MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Arts & Culture Stories from NPR

• Photographer Tyler Mitchell On Being The First African-American To Shoot A 'Vogue' Cover
  NPR's Audie Cornish talks with Tyler Mitchell about being the first African-American photographer to shoot the cover for Vogue and what it was like to work with Beyonce.
• Satire, Soap Opera, Duty, Devotion: 'Crazy Rich Asians' Is A Movie Milestone
  The romantic comedy based on Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel has been saddled with cultural and commercial expectations. Critic Justin Chang was happy to find the film doesn't collapse under the weight.
• 'Flights' Is A Trip, If You Like Wandering Off The Edges Of The Map
  Polish author Olga Tokarczuk's new collection is a cabinet of curiosities — surreal, loosely connected stories about the human body, about movement, about two-headed calves and saints' relics.
• Finding, Then Filming, The Young All-Female Crew In 'Skate Kitchen'
  Director Crystal Moselle stumbled upon a group of teenage skater girls on the New York City subway. Then she made a feature film that stars them.
• Che Apalache Hopes To Open Minds And Ears With Their Latin Bluegrass Fusion
  Che Apalache is a band made up of one North American and three Argentinians. They play bluegrass and have been a big hit with Anglo audiences and Latinx listeners as they tour the rural U.S.
• 'A Girl's Guide' To Growing Up On A Secretive Missile Test Site
  When Karen Piper was 6, her family moved to the Mojave Desert. In A Girl's Guide To Missiles she describes how her parents designed weapons, but she didn't understand how it all connected to war.
• A Day At The Beach Won't Be The Same After 'The World In A Grain'
  Journalist Vince Beiser's no-nonsense writing makes light reading of a grim subject, the past and future of sand, but it paints a telling picture of how great a problem lies before us.
• 'His Favorites' Is An Artful Argument For #MeToo — And More
  Kate Walbert's new novel follows a young woman who goes to a posh boarding school after tragedy upends her life — only to find she's no safer there than she was at home.
• Jazz In The 21st Century Is All About 'Playing Changes'
  Nate Chinen's new book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century identifies the key players in the genre's resurgence. Chinen's aim with the book is to get the root of the resurgence.
• Opinion: Don't Sweat The #Repsweats And Let 'Crazy Rich Asians' Be What It Is
  NPR Code Switch reporter Kat Chow writes about the burdens imposed on representations of Asians and Asian-Americans in pop culture — even in a fun, frothy rom-com.