PUBLICATIONS
Essays / Articles
- 2024-
The Atlantic, February 2024, “When soccer was an American afterthought”
-2023-
The Atlantic, December 2023, “Arlington’s Civil War Legacy Is Finally Laid to Rest”
The Atlantic, December 2023, “Donald Trump VS American History”
The Atlantic, September 2023, “The Man Who Became Uncle Tom”
The Atlantic, July 2023, “The Two Players Who Tell the Story of U.S. Women’s Soccer”
The Atlantic, March 2023, “Radio Atlantic: How Germany Remembers the Holocaust”
-2022-
The Atlantic, December 2022, “What We Ask of Black American Athletes”
The Atlantic, December 2022, “Monuments to the Unthinkable”
The Atlantic, November 2022, “A Kid’s Eye View of the U.S. vs. ‘Whales’”
The Atlantic, November 2022, “How to Cheer for America”
The Atlantic, October 2022, “What a Racist Slur Does to The Body”
The Atlantic, May 2022, “No Parent Should Have to Live Like This”
The Atlantic, March 2022, “Close to Home”
The Atlantic, February 2022, “Senegal’s Victory Is So Much More Than a Soccer Victory”
The Atlantic, February 2022, “Now We Know Their Names”
-2021-
The Atlantic, December 2021, “'I Always Think of Poetry as Home for Me”
The Atlantic, December 2021, “800,000 Deaths”
The Atlantic, November 2021, “57 Years in a Cage Is Long Enough”
The Atlantic, September 2021, “A Slow and Quiet Calamity”
The Atlantic, July 2021, “The Lines of Control”
The Atlantic, July 2021, “Why I’m Supporting England at Euro 2020”
The Atlantic, July 2021, “The Near-Holy Experience of Watching Euro 2020”
The Atlantic, May 2021, “Why Confederate Lies Live On” (Book Excerpt)
The Atlantic, April 2021, “George Floyd Was Also a Father”
The Atlantic, April 2021, “The Infrastructure Bill Should Look After Our Future, and Our Past”
The Atlantic, March 2021, “Restoring Pell Grants - And Possibilities - for Prisoners”
The Atlantic, February 2021, “Stories From Slavery, From Those Who Survived It”
The Atlantic, January 2021, “Trump Is Putting the Machinery of Death Into Overdrive”
The Atlantic, January 2021, “The Whole Story in a Single Photo”
The Atlantic, January 2021, “Black Voters Understood What The Stakes Were”
-2020-
The Atlantic, December 2020, “Teaching Should Be Political”
The Atlantic, November 2020, “In 1864, Like in 2020, America Got Lucky”
The Atlantic, October 2020, “Let the Incarcerated Vote”
The Atlantic, August 2020, “Chadwick Boseman Gave Us Something We Had Not Before”
The Atlantic, September 2020, “Telling the Truth About Slavery Is Not ‘Indoctrination.’”
The Atlantic, September 2020, “Taking My Children to See Fredrick Douglass”
The Atlantic, June 2020, “Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter”
-2019-
The New Republic, August 2019, “The Sound and the Silence of Toni Morrison”
The Atlantic, March 2019, “Elite Colleges Constantly Tell Low-Income Students They Do Not Belong”
-2018-
The New Yorker, June 2018, "World Cup 2018: The African Teams Depart Early"
The New Yorker, June 2018, "World Cup 2018: Once Again, Brazil Counts on Coutinho"
The New Yorker, June 2018, "World Cup 2018: The Black and White and Brown Faces of Les Bleus"
The New Yorker, June 2018, "World Cup 2018: Senegal Dances Again in the World Cup"
The New Yorker, June 2018, "World Cup 2018: Panama’s Pride Against the Belgian Juggernaut"
The New Yorker, June 2018, "World Cup 2018: Waiting for Mohamed Salah"
Bleacher Report, June 2018, Inside the Unstoppable Greatness of Neymar"
The New Republic, May 2018, "Wake Up, Mr. West!"
The Atlantic, April 2018, "Freedom Ain't Free"
National Geographic, April 2018, "Why Historically Black Colleges Are Enjoying a Renaissance"
The New Yorker, March 2018, "The Agony of Being an Arsenal Fan"
The Paris Review, March 2018, "What Would W. E. B. Du Bois Make of Black Panther?"
The Atlantic, February 2018, "The New Tax Law’s Subtle Subversion of Public Schools"
-2017-
Buzzfeed Reader, December 2017, "The Terrible Costs of Selective Empathy"
The Paris Review, December 2017, "An Intimate History of America"
Poets & Writers, October 2017, "The Poet at Work" (Profile of Kevin Young)
The New Yorker, September 2017, "James Baldwin’s Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil"
The New Republic, September 2017, "Affirmative Action as Reparations"
The New Yorker, July 2017, "A Joyfully Defiant U.S. Men’s National Team Takes the Gold Cup"
The Atlantic, June 2017, "The Lifelong Learning of Lifelong Inmates"
The New Yorker, March 2017, "Freddy Adu and the Children of the Beautiful Game"
-2016-
The New Yorker, December 2016, "Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' as a Parable of Our Time"
The New Yorker, October 2016, "The Desegregation and Resegregation of Charlotte's Schools"
The New Yorker, August 2016, "Why the U.S. is Right to Move Away From Private Prisons"
The New Yorker, July 2016, "Racism, Stress, and Black Death"
The New Yorker, June 2016, "The Power of Pell Grants For Prisoners"
Vox, June 2016, "Police Killings Get a Lot of Attention -- So Should Police Beatings"
The New Yorker, June 2016, "There is No Justice in Killing Dylann Roof"
Boston Review, May 2016, "What is Education For? - Response to Danielle Allen"
The New Yorker, March 2016, "Donald Trump, David Duke, and the Soccer Fields of Louisiana"
The New Yorker, February 2016, "The Meaning of Life Without Parole"
Poems
-2023-
The Atlantic, March 2023, “The Gun”
The Atlantic, March 2023, “Nomenclature”
-2019-
The New York Times Magazine, August 2019, Two poems for the 1619 Project
Adroit Journal, July 2019, "Here Nor There”
Southern Indiana Review, June 2019, “For the Doctor’s Records”
Wildness, May 2019, “When people say “we have been through worse before”
-2018-
Auburn Avenue, November 2018, “This Year Was the First Year I Could Not Remember Your Voice”
POETRY Magazine, October 2018, “the drone”
-2017-
Academy of American Poets, August 2017, "FaceTime"
Poetry Society of America, May 2017, "what is left"
The Rumpus, April 2017, "Pangaea"
-2016-
The American Poetry Review, Nov/Dec 2016, Six Poems
Split This Rock, December 2016, "There is a Lake Here"
Public Pool, June 2016, "Full-Court Press," How to Fight," "My Jump Shot"
The Diverse Arts Project, Spring 2016, "Meteor Shower"
Drunk in a Midnight Choir, April 2016, "a lineage"
Bat City Review, Spring 2016, "For the Taxi Cabs that Pass Me in Harvard Square"
Waypoints Magazine, March 2016, "Ode to the End-of-6th Grade Picnic"
Lunch Ticket, Winter/Spring 2016 "Beyond This Place"
-2015-
Watershed Review, Fall 2015, "Ode to the Only Black Kid in the Class"
Switchback, Fall 2015, "Keeping Score"
Bird's Thumb, October 2015, "Line/Breaks" & "Ode to the Loop-de-Loop"
Harvard Educational Review, September 2015, "The Art of Unlearning"
Kinfolks: A Journal of Black Expression, Fall 2015, "Counting Descent"
Mason's Road, July 2015, "Soles"
Drunk in a Midnight Choir, May 2015: Three Poems
Lime Hawk, Spring 2015, "What the Ocean Said to the Black Boy"
Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, April 2015: "for mrs garner"
Still: The Journal, Winter 2015: 4 Poems
Off the Coast, Winter 2015, "what the cicada said to the brown boy"
Winter Tangerine Review, February 2015, "For the Boys Who Never Learned How to Swim"