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‘What Kind of Life Is This?’: Five Desperate Cubans Weigh Their Odds in Texas
It’s 3 a.m. in Austin and Rodríguez is still awake, the glow of his phone illuminating his face in the darkness. He refreshes the page again. A painting job appears—$150 for a day’s... READ MORE
Jesse Jackson Comes to Town
On February 19, two days after the death of the reverend and civil rights icon Jesse Jackson, the Observer’s longtime contributing photographer Alan Pogue emailed me a shot of Jackson shaking hands with... READ MORE
In Diverse Southwest Houston, Longtime Incumbent Hubert Vo Forced into Runoff Row
At an office tucked in the corner of the Universal Shopping Center in Houston’s Alief area, among Vietnamese restaurants and immigration service offices, I met Democratic state Representative Hubert Vo to talk about... READ MORE
The Aesthete from Archer
The ironies that affix themselves to the life and literature of Larry McMurtry are best exemplified by the title of his autobiographical meditation on storytelling, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, wherein the... READ MORE