives: We don't really have other choices! Women are going online looking for advice from other women for managing their autoimmune conditions because autoimmune disease and other diseases that have disproportionately affected women have been very underfunded and understudied. So when women are using this relatively new resource called the internet to speak to each other and discuss what has worked for them and how they've managed—that's not alternative. That's just us actually trying to find some relief because the mainstream channels have let us down. [And] given the current political situation, I don't see that getting any better.
Your book makes it really clear that progress and bullshit are really intertwined. Meditation is incredibly helpful to a lot of people and it’s being oversold as a solution. Our health-care system does need to focus more on menopause and there’s now a lot of menopause-related crap being sold to us with cutesy names. So is there a wellness development that you find really promising, and one that feels particularly BS-laden at the moment?
For years, there was a conversation about [hormone replacement therapy] HRT being very, very, very dangerous for women, so women stopped taking HRT. Then NAMS re-released its research and talked about HRT being safe for women—that coincided with the rise of telehealth [in COVID] and suddenly you had a number of telehealth startups making HRT very, very, very easily accessible. So you combine all that in a perfect storm and you get a lot of women with very high expectations for what HRT is going to be able to do for them during perimenopause—and all this is doing exactly what wellness culture has the potential to do in the worst possible way: It oversimplifies matters with a profit motive behind it all.
The real story of HRT is: Here's a treatment that can help some women with some symptoms some of the time, but the only narratives that seem to gain any traction are “It will kill you!” or “It will save you, hurl down your crutches, Oh Lord, I can walk!” And neither of those stories seem to me to be the correct story of HRT, but no one seems to have any tolerance for anything in the middle.
Part of that seems to be driven by how much money there is to be made. Part of it seems to be driven by the appetite for a good story. Part of it seems to be driven by a lack of patience for complexity, and how boring medicine can actually be. But it really started to freak me out—the expectations that people seemed to start having for what HRT was going to do for them, and the amount of money that a number of business people were excited to suddenly make. And that's wellness culture in a nutshell.
I’m breaking the rules of this column with a fourth question. Is there one particular wellness habit you've picked up while writing the book that you will keep?
Breathing. It’s free. I do 4-7-8 breathing. I'm big on all the free stuff: I walk everywhere, and I sleep. Sleep as much as you possibly can, and never, ever, ever feel guilty for going to bed.
A Night of Black Creativity
  May 6, 2025 Hey there, Meteor readers, Hearty congratulations are in order for Meteor collective members Dawn Porter and Tanya Selvaratnam, both of whom are nominated for News and Documentary Emmys this year: Porter for The Sing Sing Chronicles and Documenting Police Use of Force; and Selvaratnam for Love to the Max. Watch if you haven’t! In today’s newsletter, we’re strolling down the blue carpet of last night’s Met Gala with Julianne Escobedo Shepherd—and taking a moment to celebrate midwives. Still thinking about this, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON CARDI B AND HALLE BERRY. NO NOTES. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Fashion’s dandiest night: Whatever your feelings about the Met Gala, this year’s theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, was an important one. It was selected by Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton last year after he read the 2009 book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, by Barnard professor Monica L. Miller, now chair of the college’s Africana Studies Department. Inspired by its deeply researched history of the way formerly enslaved Black people reclaimed the frippery they were forced to wear into their own distinct style, Bolton asked Miller to become the Costume Institute’s first guest curator in his ten-year tenure. The exhibit itself lasts for nearly half a year, long after the last bit of carpet is rolled up. Superfine looks at the lineage of Black style in “the Atlantic diaspora,” and cites Zora Neale Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” an essay from 1934. “The will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro expression,” Hurston wrote. “Perhaps his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the soul of its creator.” In other words: Black fashion evolved as a form of resistance against the way white culture expects Black people to be, but it doesn’t matter whether the clothes please anyone but the wearer. Aesthetically speaking, this year contained the best fashion at the Gala in years, its “tailored for you” dress code encouraging attendees to show up and show out as themselves. Co-chair Teyana Taylor wore a long red cape embroidered with the words “Harlem Rose,” created by costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who in 2018 became the first Black woman to win an Oscar for Best Costume Design, for Black Panther. Rihanna donned a deconstructed suit—part jacket, part bustle, part waist-as-lapel—its regal pinstripes channeling the spirit of Ida B. Wells, assuredly strutting into her newspaper job at the New York Age in the 1890s.  DO WE THINK SHE'S HIDING R9 UNDER THAT HAT? (VIA GETTY IMAGES) While the glitter of the Met Gala may seem out of touch in these violent times, it feels significant that Black creativity was celebrated at such a major institutional event, in a moment when institutions are being all but purged of Black people and other people of color. We’ve already seen how the Trump administration’s blatantly white supremacist agenda has affected the Kennedy Center, all cabinet-level departments, and state universities; he has promised to next come for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, PBS, and other government-funded institutions that bring alive the history of Black and brown people. Those institutions have only just begun to help this country grapple with its historical atrocities; now, thanks to the administration’s war on what it derisively refers to as “DEI,” the small progress that’s been made is being literally erased. Don’t just talk about it, be about it, goes a common phrase in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The long national project of what that means politically is being cut off at the knees, thanks to these attacks on Black history in classrooms, libraries, government websites, and museums. So it’s huge that “fashion’s biggest night” at the country’s most renowned art institution was about Black history and Black people reveling in Black fashion as resistance. It was emphasized across every major publication, every tabloid and blog, and all over every social feed—Black fashion history everywhere. As Professor Miller put it to Lala Anthony in an interview on the carpet last night: “I’ve never had such a big classroom.” –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd AND:
  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
There's No "Fetus Debris" In Your Vaccine
  May 1, 2025 Howdy Meteor readers, A reminder that as of next Wednesday, you will need a REAL ID for air travel within the U.S. Why am I bothering with this PSA? Because it’s a pain in the ass: I wasted several hours of my own life at the motor vehicle commission, only to be told that the stacks of paperwork I brought were not enough to confirm my identity. Apparently, that’s a pretty common problem, especially for married women, so…best of luck out there. In today’s newsletter, we parse through the most dangerous medical lies of the week. Plus, a long overdue honor is bestowed, and your weekend reading list. Standard ID girlie, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONPure malarkey: 👏🏼Stop 👏🏼spreading 👏🏼misinformation 👏🏼about 👏🏼 our 👏🏼health. This week, two major instances of misinformation made the rounds. First up is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s claim that MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccines contain “aborted fetus debris.” To be clear: These vaccines do not, at all, contain parts of fetuses or fetal cells. What he is referring to is the widely accepted and longstanding use of fetal cells to develop vaccines, which involves introducing a virus or bacterium to human cells and then inactivating or killing the virus. The original fetal cells used to develop the vaccines we now rely on were harvested in the 1960s from two elective abortions. Like all cells, they’ve continued to multiply over the years, and scientists have been using the same line of cells for generations. But as the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explains, no vaccine injected into a person contains fetal cells. After the vaccine viruses are grown, the manufacturers “purify the vaccine viruses away from the cells.”  So why peddle this falsehood at all? RFK Jr. is a notorious flip-flopper on vaccines. One week, he supports them, the next he doesn't, but no matter what, he casts baseless doubt on their efficacy at every turn—even in the middle of a measles outbreak in Texas. What better way for a vaccine skeptic to dog-whistle conservative-leaning parents than to say there are dead babies floating in the vaccine liquid? (So far, two children have died in Texas as a result of the outbreak, which is two too many.) On to the next big lie of the week. A new “study” titled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women” was released by the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, which advertises itself as “working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law.” I will not provide the link to the actual study because, as we’ve written before, we should not share links to false or misleading information for any reason. But that didn’t stop Fox News from doing this tomfoolery. Deep breath. Here are the facts: This “study” was not conducted by doctors, whereas the rigorous clinical testing for mifepristone’s FDA approval was conducted by multiple doctors over years. (We spoke to two of them last year.) Instead, it was compiled by data analysts reviewing health insurance claims. What they say they found by reviewing claims’ procedure codes is that nearly 11 percent of women who used mifepristone had at least “one serious adverse event” in the 45 days after taking the pill. But as journalist Jessica Valenti points out, the study does not provide evidence that the “serious adverse events” are directly caused by or even related to the use of mifepristone—they simply happened within 45 days of use. And these “serious adverse events” are loosely defined; for instance, according to Valenti, they include “hemorrhaging,” which could include the heavy bleeding that can be normal after a medication abortion. So why even talk about this “fart” of a study, as Valenti hilariously characterized it? Because it calls on the FDA to “further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women,” on the grounds that the pill is “considerably more dangerous to women than is represented” on the label. Politicians have already started to parrot that narrative. The new FDA head, meanwhile, is anti-abortion. For the kabillionth time: Abortion pills are safe! AND:
 MAHDAWI AT A CAMPUS PROTEST IN 2023. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 LT. COLONEL ADAMS (FRONT LEFT), A MAJOR AT THIS TIME, WITH CAPTAIN MARY KEARNEY BEHIND HER AS THEY INSPECT THE FIRST RECRUITS TO THE 6888 IN 1945. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  WEEKEND READING 📚On bad buys: Women are still learning about the dangers of multi-level marketing schemes the hard way. (The Cut) On childhood fame: Piper Rockelle, the kid-fluencer at the center of the Netflix documentary Bad Influence, finally breaks her silence. (Rolling Stone) On something you may have missed: This heartwarming, tear-inducing excerpt from Tina Knowles’ memoir, Matriarch. (Vogue)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Longest 100 Days Ever
  April 29, 2025 Salutations, Meteor readers, Before we get into it today, exciting news: We’re going to the Tribeca Film Festival! This summer, you can catch the world premiere of Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print; our very own Cindi Leive served as an executive producer. The film—from McGee Media in partnership with HBO—looks back on Ms. magazine’s 50+-year history to tell the story of how it defied the odds and brought feminism to the masses. Plan to be in New York in June? Grab a ticket! In today’s newsletter, we provide perhaps the only positive take you’ll read about the past 100 days. Plus, Rebecca Carroll talks to Dr. Connie Wun about the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam. Counting the days, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe worst of times: A mere 100 days ago, Donald Trump took office, and it has been a vengeful, embarrassing, and violent presidency thus far. It has also been a test for the American people—so today, we’re heralding the ways women have spent this time fighting back against an overgrown playground bully. Hats off to…
These leaders—and thousands more—are doing the work that needs doing, at one of the hardest times to do it. More of this over the next 1360 days! AND:
 ALL THREE MEMBERS OF SALT-N-PEPA (SANDRA "SALT" DENTON, DJ SPINDERELLA, AND CHERYL "PEPA" JAMES) AT THE 2018 ESSENCE FESTIVAL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 Three Question About...The End of the “U.S. War in Vietnam”Five decades after the conflict’s end, Dr. Connie Wun reflects on generational trauma and the battles we’re still fighting.BY REBECCA CARROLL  THE VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War—a conflict that remains both controversial and divisive. Here in the U.S., the first televised war brought pushback against the draft, and a feeling that America shouldn’t be intervening in a conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. By the time Soviet-backed North Vietnam invaded Saigon and declared victory in 1975, the protracted war had claimed the lives of as many as 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, as well as 58,000 American soldiers. Dr. Connie Wun, the executive director of AAPI Women Lead, was raised in Oakland by Vietnamese refugees. We sat down on the 50th anniversary of the exact day that her grandmother and mother were forced to leave Vietnam, to talk about her personal connection to the war, why remembering it matters, and the fight against war on every battleground. In some ways, it feels counterintuitive to commemorate war, but why do you think it’s important to commemorate the Vietnam War in particular? Here [in America] we call it the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, they call it Reunification Day [marking the liberation of southern Vietnam and its reunification with the North after “the U.S. war in Vietnam.”]. And across the globe, it’s called the Fall of Saigon. So, depending upon who you ask, there are various interpretations of what April 30th, 1975, means. Some people are commemorating and honoring the three million-plus people who were killed, and the slow, ensuing deaths that followed. Trauma from the war was among the main causes of my grandmother’s cardiovascular diseases. And that’s the case for many Vietnamese people today. We have high rates of chronic health illnesses, diabetes, and depression, and these are all underreported. My grandmother passed away after having triple bypass surgery. Many of us are permanently displaced and are commemorating the loss of our homeland. I have family members who fought with the Viet Cong, and then people who fought with the South. We are commemorating loss, we are commemorating tragedy. When my grandmother was forced to leave, she left with my grandfather, my mom, aunt, and uncle; my grandmother’s cousins as well as their nieces and nephews. More than 20 people left with them on the flight to the refugee camps in Guam, and then the Philippines. According to our family stories, our family was a part of Operation New Life [a military-led humanitarian effort for refugees who evacuated Vietnam before the end of the war]. Over the past few years, I’ve been collecting our family's stories—I have inherited centuries of warfare. How do you find a definition of solidarity for yourself and the work that you do? The premise of solidarity for me is about surviving, resisting, and ending global and domestic wars. So that’s global and domestic wars against Black peoples, global and domestic wars against Indigenous peoples, global imperialist wars, and colonial wars. Modern civilization is premised upon global and domestic warfare. What I don’t know is if we’ve learned as a whole, and I don't know if we’ve agreed to care about, is that war and its implications are forever. How do we see through to a time when we don’t have wars? We have to undo modern civilization. That’s the task at hand. The way through is to submit to the fact that we’re under warfare. Which is why my grandmother passed away some 20 years after leaving Vietnam. My job, having inherited her legacy, is to keep fighting and to demand that I get to stay alive. I will be one of the people who is going to overthrow what’s taken so many people’s lives. That has to be our commitment to each other—undoing, overthrowing, and building something else.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Wonder of Amy Sherald
Ordinary Black life is extraordinary in the artist’s first major mid-career museum survey.
By Rebecca Carroll
Last month, The New Yorker featured a breathtaking portrait on its cover by celebrated Black American artist Amy Sherald. First painted in 2014 and titled “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance),” the portrait of a young Black woman wearing a bright red hat is the same piece Sherald later submitted in a competition at the National Portrait Gallery. She won the competition, which caught the attention of former First Lady Michelle Obama, who then personally chose Sherald to paint her portrait for the National Portrait Gallery—making the Georgia native the first Black woman artist to be selected for an official presidential portrait. The Obama painting changed the entire trajectory of Sherald’s career, and since then her figurative grayscale portraits have been shown in public and private collections around the world.
Now, Sherald is having her first major museum survey at The Whitney Museum of American Art, called American Sublime, a title borrowed from the poet Elizabeth Alexander’s book of the same name. I’ve known and admired Sherald for years, and I was thrilled to sit down with her to talk about her work in this truly transcendent exhibition.
Rebecca Carroll: The last time we saw each other in person was pre-Michelle Obama portrait, when we randomly ran into each other on the street in Brooklyn. And here we are today to discuss your first solo exhibition at The Whitney. How are you feeling?
Amy Sherald: I told a friend last week, “I don’t know, I just feel emotional.” And she’s like, “Well, you’re getting used to belonging to the world, and not just to yourself.” Hearing that made me want to cry, and I left her a voice text, and said, “Okay, I’m sitting here holding back tears because I am a thug and I do not like to cry. But that’s exactly what I feel like.”
It’s a lot! The show is also set against a backdrop of political turmoil in America, particularly in regards to race, and actually not dissimilar to what we were experiencing when we last saw each other. At that time, the height of Black Lives Matter, I had written a piece for the LA Times, saying “Even as we see images of what most of us already know, that police violence against Black people in America is occurring with vicious regularity, something remarkable is materializing in its wake. We are also bearing witness to a pronounced moment of Black cultural ascension.” How has your work been impacted by eras of Black cultural ascension versus centuries of Black oppression?
My work was essentially born out of the desire to free myself from a history of oppression, but also in celebration of these eras of enlightenment. What I want the viewer to experience, and I say this in the exhibition [statement], is “the wonder of what it is to be a Black person.” I’m no longer religious, but I speak about this in that language of flesh and spirit—because part of us always has to be activated [in fighting oppression].
Right, exactly. I know you consider yourself as much a storyteller as an artist. As Black storytellers, I feel like we never make anything without parts of each other within us—intergenerationally, ancestrally, futuristically. But when the work goes out into the world and starts to belong to non-Black people, I sometimes feel these waves of protectiveness about it. Do you ever feel that way about your work?
I want the work to belong in the world because it was the only way that I could figure out how to counter whiteness, and the way that everything is saturated with it, comes from it, and evolves around it. My response to that is to make something that’s just as universal, and that can be consumed in the same way, because then [white people] are going to be consuming it in the same way that I had to consume Barbie, and all of these other things.
A pointed example for me was when your portrait of Breonna Taylor was on the cover of Vanity Fair, and it felt so unjust to me that suddenly white people were allowed to look at her in this way that we had seen her all along. Did you feel any conflict about that specific piece?
I didn’t, because of how it started. It started with Ta-Nehisi [Coates], and I trusted him and his vision. Maybe if the call had come from somebody else, then yes, but because it was Ta-Nehisi, no.
To clarify for our readers, Coates was the guest editor for that particular issue of Vanity Fair, and so that makes a difference, for sure. Now that the portrait is part of this exhibition at The Whitney, what has been the broader response to it?
A lot of people, of all races, are moved to tears by it. After I first finished it, I was really just thinking about how I’ve made this portrait, we’ve photographed it, it’s been on the cover of Vanity Fair, and now it’s in my studio. Now what can it do? I started some conversations, and it ended up being acquired by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. And now there’s a Breonna Taylor Legacy Fellowship and Breonna Taylor Legacy Scholarships for undergraduate students and law school students [at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky, where Taylor lived; the fellowships are funded by proceeds from the portrait’s sale]. So if a student is doing anything in regards to social justice, whether their major is political science or art, they have an opportunity to get this scholarship. And then if a student is in law school and wants to work expungement [when a criminal record is erased or made unavailable for public access] cases in Alabama, which pays nothing, then here’s $12,000 to get you through your summer.
Does the idea that Black artists do work for each other resonate with you?
I feel like we make what we make because we are who we are. My mom told me this story about myself, and it stuck with me because I think my work sits in the world in the same way. [When I was a child] sometimes when we had dinner, I would just randomly get up and walk around the table and touch everybody on their shoulder and say, “I love you.” I would go all the way around, and then come sit down and finish my dinner. I think these portraits are “I love yous” out in the world to affirm anybody who is willing to see past the exterior and go deeper into their experience of what it means to be a human.
I love that story. And what do you experience when you look at your work?
I feel like the work sits in The Whitney, and there are words on the wall that explain it, but that work is me—somebody who was once a people pleaser and had a problem saying no, someone who doesn't like conflict or confrontation. My personality made that work.
I would never have looked at your work and thought, “These pieces were made by someone who had a problem saying no.” Are there specific things in the pieces that signal that to you?
I guess that’s where the beauty comes from, because the work doesn’t yell at you. It speaks to you nicely. If you feel uncomfortable in the presence of a Black person, this work will make you think, “Okay, well, maybe I don’t need to grab my purse. I might feel safe in the elevator with this guy.” It speaks to people that way. I went to Catholic school from K through 12, and was always one of two or three Black kids, so I have a lot of patience. I learned a lot of, “Let me explain to you why you can't say that.” Versus my friends that went to all-Black high schools, where it’s just like [gestures taking her earrings off], “Let me tell you…”
But you feel differently now, right? You’re in a different place. How do you think that will affect your work moving forward?
I’m not sure how the work is going to evolve to match who I am now, which is somebody who’s stronger, who doesn't mind saying no, and will look at you while you feel uncomfortable with my answer. I am excited because everything that I’ve made in this show has been living in my head for 20 years.
Does it feel like a kind of excavation in that way?
It feels more like a birth than an excavation. When I think about Black American art history and just our legacy within the larger canon, I feel like we don’t or can’t function on the same timeline as everybody else. It still feels like the beginning of something, this moment of myself, Rashid Johnson, Lorna Simpson, and Jack Whitten [all currently having museum shows]. It feels really great despite everything that’s happening. The art world is representing the world that we want to be—the real world right now.
What happens next for you?
I’m hoping that this show will make it into the National Portrait Gallery without having to make any compromises based on who’s sitting in an office at the White House. And I don’t mean, “Well, if I can’t have this painting of two men kissing and a trans person, then I’m not going to do the show.” I feel like that would be a mistake. I feel like it’s a mistake to step down from boards just because [Trump] wants to take over the Kennedy Center. Now more than ever, I feel like it’s important we be in those rooms and not shutting down the conversation. I think the bigger moment would be the work being in the Smithsonian Institution and people coming there to look at American history and Presidents, and then walking into my exhibition.
Whatever the fate of the work in this show, one of the things that really came through as I was walking through the exhibit, just like the way you used to walk around your family’s dinner table and tell everybody you love them—all of these people are taking care of each other, and I felt tapped on the shoulder and loved by every one of them.
Exactly as you should have felt.
Why Is Consent Controversial?
  April 24, 2025 Howdy, Meteor readers, I know everyone is talking about Sinners, but I am what you would call a certified scaredy-cat; I still suffer from Scream. But a bunch of fellow scaredies online say it’s not too bad if you watch it during the day so I’ll see y’all at the afternoon matinee.  In today’s newsletter, we investigate sex miseducation in Indiana. Plus, Nona Willis Aronowitz remembers her “feminist fairy godmother.” Meow, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONVirginity education: Yesterday, Indiana’s House and Senate voted in favor of SB 442, titled “Instruction on Human Sexuality.” You might have heard of it (on our Instagram feed and elsewhere) because of a debate over whether that “instruction” should include the idea of consent. The bill’s author, Sen. Gary Byrne (R-IN), had removed a requirement that teachers address consent earlier this week, arguing that the subject could be seen as “controversial.” (Research from the Indiana Department of Health shows that 56 percent of sexually active high schoolers had experienced some form of sexual violence, with 11th grade girls making up most of that group.) After public outcry, though, the consent requirement was re-added to the bill yesterday—your latest reminder that yelling works. But here’s the thing: The bill is still light on the education part of sex education. In addition to consent, it requires sex-ed classes in Indiana to teach four things: abstinence, abstinence (yes it’s listed twice), instruction that the best way to avoid STIs is a “mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage” (we remind you, these are children and teens), and the viewing of a high-definition ultrasound video, at least three minutes long, depicting the development of organs in a fetus. It’s giving Catholic-school health class, and I would know, as someone whose sex-ed was having to watch the movie Riding in Cars with Boys. Let’s linger on the video for a second. These kinds of videos—most notably the notorious “Baby Olivia”—have cropped up over the last two years as a tool of the anti-abortion movement and are more often than not, medically inaccurate and meant to elicit an emotional response rather than be strictly educational. When pressed about the video requirements by Democratic senators yesterday, Byrne insisted he was not specifically suggesting “Baby Olivia,” IndyStar reported, and that school boards would be able to choose which films get shown to students. “There’s plenty of examples of videos,” he argued. (When pressed to name them, he could not.) Indiana is, of course, not the first state to introduce such narrow requirements for sex-ed classes or to inject what sound like conservative Christian views of sex into a secular public school system. Currently, 37 states have laws that require abstinence as part of sex education, while only 18 require teachers to share information about birth control. As far as education around consent? Only 12 states—13 if the Indiana bill passes—require that it be mentioned. But studies show that simply telling teenagers not to have sex doesn’t protect them from STIs or unwanted pregnancies. What does work, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, is comprehensive education that includes consent, contraception, STI prevention, and sexual health for LGBTQ+ communities. AND:
 OBAMA AT A LIVE TAPING FOR HER PODCAST, "IMO." IN HER LEFT HAND, SHE CAN BE SEEN HOLDING ALL OF HER DESIRE TO CONTINUE BEING A PEOPLE PLEASER. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 DURBIN IN 1994. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  WEEKEND READING 📚Online: When we said we wanted a “womanosphere” this is not what we meant. (The Guardian) On history repeating itself: Historian Greg Grandin explores Latin America’s journey from “fighting to facilitating fascism.” (Democracy Now) On mixtapes: Have a cry with writer Jill Mapes, her dad, and a shared appreciation for good music. (Hearing Things)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
