Victor Tan Chen's Blog, page 2

Hillary Clinton and the Art of the Impossible

Hillary Clinton formally accepts the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on the fourth night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Ali Shaker/Voice of America, via Wikimedia Commons

Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speechon Thursdaybrought to mindthe wide gap that separates those in this country who wantsweeping changeand those who favor incrementalreform.It’s played out during the presidentialcampaign, obviously, in the fierce primary clashes between Bernie Sanders...

Progress for African Americans? Yes, and No

Dr. Martin Luther King delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington on August 28, 1963. National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia

All the discussions today of how much racial progress we’ve made since Dr. Martin Luther King was alive reminded me of a disturbing point about the blackwhite health gap mentioned in recent research, some of which I discussed in an Atlantic essay over the weekend.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, African Americanshave beencatc...

Best of In The Fray 2015

From Age of Isolation: Portraits of Older Immigrants. Photo by Dana Ullman

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Age of Isolation

Tucked away in Staten Island’s Clifton neighborhood is a fourth-floor apartment painted in drowsy greens and browns. A blend of savory aromas—fish gravies, okra, fufu, stewed bitterballs—fills the air as brightly dressed women chat over bowls of chicken stew with rice.

Monah Smith, a small, wizened woman with a quiet smile, has been cooking for them. Smith sells home-cooked meals from her apartment in Park Hill, a low-income housing complex. The place never seems to be empty. Staten Island i...

Sleeping under the Rocket Trails

A motorcycle in front of United Nations-issue tents and their residents in a refugee camp in Bekaa, Lebanon.

Four years of a raging civil war in Syria have displaced more than eleven million people, ushering in the largest exodus since World War II. Of those forced from their homes, fourmillion have fled the country. While the crisis has now reached Europe in a very visible way, the majority of Syrian refugees are not (yet) risking the hazardous journey to its shores. Instead, they are stayin...

Sleeping Under the Rocket Trails

A motorcycle in front of United Nations-issue tents and their residents in a refugee camp in Bekaa, Lebanon.

Four years of a raging civil war in Syria have displaced more than eleven million people, ushering in the largest exodus since World War II. Of those forced from their homes, fourmillion have fled the country. While the crisis has now reached Europe in a very visible way, the majority of Syrian refugees are not (yet) risking the hazardous journey to its shores. Instead, they are stayin...

Don’t Blame Canada If They’re Doing What America Should Be Doing

I wrote an essay that appeared in the Atlanticyesterday. Based on the research for my book on unemployment, the piece talks about the debate over Denmarkin last week’s Democratic presidential debate—and how the real debate should be over Canada:

Clearly, America won’t expand its social safety net to anywhere near the scale ofDenmark’s over the next president’s time in office. Judging from their rhetoric in the debate, though, Clinton and Sanders both agree that government can and should play...

Page 99 of My New Book on Unemployment

I participated in Marshal Zeringue’s Page 99 Test at the Campaign for the American Reader. The blog is based on a quoteby the writerFord Madox Ford: “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” New authors talk about the ninety-ninthpage of their book and what it says about itslarger themes.Here’s what I wrote about my book Cut Loose :

Page 99 talks about how the unemployed deal with the depression and anxiety that come from losing part of...

Op-Ed on the Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage

Newsdayhas published an essay of mine that putsthe fight for a $15 minimum wage within the big-picture context of my new book, Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy:

Amid all the controversy over the recent push in New York and elsewhere for a $15 minimum wage, it’s important to remember the big picture.

In the decades after World War II, the United States had powerful policies and popular movements that lifted up working men and women. A third of employed Americans were member...

Lost and Found: A Conversation with Writer Philip Connors

Earlier this year, forest-fire lookout and nonfiction writer Philip Connors came out with his secondbook, All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found. It’s a beautifully wrought memoir about his brother’s suicide, which happened when Connors was only twenty-three. In the Fray’s Susan Dunlap talked with Connors over email in the spring about the way his brother Dan’s death shaped the trajectory of his own life, the approach he took to writing about a taboo subject, and the comforts of solitud...