Author: Frankie Solinsky Duryea

I really enjoyed these articles, in how they help visualize the writing process. Particularly with Rosenthal’s article, I was reminded of the classic video of Kurt Vonnegut drawing story structures on a blackboard; I’m continually reminded of the benefits forays into fiction-style provide. Drawing from other genres of writing, and thinking about journalism as the collision between narrative and informational, hopefully will inform my writing a little more. Great quote from George Saunders (which I’m going to butcher) along the lines of “ you should write how you talk and think, so talk the way you want to write,” which more generally I think applies to the idea that our output is founded in curation of our input. Reading varied writing that I appreciate is the best way to write how I’d like to. I also was interested in the way McPhee celebrated the theme-driven story narrative, in opposition to the chronological one; I wanted to read Preston’s article analyzing its structure, so I broke it up and was happy to find it constantly disrupted chronology. It started in the present election, jumped back to 2021, moved forward, then jumped back to 2016 and moved forward, then jumped to the present, only for a brief encounter with Eisenhower in the far-past. I see how this structure works – and it works well for this analytical / opinion style article – but I’m wondering whether I’ll be able to do something thematic for my longform article. I was just writing out a layout, and I’m wondering how to plan my article before getting the sources and interviews? Is that even a good idea, or should i just immerse and figure it out after? Hard to know how much to prepare without it interfering with my openness to change, in the moment of reporting. 

Despite really enjoying these articles, I’m having a hard time immediately transferring them to my practice. One thing I got from the McPhee piece was how personal his process is – it feels very dependent on the kind of person you are. He talks about the personalized system that was created for him on Kedit; we now have so many different programs we could use, but choosing one is daunting. There’s a turn towards online softwares, and I agree that they’re helpful; transcription softwares especially save so much time, and google drive does a great job of keeping my information backed up and easily accessible. My immediate thoughts were 1) people are turning towards AI to help in their articles… I get that it’s a helpful tool, but I worry that it’ll take away creative potential and limit me, so I don’t use it. It feels like journalism is dependent on work – the best articles are ones where you can tell how much time the author put into them, and that work is unavoidable. But do tools like AI help us cut out the unnecessary work, or just constrict our whole process? 2) on the opposite hand (!) I’m still a huge proponent of paper and analog work. Maybe it’s just because I can romanticize the article-creating process better when I imagine myself working with sprawled papers (and I think being able to romanticize your work process is one of the few ways of keeping yourself constantly engaged) but I really enjoy working with paper; I also just feel more personally connected to the work when I can hold it. Regardless, this is making me want to start printing everything I write to engage with it that way. Regardless of the actual process, I was really grateful for the way McPhee treats writing with a “i’ll do my best,” mindset. Especially in a class of really dedicated students, I think we have to submit to the story’s will. If the effort’s been put in, it’s been put in. Learning when to put the pen down, or close the computer, will probably make our final results better.

The articles chosen for this week were tremendous – each one demonstrated what journalism has the capacity to be. Powerful and affecting, these were great examples of embedding. I’m struck by the quality and quantity of reporting that went into these, not just in terms of how they got the support to engage in such long projects, but also in the organization of information. Taub had papers sprawled out on his floor… how do you go from that to a tight article? Topically, I felt like these stories all showed underrepresented voices. In yours, Deb, I was most impressed by the final detail that Um Nour was facilitating sex-work; to survive means to take advantage of your social position at every rung of the ladder. Victims of economic violence perpetrate violence against others, unfortunately usually those lower in the ladder than them. This is a side of migration, and of everyday living, that normally is overlooked. Each story felt like it unraveled dominant narratives to show underlying ones: from fake chinese threats to the relationship between the BVT and Halabi, the real events are always shrouded in other narrative constructions. Particularly after this election, I think we need to key into the narratives that are created by institutions of power. The American voters were against Biden’s migration policy and “his” economy because they were led to feel that way. Narrative journalism can be weaponized by the state (Austria), or by individuals (Wang). Regardless, there seems to be an obligation to criticize and question the things we hear. We interact with narratives all day, and live our lives accordingly; knowing which ones to look into is difficult, and sniffing out those fake narratives feels essential to good journalistic work. 

Now, methods-talk again. I’m really attracted to embed-style journalism because of the wealth of details that comes out: that Sayyid takes away his empties because he’d be the one picking them up later, that one of the women on stage cried while dragging on her cigarette, that Pircher is called “rumpelstiltskin” behind his back, these details are what make a story great, and they show me that the reporter has done their due diligence. At the same time, I’m abundantly aware of the challenges embedding creates. Langfitt’s work is amazing, but I don’t think it could be done anymore. I talked about Langfitt with a friend who laments the impossibility of foreign-correspondance in China, and he joked that if you tried the “free Taxi,” bit now, your second or third passenger would be a CCP officer. Embedding is reliant on access. Taub bypasses this by using documents and investigates by moving around the subject, but even here he somehow has access (which to be clear, I don’t understand… how does he get all these internal documents!? How does he get top-secret BVT memos?). Embedding is a great tool, but there needs to be an open door to go through – how do you open that door? This “access,” question creates further challenges – Hessler is a foreigner, and so why Sayyid trusts him is slightly unclear… at a certain point, it’s to get something. Embedded reporting straddles a line wherein subjects become friends or collaborators. There’s some mutual exchange. As shown in the Langfitt article, this can have serious consequences. How do you make sure the information you’re getting is positive, reliable, etc? Hessler’s interaction with Wahiba shows another big problem in embedded journalism or immersive journalism. A lot depends on the social standing of the journalist themselves, or their identity! A foreign man could never see Wahbia and talk to her for a story, but there’s probably a good story to her life and to her. Without her perspective, a lot is lost in my opinion. Someone else could write a story with access to her. Just not Hessler. And to navel-gaze for a moment, I couldn’t write it either! Given my position and identity, more doors for immersive reporting are open to me than most. I’m abundantly aware of that privilege there. But at the same time, thinking specifically about trying to talk with Afghan women for my final paper, my position will create challenges. These articles also present an alternate to our norm, wherein the reporter is themselves the migrant, rather than the other way around. There is the challenge of possible misunderstandings – I guess the solution is to immerse so deeply that you don’t feel like an outsider any more, but getting that far feels difficult. Lots of words, lots of thoughts. Each of these articles was a novella unto themselves, so I feel like I could (and should) say more, but generally just impressed and motivated by these readings.

I’m deeply impressed (and inspired by) all the cases of creative journalism put on display this week. In a profession that sometimes feels tired and rigid, it’s really cool to see imaginative work being done and I have many questions. How do you reconstruct stories after the fact, reliably? How do you counter other (malicious) media narratives? How does AI help (and, I assume, complicate) open-source reporting? With an abundance of information that you can dig into, how do you even begin knowing where to start? With everything that we are able to access, what is still lost to us? 

I found it really interesting that the documentary emphasized organization to such an extent. The internet is disorganized and seeing the process of investigation rather than archival is powerful. Thinking about how documentation is only powerful when accurately narrativized, I felt like many of our readings this week pointed to equally sinister uses of information. Living in an age of hyper surveillance, it’s nice to imagine that we can utilize technological paper trails as citizen-journalists, but it also feels like a scary affirmation of the ways all documentation (and much of journalism) contributes to state databases. Data can always be twisted, and Russia claiming the hospital they bombed was uninhabited (despite the videos showing the opposite) is an obvious example of how fact can easily be denied or manipulated. And as there begins to be more and more content on the internet, propaganda and misinformation spread so quickly. Sometimes it feels like we spend more time fighting misinformation than creating new positive information. Still worth it.

All these readings were unfortunately framed for me by another recent article I read, which talked about the abundance of documentation that we have available about Assad’s crimes in Syria. Nothing has happened as a result of that documentation. While continually amazed by the investigations that are possible, issues of accountability immediately come up. In Bellingcat’s case, the character that is given attention in the documentary is al-Werfalli. With outstanding arrest warrants and an abundance of evidence, he died in 2021 without having ever been to court. My generation is already distrustful of a failing ICC – Sinwar, Netanyahu, Putin, we aren’t seeing arrests at any significant level. It’s incredibly meaningful to transmit information, but the question then becomes how we translate that into action (which is a recurring theme and issue in journalism). I’m really impressed by the Ukrainian Government’s effort to document the war through civilian crowdsourcing – this seemingly will give a very comprehensive picture of human rights abuses, a database of information that can be mined for criminal evidence. But how do we get that evidence to mean anything?

I love the story about the Darién Gap by the Atlantic… I just think it’s tremendous. The stories from this week have raised more questions than provided answers, personally. Firstly, I want to interrogate the impact of the Darién story – it made waves when it came out, front page and cover story on their edition which feels huge for a migration story. But since then, what has changed? I have google alerts set for news about the Darién gap, and it’s always the same news. At this point we know migrants from all around the world are coming through it (Africans, Asians, etc) and we get daily horror stories about deaths and abuses on the journey. How does a story about the Darién make an impact at this point? And when will real change happen? Alma Guillermoprieto writes that “because the media were much more important than they are now, my articles (…) had to be taken seriously by the policymakers and by the public.” I disagree with the value-judgment given to the media over time, but I do agree that policymakers used to respond to the media more. What has changed? Readings from this week more generally made me aware of the ways governments sanction migration, even in its illegal forms. Panama doesn’t necessarily outlaw smuggling through the Darién, they just make it less safe. The US doesn’t outlaw immigration, they make it more difficult. (1.6 million “gotaways”!!!!) I found the New Yorker article sad in how it affirmed the political machinations behind migration policy. I enjoyed the way it zoomed out from migration and showed it as an issue that sheds light generally on the current political landscape. What does it tell us? That we’re in deep trouble. Minor things: one of the guys outside “Stripes” says there’s an app for human trafficking… what is it!? That is a fantastic story. Similarly, I’ve heard surprisingly little about CBP One… are tech stories just not sexy? I imagine it’s having a huge impact at the border, but I only ever see statistics. Writing about tech in an interesting way is deeply difficult. 

I’m going to now turn to some “methods” questions again. Particularly focusing on photography since we have Robert Nickelsberg in class with us. The photos in both the Atlantic piece and the New Yorker piece are striking, how does / did he select photos for articles? What does his editing process look like, or was the magazine work he did from El Salvador edited by others? The New Yorker piece in particular makes me think of Ken Light’s Midnight La Frontera, a photography project I have personal issues with, but still find deeply, deeply compelling. How do you walk the line between taking photos that shock without doing so in an intrusive or voyeuristic way? I guess that’s a general question to be applied to photography, but photojournalism carries its own independent weight. And he’s done work on reconstruction of the past / confrontation of the past – at least that’s how his photos are interpreted by the writers collected in Legacy of Lies – what did that process of creation look like? I think I just have general questions about photojournalism, but those can be left for tomorrow. Enjoyed these readings, questions float about.

The side-by-side presentation of articles about Afghan immigration and US-military “mistakes” returns us to a theme that has permeated this whole course: during the first class, we discussed how underfunding foreign countries leads to the need to immigrate away from them. This week’s readings felt like an extension, that foreign military destabilization will also always lead to refugees. Even in a case where the United States presents the work that they do as “helping,” (and it ostensibly was meant to) their missteps led to public fear. American conservative voters will sometimes say we have no moral obligation to accept refugees and provide them with comfortable living conditions, but with the damage the US has caused abroad (in aerial violence and the rushed evacuation from Afghanistan) it does feel like we have a need to help. Still, despite SIVs and humanitarian parole, it feels like we’re doing surprisingly little in comparison with Iran and Pakistan. As global leaders, is the US obligated to help more than they would in other cases? What other obligations does the US have? Khan mentions at one point that the military didn’t give condolence payments to the families in Tokhar – is economic repayment a path towards accountability?

I’m also struck by how interrelated all migrations stories are. Afghan immigration is of course not existing in a vacuum; I find it really interesting that PBS reported many are now trying to come in through the Southern Border. And the newest waves of refugees aren’t just coming from Afghanistan, I have to assume many of them are coming from European and Arab countries. How is the issue playing out globally? And more locally, what role do the US government and NGOs play in cross-state migration? Immigrants want to be close to diaspora hotspots (like CA, St. Louis now, and D.C.) but how easy is it to re-resettle? I definitely agree that Afghan media and businesses need to grow roots before migrants will feel fully comfortable, and I wonder how long (historically, considering other groups that have been in their place) that will take? We’ve generally looked at immigration historically, and I’m finding myself curious as to whether any groups have come to the US with similar issues – if education, median yearly household income, and English language proficiency are so low, what historically has been the best way to combat that? And why aren’t we considering Afghans as part of a greater historical trend?

I’m also in love with the way that the second part of Khan’s reporting begins outlining her methodology; it feels like journalism-student gold. (cross-checking information in official reports with civilian reporting, using wayback machine, importing all data to an app where she could access it on her phone). I found it interesting that she also suggests meeting people “unplanned” – not warning them – because this way the information flows the most smoothly and is most reliable. Thinking about her work in the context of our prior harm-reduction, I’m a big fan of the way she presented herself totally honestly, but also imagining it was difficult to keep up contact – how do these families feel about their publication now? Also, she tells Katbeeah what the internal US documents say – is that necessary / does that help? I wonder whether hiding information like that could be better for the victims. I also found it interesting that both Khan and Hays referenced FOIA requests – I understand these vaguely, but I’m wondering at what point they feel useful. They seem outside the scope of what we’re working on, but is there a point as a journalist when that kind of information is necessary? Also, would have loved to have seen how she organized her information (considering there was so much by the end!!) + how she determined which stories to tell, out of so many possible (and deserving) accounts. Starstruck by both of Khan’s articles, lots to think about.

The pervading theme of this week’s readings, for me, was the effect of technological advances for migration. On one hand, we see how online systems are facilitating the resettlement of Ukrainian refugees, and promise to possibly simplify refugee processes going forward. I’m honestly hesitant to wholeheartedly welcome this advance; I think, like the CSIS article says, that we sometimes imagine tech as something exterior to ourselves. We need to be abundantly aware of the way all technology is built by and entrenched in human biases and error, without just using it as a first-resort without criticism. I’m very happy to hear how many people it’s helped, and with the proper oversight I am hopeful, but I also don’t think it’s the only solution. The HIAS article immediately made me think of CBP One, the equivalent app for Southern border migrants, which has been critiqued for a long time (plagued with glitches at the start and of course hasn’t been as streamlined as the Ukrainian equivalent). Still, it could help in the future. 

At the same time, we see how TikTok perpetuates white supremacy and anti-immigrant rhetoric. I thought the study was fantastic at dissecting ways that TikTok fails. Far-right groups will continue to come up with new dog-whistles, but if explicit anti-immigrant content can be moderated, there’s less of a chance people who aren’t already in the community will fall into it. I wonder if that kind of effective censorship is possible on the internet? I was also wondering what “pipelines” lead into far-right internet communities? People don’t just reach those videos without reason (mostly), there have to be “adjacent” spheres that lead them there. In online fandoms where viewers become commenters and creators, community and identity get tied to ideological underpinnings. It’s scary to realize that some people may see these anti-immigrant circles as their “communities,” where if they change their opinion, they’re at risk of being socially ostracized. Especially since these communities have so much potential for cross-contamination, the internet is a place where kids (kids who don’t have great real social lives) can fall into these spheres, and become so quickly indoctrinated. It scares me. 

I was also very interested in Allan Little’s article in the BBC – particularly in his use of the phrase “paradigm shift.” He critiques “the West” for its inability to see Russia’s mounting threat, and I know I’m part of that. If “we” failed to see what Russia was or is, is that a media failure too? Even as he says that Russia’s war with Ukraine is world-changing, I have to acknowledge that I’ve never thought of it that way. From the US, sometimes it’s easy to ignore. How much responsibility does the media have to transmit the actual power, the emotion behind a war? Responsibility feels like an unproductive word, but it more generally just makes me conscious that without the physical experience of being in Ukraine, I will never fully understand the conflict through reading about it. How do you get across the weight of a war, or the changes in the world, without being ideological?

One in ten unaccompanied migrant children in Arizona say they were physically abused while in the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency’s custody since January of 2023, according to a September report by the non-profit Florence Project for Refugee and Migrant Rights

Based on a fifteen-month investigation and hundreds of individual interviews, the report also found that one in four of the interviewed unaccompanied minors say they were verbally abused. Many more report a lack of hygiene products, medical supplies, warm clothes, and food.

“Kids shouldn’t be held in inhumane conditions, subjected to abuse,” said Jane Liu, director of Policy and Litigation at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “There really is just very little accountability.” Her organization works with the Florence Project, part of a collective effort to bring visibility to the conditions unaccompanied immigrant children are held in.

Detention centers for unaccompanied minors have long been criticized, and the Florence Project’s report is the most recent update in a history of attempts at change, says Liu. “Every couple years we’ve been raising these issues . And nothing has been done.”

The Customs and Border Patrol agency was created in 2002 as a subsidiary of the DHS, explains Luis Coronado, history professor at the University of Arizona and member of the Binational Migration Institute. Before then, the paths of unaccompanied migrant children were determined by Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).

“If you think things are bad now, it was horrendous back in the 80s and 90s,” said Liu about detention facilities. Litigation against the US government for its treatment of unaccompanied immigrant children started in 1985, with the Flores v. Reno case. It was dismissed in 1993 after a long legal battle.

Despite the case’s closure, public pressure persisted, and in 1997 the Clinton administration signed the landmark Flores Settlement, the nation’s first formalization of unaccompanied migrant children standards for care.

Since then, CBP has become responsible for unaccompanied migrant children after their apprehension. Updates in 2008 resulted in CBP’s promise to hold minors for no more than 72 hours (notably excluding “exigent circumstances”) at which point they should be transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

But the reality inside the facilities often differs harshly from CBP’s promises.

In 2019, the agency apprehended an all-time high of 76,136 unaccompanied immigrant children, prompting what CBP called a “crisis.”

Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, reported that at CBP’s Clint Texas facility that year, children were being held for over a month, without access to showers or sufficient food.

Between September 2018 and May 2019, six migrant children died in government custody – the first deaths in a decade. Then in June of 2019, Trump administration lawyers appeared in court arguing that the government isn’t legally required to give unaccompanied immigrant minors toothbrushes, towels, or “sleep.”

Just a week later, the state of Texas was sued for the inhumane conditions in the facilities of Rio Grande Valley and El Paso.

The facilities promised to improve, but in 2023 Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, 8-years-old, died in Texas CBP custody. An independent investigation attributed the failure to “systemic weaknesses.”

Despite the fact that unaccompanied migrant children apprehensions have steadily declined since 2019, CBP was sued again in February of 2024, this time for their open air detention sites – transitory spaces which, they argued, didn’t fall under the purview of the Flores settlement.

CBP declined to comment about any previous suits or allegations against them, including the Florence Project’s most recent report.

Liu fears that there will be no improvements even after the Florence report documents on-going abuse, “kids will tell us about literal abuse that they’ve suffered. But they don’t want to raise complaints because they fear retaliation.” She said that as a result, most abuse goes unreported.

Even when unaccompanied minors do raise formal complaints, they often don’t know the names of the officers. “It’s a bit of a black box in there,” said Liu. CBP facilities are inaccessible for non-government agencies, so reports like that of the Florence Project can only be taken retroactively.

Speaking of CBP’s internal failings, Coronado said, “It’s not because they don’t want to pay attention, but because it’s very functional for them to not pay attention.” Holding individual officers accountable, he explained, threatens their system.

There are reports that CBP is internally investigating over 200 of their officers, but Liu said she wasn’t aware of any internal investigation. Regardless of any internal efforts, she didn’t think CBP had been making the necessary systematic changes.

“The bottom line is that the CBP facilities are really temporary holding facilities,” says Liu. “They’re not meant for anyone, to be honest.”

My underlying thread when reading the articles of this week was a sense of policy disorientation. The stark differences in processes for Ukrainian refugees and latin americans (particularly Venezuelans) showed the fluidity of our system. In the series Immigration Nation, there’s a moment where it’s shown that refugees who could be released from southern detention centers are kept for political reasons, a moment where the ambiguities in the legal processes are instrumentalized. Watching the video about the comparative ease with which Ukrainians came in, I was shocked. But then reading the article by Sahalie Donaldson and seeing the NYT graphic showing the influx of refugees to New York, I saw how unprepared major American cities really are for that influx. (We) were able to handle Ukrainian immigrants, what is it about their Latin American counterparts that destabilizes the refugee system? Is it that they tend to land with better-established family members? Or that their presence incites less political backlash? 

Reading the chronicle of Mayor Adams’ failures and experiments, it’s clear the city is struggling with how to adapt. Adams was faced with pressure on all sides; while human rights groups decry the conditions refugees find themselves in, native New Yorkers (like Barry Bliss) and conservative politicians push back on the camps and housing developments. A great part of that struggle is definitely due to Abbott’s busing programs, but regardless it seems like New York is unequipped to handle migrant influxes. I wonder what policies have worked as responses to mass migration in the past? I see a lot of valid complaints, but I have no idea what the answer to refugee influxes is. The issue is often presented in monetary terms – one NYT article says that Abbott has spent more than 230 million to bus 120,000 migrants to New York. Wouldn’t that money be better spent if we thought of it tangibly as (nearly) 2k dollars for each immigrant? First off, where’s that money going? And especially as New York spends many times more than that, what would be the best use for that money? The most tangibly beneficial? 

A “methods” question, because I’m still trying to read this with an eye for how to improve: how are visual elements best utilized in these articles? The interview on CBS is a great example of face-to-face time forcing empathy, and the NYT interactive visual model that shows migrant busing does a fantastic job of making the issue feel more understandable. But in general, how are photos (especially of people) used (because they are “used”) without dehumanizing their subjects? The Ferré-Sadurni and Bensimon article has great photos, and I think part of my attraction to them is from the fact that they’re not always straightforward – the second to last photo of the drying clothes is deeply powerful, despite the lack of a human subject. In looking for images that help, I hope to find telling details.

I loved how these articles (and video) took on similar topics – comparisons and analyses of Trump and Biden’s immigration policies – and still felt like vastly differently articles. I’m continuing to approach our weekly readings as “example of craft,” (and then waffling between that and whether I should think about policy, but whatever) so I was focused on the way they all transmitted their information. The first article, which takes on a historical perspective, was really powerful in building out patterns and providing a strong argument for why Trump’s plan won’t work. But at the same time, there were ambiguities, and that historical focus felt unexciting if that’s fair to say – not boring by any means, but I can’t imagine it captured public attention. Jonathan Blitzer’s article, meanwhile, did a great job of politically analyzing. It used lots of data, maintained clarity through well-defined points, and also had some entertainment factor. The article written by Taladrid, however, was my favorite – and I realize the goal of these readings isn’t value judgment, but I only point that out to notice my own taste in writing. I found the narrative about Bárcena, whose description could’ve been a profile, really compelling. It entertained me, and at the same time the narrative was used to tell a fantastic story about the border and about US-Mexico relations. I was particularly impressed by the pangs of data which pierced the narrative flow – references to Biden’s border-enforcement budget compared to his budget for root causes of migration, “we’re trading one and a half million dollars per minute.” In my own writing, I realize I tend towards preferring narrative, but I want to take the lesson of purposeful data from this article. Using tight, concise, and sparse data points managed to make a deeper impact than a paragraph of data would have. Just something for me to think of going forward.

The monetary/political aspect of the border really caught my attention this week. By highlighting trade-relations between Mexico and the United States, I felt like Taladrid brought up the often-unseen part of politics – an affirmation of how imaginary harsh border policies are, his article showed that mutual exchange is necessary for the survival of both countries. In this context, “closing the border,” and other enforcement techniques felt as political as López Obrador’s new airport. I felt like Blitzer’s article did an amazing job of showing the border as a political issue too; seeing Republican pushback against Biden’s border bill, when it’s something that they would support if one of their politicians raised it, shows the absurdity of the political game. More than anything, it maybe shows the benefit Trump and other Republicans get from illegal immigration – they can mobilize the topic, and therefore use it to gain more votes.

After Tuesday’s debate, it felt impossible to read these articles without thinking about Kamala’s insertion into this conversation. When immigration came up as a topic, I remember feeling the air leave the room I was in – there’s an understanding (one shown by Taladrid in Mexico’s double-bind, where they fear helping Trump get reelected) that any conversation around immigration will go Trump’s way. Kamala managed to rope-a-dope, which the media loved, but not before making certain statements about border security. The parallels between her and Biden were clear, and it felt, again, like a very political move. My final comment is that I find it super interesting how, when immigrants from other countries come to the US, those countries feel the pressure. While Mexico tries not to make their border policies based solely on American interests, I was wondering how Haitian news outlets might be reacting to Trump’s comments about Springfield.

I started with the John McPhee reading and, probably for that reason, I then read the other pieces with an eye towards their narrative. I was happy to see the structure McPhee laid out in The Picnic, where linearity is less important than good writing. Especially in the first chapters of Longo’s book, time jumps around constantly; it’s not the form that I expect historical nonfiction books to take, but in this case I found the thematic organization to be much more fun to read.

I was also interested in the craft and information-gathering behind Longo’s book. I’m wondering how he decided where to “start” his story – while the prologue brings us to the present, the book begins pretty shortly before the August 19th picnic. I’m wondering how he decided to begin it there, and not with more historical context of the iron curtain? And since the information gathered can’t be “seen,” how did he gather it and feel out which details were most important? Thinking particularly of the meeting between Gorbachev and Németh where the aides were told to stop writing what was happening, and Longo’s reference to the “shadow archive of secret decisions,” how was this archive of material accessed? I imagine that many of the events we write about in this class might have happened before we could start reporting, so we might come across similar experiences with hidden information. And in the seventeenth chapter, there’s such a wealth of detail and emotional information – since the book was written ~30 years after the event, how was that information gathered and selected?

One quote from the prologue particularly stuck with me: “There’s a saying popular in Hungary, he says. The future is certain. It’s the past that keeps changing.” In all these readings, there are continual references to the power of reporting. Goudeau references articles, speeches, government reports on the state of camps – these are affecting change in government and political opinion. Poszgay’s public radio address does the same. The readings collected this week present writing as a political act, in these cases with antifascist potential. Reading both Goudeau and Longo (where criticism of militarized borders should cause reflection on our end) we’re confronted with the present by understanding the past. Their pieces of writing have potential to cause change; returning to the quote I initially called to, they have the potential to present the past in a different way. The American border requires scrutiny, and the return of fascist parties in Hungary (and everywhere in the world) equally calls for action. I don’t know how to make my writing effective, what it is that takes words to action, but these readings personally make me feel responsible to learn how to. I’m very excited for this class.