October, 2013 Muern Sarun’s parents had turned down several offers of marriage when they asked a motorbike mechanic named Rous Savy to take their daughter’s hand. Rous had taken a liking to Muern after she parked in front of his house in Cambodia’s Kandal
When the reigning Mr. Gay Namibia married his Botswanan partner in South Africa in April 2013, Zimbabwe’s ZimEye.org declared, “History [made] as Africa witnesses second gay wedding.” The first, said the website, happened a week earlier when two men married in a Zulu ceremony in
On a rainy afternoon not long ago, South Africa’s only openly gay imam was wrapping up a sermon in a candlelit room in Cape Town. A devoted congregation of a nearly a dozen lesbian, gay, and transgendered Muslims, adorned in hijabs, embroidered fezzes, and dark
In his second inaugural address, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to make the United States a beacon for the world by recommitting the country to its ideals of equality. He also made history by saying those ideals demand marriage rights for same-sex couples just as
There are things many Ugandans know about Rachael Kungu: that she is a DJ who spins at clubs and house parties, that she is warm and approachable, that crowds adore her, and that, perplexingly, she is a lesbian. Kungu lives in a leafy, middle-class neighborhood
MARION, Alabama – Reese Billingsley, insurance salesman and member of the county’s tiny black middle class, eased his Model-T Ford off the dirt road into the cotton field, and blew the horn. “You see, she told me not to come up to the house,” the
Song Liming lost his virginity on a chilly day in February 1982 to an Italian temptress named Antonella in Building 10 of the Foreign Students Dormitory at Nanjing University, while Antonella’s ex-, an avuncular German named Uli, was knocking on the door outside. Song was
A Pullman porter was, before anything, a man who made beds. Or, as they said, made down beds, since the most taxing part was popping the upper berth from the ceiling. The lower was formed by folding down opposing seats, fastening curtains, affixing the headboard,
He was a black man in a white jacket and sable hat. He only recently had stepped out of the cotton fields, and now was stepping onto one of the locomotives that had symbolized freedom to slavehands like him. He lit the candles that illuminated
WASHINGTON — Sitting in his book-lined office at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Michael Neufeld talks bitterly about his role as the much-maligned curator of the most infamous museum exhibition never mounted. Michael Neufeld, curator of the Enola Gay exhibition. (Photo by Julia
On a broad and shallow lake situated in the middle of a vast oil field north of the city of Surgut in northwestern Siberia, a Khanty (han-tee) fisherman poles his battered metal boat — an old Russian motorboat sans the motor — across placid, slate
Research chemist Malgorzata Dudek had worked for two decades at the technical university in Gliwice and in 1983 decided she wanted to apply that knowledge in a startup business. That proved too daunting. Her own knowledge was not the problem. She knew the state-owned chemical
BERLIN – Like a streak of lightning or an unraveling Star of David, the Jewish Museum Berlin zigzags through this city’s Kreuzberg section, just steps away from graffiti-covered storefronts and boxy, high-rise public housing. Clad in zinc, its façade broken by irregular slashes of glass,
The crew of the fishing boat Edward L. Moore out of Portland, Maine. Scott “Scotty” Russell, 45, has been the captain of the Edward L. Moore (ELM) for the last 19 years. In his early twenties, while out of work as a house painter, he
Text and photos by Ernesto Bazan In November of 1992, I made my first trip to Cuba. I had bought a super cheap tourist package in Merida, in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. It was $350 for a flight and a week’s worth of food
An unexpectedly large number of new businesses in Poland today are owned by women. Many are doing quite well, in manufacturing as well as in the service sector, helping propel Poland on its fast-track path toward a competitive market economy. Today, women are estimated to
SUITLAND, Md. — The George family traveled to the nation’s capital from their northern California reservation this July with a clear agenda: To inform America about the Hupas’ continuing battle to preserve their land and culture against environmental threats. “America has been educated from a
“I believe I’ll get drunk, tear this barrel house down.” —Drunken Barrel House Blues, Memphis Minnie. The juke joints are dying. “We used to have big crowds, every Friday night especially, and check nights,” said James Alford, manager of Smitty’s Red Top Lounge in Clarksdale,
In For My Sons and Daughters, the South African poet Dennis Brutus conveyed a prophetic message to his children: “Memory of me will be a process of conscious and unconscious exorcism.” As noted by chroniclers and scholars of the human experience from Euripides to Freud,
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.-It was a long way from the old neighborhood in mostly black south-side Chicago. On a recent Saturday afternoon in a Knoxville suburb, Edye Ellis glanced up from her kitchen table, paused between bites of a turkey sandwich and watched as a neighbor’s cow
