What We're Reading: Janurary 2025

We have a mix of practical advice (several articles around ridding yourself of unwanted clothing), two pieces of longform journalism dealing with the "loneliness epidemic," and a handful of pieces of reporting germane to our local area of the SF Bay. Enjoy! 

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Clothing Take-Back Law Targets Landfill Clutter 

Web link; SFPL database link

The Mercury News (San Jose), October 2, 2024

It's not quite time for spring cleaning, but the new year may have you thinking about what to do with old clothes that no longer fit or are just plain out of style. This article reports on new legislation signed into law by Governor Newsom that will require clothing retail stores to provide bins for unwanted clothes in all California counties by 2030. Before then, you can try the Take Back Bag from For Days, or you can sign up for the supplementary recycling service Ridwell, which picks up clothing and textiles in addition to items like batteries and lightbulbs. For a complete overview on what to do with unwanted clothes of varying qualities and how to prevent the problem going forward, check out the NYT's Wirecutter write-up from last year.

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The Anti-Social Century

The Atlantic, February 2025 

You've probably heard that the U.S. has a "loneliness epidemic" going at full tilt according to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. The Atlantic follows the thread that Murthy started unspooling on the topic nearly two years ago. Indeed many of us experience acute loneliness during the holidays, ironically, so the topic is fresh in our seasonal awareness. Journalist Derek Thompson explores how and why our culture promotes the insularity of being alone with a screen rather than sharing space with living, breathing humans, and the resulting implications for society and the individual due to this degradation of humanity's oldest tradition of being social animals.

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How Far Would You Go To Make a Friend? 

New York Magazine, January 13, 2025 

Being completely in-tune with the topics on the tip of the tongue, NY Mag published a great companion piece that could act as an antidote to this loneliness epidemic the Atlantic is talking about. The piece zeros in on one entrepreneur's plans to create an anti-loneliness nonprofit called Belong Center. It's a fresh perspective (and possible solution) to a topic that's easy to talk about but more difficult to do anything about.

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A decade-old ladder, a half-dozen letters and the story of how an ‘American Nightmare’ kidnapper allegedly came to Contra Costa County

Web link; SFPL database link

The Mercury News (San Jose), January 9, 2025

Listen up true crime aficionados! Did you see the Netflix documentary "American Nightmare?" This article picks up where the doc left off--connecting the perp, Matthew Muller, to several other instances of breaking and entering, assault, and abduction, all having come to light because a Central California law enforcement officer began writing to the perp after watching the doc. On January 17, Muller plead guilty to an additional two home invasions in Santa Clara County. 

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A mystery photographer made stunning images of 1960s San Francisco. Clues point to a filmmaking legend

Web link; SFPL database link 

San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 2025 

Fans of french film maker Agnès Varda will be pleased to learn she may be the photographer behind a cache of 1960s photographs documenting our City by the Bay. The Chronicle's culture critic Peter Hartlaub investigates from the source--a man named Bill Delzell is helping the latest owner of the collection figure out who was behind the lens. It seems as of February 7, the photographer's identity is still not confirmed, but Delzell has reached his funding goal and will be able to move forward with developing and digitizing the rest of the photos. 

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Boom on San Francisco Bay 

National Geographic, August 1956

This in-depth article and photo essay about 1950s San Francisco is like visiting with an old friend and seeing pictures of them as a young person. There are so many highlights, but perhaps the painter at the top of a Golden Gate Bridge tower is the most breathtaking of all. Thanks to the patron that asked the reference question that led us on a wild chase to this amazing article. 

What We're Reading: December 2024

For the last installment for the year of recommended articles from the staff at the Magazines and Newspapers Center, we have two articles from the blockbuster Christmas Day issue of the Los Angeles Times (which one librarian read in full at a California airport that day), as well as a couple fun articles, one investigating the secret language between plants and insects, and another that's a big old throwback to the hippie counter culture of the late 60s and early 70s. Enjoy and best wishes for the New Year! 

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When They Hear Plants Crying, Moths Make a Decision

New York Times, December 6, 2024 

Insects, specifically a moth called the Egyptian cotton leafworm, are proven to use a secret language to understand messages from plants. This study shows that the moths heed the mournful clicking noise plants are known to make when in distress, and avoid laying their eggs on such plants. File this one under "more things humans don't know just because we can't hear some sounds." Reminder: you can get access to the New York Times several ways through SFPL.

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Trump Starts to Walk Back Promises; After Casting Himself As a Problem Solver, the President-elect Is Throwing in Caveats

Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2024

Try not to do a big round of "told ya so" when reading this article. For those of us curious from a media studies perspective of how Trump has been covered in the news, this article is evidence of papers not doing enough before the election to show the doubtful side of Trump, perhaps, but delighting in exposing his rhetoric and claims now that the deal is done. Journalist Kevin Rector tracks specific promises made by Trump on the campaign trail that the president-elect is now walking back in order to "manage expectations." The piece explores the rhetorical moves utilized by Trump and puts them in historical context of past presidents' practice of elocution, while explaining why voters tend to believe Trump based on the promises he has made good on.

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Is Wells Fargo's move a bad sign for state? San Francisco bank's shift to leased offices may be the latest evidence of sector's drift from California.

Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2024 

 

With the safety of distance, the Times' Darmiento examines the history of the financial industry in San Francisco and what Wells Fargo's selling of its property at 420 Montgomery could signal for our downtown recovery. While the financial sector was an industry propping up white collar workers in the City alongside the boom and bust tech industry over the past 30 years, apparently that grandeur started fading away in the 1990s, and Wells Fargo, being helmed from New York City currently, could put the final stake in the coffin. In terms of the Los Angeles Times, the entire Christmas Day issue was captivating; we encourage you to check it out on ProQuest. 

 

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For What It's Worth

San Francisco Good Times, July 10, 1969

Early Greil Marcus offers a retrospective of Neil Young as the musician was transitioning from "old Neil Young" to a new chapter of joining Crosby, Stills and Nash. Marcus's landmark book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock n Roll Music would come out 6 years later. Marcus wrote regularly for this counterculture newspaper published in San Francisco from 1969-1972. Now anyone in the world can delight in a total flashback to San Francisco 55 years ago by reading Good Times in Independent Voices from Reveal Digital, an open access collection hosted on the JSTOR platform. All the titles from the collection will now appear in Periodical Finder, scanned at high-resolution and full text searchable. If you crave feeling that brittle newsprint under the tips of your fingers, the San Francisco History Center has some issues of the paper in its collection as well.

What We're Reading: November 2024

Election 2024. It dominated the news cycle for the majority of the year, and now that it has come to pass, we are stuck examining the outcome and figuring out how it happened. The selections for this month feature analysis of the election on the national, state, and local levels. We pull articles from the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Standard for this reflection, with an emphasis on the data graphics each paper employed to tell the story with more than words. And lastly, for a little bit of something else, we have an article from the Chronicle about the ongoing issues around transgendered players in the college women's volleyball scene that puts SJSU at the center of the drama. The Chronicle has been doing in-depth, targeted reporting on the issue, which should be highlighted.

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Key to Trump's Win: Big Losses for Harris Across the Country

New York Times, November 23, 2024

So many of us San Francisco voters are wondering what went wrong in the election at the beginning of this month. This piece from the New York Times takes a look at the voting behaviors of the country as a whole, offering compelling graphics that chart the voting change from 2020 to 2024. Read it in PressReader, which offers a digital replica of the print paper, so you can see the graphics in their printed glory, or read it on NYTimes.com where you can interact with the data with this courtesy link.

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Hanging out in SF’s Trumpiest neighborhoods

San Francisco Standard, November 11, 2024

The Standard uses data from the San Francisco Department of Elections and interviews with residents to dig into the trend towards Trump observed in the City's southeast corner, including Visitacion Valley and the Portola District. The handiwork of the Standard's data graphics person, Noah Baustin, is on display in an interactive graphic that maps votes by precinct in this piece as well as others filed under Election 2024, for example the article reporting on the low(er) voter turnout this year. The Chronicle put out a similar piece with interactive maps that explores the Trump trend in the southeast corner of SF, getting even more granular by highlighting, on a map, the two "Trumpiest" precincts in the entire City, showcasing the handiwork of graphics reporter Harsha Devulapalli and deputy data editor Aseem Shukla. 

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2024 Election Results

San Francisco Chronicle, last updated Dec. 7, 2024

As a special project dashboard, the SF Chronicle's 2024 election results page has been updated daily since the election and provides many interactive graphical representations of voting trends on a national, state, and local level. We offer this to you with a gift link to bypass any potential paywalls since this is the type of dynamic reporting not available in the library's subscription to the Chronicle through NewsBank. You can also view their California election dashboard and their San Francisco election dashboard. One of the most striking graphics is the change from blue to red of many counties in California, as well. 

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Legal Bid to Bench Trans Player Spiked 

San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2024

This article is the penultimate piece to date in the Chronicle's reporting on the lawsuit barring transgender women from playing college volleyball as brought forth by some players on the San Jose State University team. Now, the SJSU volleyball season is over, but several lawsuits and the future of women's sports remain. You can check out reporter Anne Killion's most recent piece to see where everything stands at the moment.

What We're Reading October 2024

Of note this October is what we're not reading rather than what we are reading. What we've been deprived of is a presidential endorsement from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which has kicked up a lot of criticism in the form of resignations and a major backlash of subscription cancellations. Thankfully our hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is planning on running an endorsement, although it makes us wonder if Nov 3 is too late for such things. Regardless, we're continuously grazing on pieces of periodically produced media, so here's our October Four. 

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New York Magazine, October 21, 2024 issue 

The front cover dares to state Media Elites Tell All! But inside the covers, awash in catchy, bold graphic design, New York magazine's new issue is devoted to the inquiry of "Can the Media Survive?" and they interviewed "57 of the Most Powerful People in Media" for it, including the editors of some big legacy print magazines. They further tackle questions that preoccupy us around these parts, like "What's the Point of Print?" and "Why Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong Hasn't Turned Around the L.A. Times." 

You can read New York magazine on the digital magazine platform PressReader.

 

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Joy Boy: Mychal the Librarian reminds us there is so much good in the world

Curl Magazine, Fall 2024

Celebrity librarian Mychal Threets is out here reppin' us librarians on our bad days (see the NYT piece "Librarians Face a Crisis of Violence and Abuse"), on our good days (see his celebration The Library Afro Revolution), and every day in between. So we were tickled to see his hair spa treatment in the new issue of Curl magazine, where he also chatted with the mag about inclusivity and hair pride at the library. He's on the cover and in a feature article where stylist Gina Marie Rodriguez helps him reach his "big Afro goals."

You can read Curl Magazine on the digital magazine platform Flipster.

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Of Note: Cats in Clara’s Correspondence 

Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, October 24, 2024

While this one isn't from any type of periodical you would need SFPL for, who doesn't love connecting with cat lovers both past and present? This Library of Congress blog explores evidence of cat affection in the Clara Barton Papers, especially in context with Barton's relief efforts in Europe with Antoinette Margot following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the resulting relationship between the two women. 

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Walk-off Slam Was Product of Work with Dad

Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2024

As we know now, the Dodgers won the 2024 World Series by locking up game 4 last night, but spectators were left breathless at the end of the first game of the series when Freddie Freeman scored a walk-off grand slam with the bases loaded. The Athletic's Andy McCullough did poetic justice to the night in his write-up, but the LA Times' Jack Harris went straight to the heart-strings with his retelling of Freeman's long afternoons spent practicing with his dad in SoCal sandlots. Whether or not you're celebrating for the Dodgers, ruing their win, or are completely indifferent, take a peak at this article for some good sports writing.

What We're Reading Sept 2024

September was abuzz with news from our deceased pop culture royalty, court case rulings very germane to the business of ebooks in libraries, the dividends of newspaper research, and useful advice in a small business-newspaper crossover event. Read on to get a glimpse of what librarians on the 5th floor of the Main Library were reading in September. 

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The Prince We Never Knew

New York Times Magazine, Sept. 8, 2024

NYT Mag journalist Sasha Weiss spent a year and a half reporting on a documentary of Prince that will probably never be released. Weiss, as one of the few people who have seen it, dispatches the intensity of the documentary, which can be summed up by the following quotes from director Ezra Edelman: “How can you tell the truth about someone who, when you’re talking to people, they all had different things to say?... How can you tell the truth about someone who never told the truth about himself?”

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Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries

MIT Technology Review, Sept. 11, 2024 

The Internet Archive received a harsh blow to its mission of making books digitally available the way a brick-and-mortar library would lend books this month when "the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaffirmed that decision with some alterations to the underlying reasoning," according to this opinion piece by Chris Lewis. The crisis highlights the stranglehold book publishers have over libraries wanting to buy titles in ebook formats, which are priced at up to 300% of the consumer price, and have DRM, or digital rights management, installed on them, causing the books to "self-destruct" once a loan or purchase period ends. *N.B. while SFPL offers the MIT Technology Review in many formats, including on Flipster, this article is an online-only piece and was not published in the print magazine. 

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A boy snatched from a California park in 1951 is found living on the East Coast

NPR, Sept. 24, 2024  

Archival newspaper research can literally reunite families and solve mysteries! The family of a man kidnapped as a child from a park in Oakland conducted newspaper research at the Oakland Public Library in addition to other approaches to find their long-lost uncle. Now we wonder if our newspaper collections at SFPL have ever helped a cause so noble. 

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How to open a bakery in 61 easy steps

San Francisco Business Times, Sept. 19, 2024 

While the title of this piece reads more like a satire from the Onion, the many convoluted steps to opening a business in San Francisco are real. The good news for aspiring entrepreneurs is that the San Francisco Business Times has you covered, starting with offering this in-depth list of necessary steps one must take. SFPL's Business Center will take you the rest of the way. *N.B.: SFPL offers the San Francisco Business Times full text for free through our eNews site and on the Articles and Databases site.

What We're Reading: August 2024

Summer is over and what an epic summer we've had! From reading about Kamala Harris's historic democratic nomination for president, beginning with her 2003 run for SF DA and through to the celebratory selfies at the DNC; to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, which saw the amazing placing of Cal and Stanford athletes, who outperformed some countries; to our own race for San Francisco mayor heating up (where do the candidates stand on public safety?)—there has been no lack of riveting articles to inform us. Nonetheless, this August edition of What We're Reading is serving up some articles to give a break from the exhilarating and exhausting news cycle we've been on. 

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The best livestream so far this year? A corpse flower slowly blooming

New Scientist, August 10, 2024

Read it in Flipster, an eMags platform courtesy of SFPL

For journalist Annalee Newitz, this was a favorite story to write this year. As they said on the social media platform Bluesky, "Plant time is the best way to get away from social media chaos." Watching the plant slowly grow day by day on livestream wasn't the only draw; spectators also got to watch the blossom's owner cut a small "window" in its spathe in order to be fertilized by pollen from a corpse flower in another state. After 13 years of growth, this corpse flower gave virtual watchers the ability to unplug from tech while using tech, and get pretty emotionally invested in the process.

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She Survived the Maui Wildfires. She Couldn’t Survive the Year After.

New York Times, Aug 21, 2024 

This story, which is available to SFPL patrons through the weblink above rather than in any print edition we can offer, follows the trajectory of wildfire refugee Edralina Diezon following the 2023 Lahaina fires in Hawaii. Having emigrated from her homeland of the Philippines to Lahaina in 2015, Diezon worked as a janitor at a local hotel and managed to survive the wildfires by sheltering there. But, as the article explores, getting help following the disaster was ultimately too difficult.

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SF Investor Uprooting Businesses

San Francisco Chronicle, Aug 20, 2024 

This disturbing piece by business and real estate reporter Laura Waxmann started ringing alarm bells in our neck of the woods as it doled out bad news for legacy businesses like the beloved restaurant La Med in the upper Fillmore. Good news came a few days later in an August 27 follow-up about proposed legislation from supervisor Aaron Peskin that would protect these businesses and was tempered by a contrarian piece in the SF Standard that ran August 26. Update 9/30: Investor in the project Neil Mehta counters the "sinister plan" in an SF Standard op ed.

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Gen-Z Is Killing the Curveball

FanGraphs, August 22, 2024 

Baseball writer Michael Baumann is a poet! In this online and openly accessible piece, he rhapsodizes about the disinvestment in the curveball by younger pitchers who prefer the slider for its efficiency. Baumann characterizes his beloved curveball as a "calligraphy brush, all swooping lines and fine control," while the "changeup is a Blackwing pencil, rich and precise, its marks here one moment and gone the next." The worse insult comes for the slider: it "is a crayon." Sports writing is anything but dull in this piece, which reads as a sext in praise of the finer nuances of a baseball's movement.

What We're Reading: July 2024

July was a completely explosive month for news. People on social media are talking about how future historians will specialize in this era because so much has happened this summer so far. Suffice to say there are many spaces this month's edition of What We're Reading won't touch with a ten-foot pole, but we do have some articles that center the work we do as librarians at the Magazines and Newspapers Center. 

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Wait, does America really still employ a ton of news reporters?

Washington Post, July 12, 2024 online/July 21, 2024 in print

Washingtonpost.com gift link

SFPL database link

Print paper image link 

This article is enlightening for its reporting and also its format. First, it uses hard data to survey news industry jobs as a measurement of health of the journalism field. This ultimately tells us that jobs for traditional journalists are not keeping up with the population growth in the USA, and that some of our data gathering approaches are no longer accurate for representing the journalism profession in the year 2024. But secondly, in terms of format, there are essential differences between what you see on the WaPo website, what you get in the print paper, and what you get through library databases that provide the full text of the paper: the data charts. These charts are interactive on the WaPo website and are an integral aspect to an article filed under "Department of Data" and "analyzed" (not written) by Andrew Van Dam. In the print paper, the charts are present, but not interactive. In the library database, they are not included at all. Tricky indeed, but not insurmountable with the help of a Magazines and Newspapers librarian. 

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After 12 Years of Reviewing Restaurants, I’m Leaving the Table

New York Times, July 16, 2024 online/July 17, 2024 in print 

NYT.com gift link

SFPL database link (NYT replica version in PressReader)

How could a food critic in New York City want to give up his job? A visit to the doctor that rendered him technically obese is one motivator, but a close examination of his pathology for eating probably had more to do with Pete Wells's decision to step away from his food critic role at the Times. Besides interrogating humanity's sometimes complicated relationship with food, and making us all drool with descriptions of some of the food he's sampled, this article gives us the glorious phrase taco artery, in description of Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. Where's your city's significant taco artery? 

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‘A political earthquake’: Media coverage of Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race

Poynter, July 22, 2024  

Last month our WWR post was about the news outlets publishing calls for Biden to remove himself from candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Since then Biden has done just that, while he was sick with covid and negotiating a historic release of prisoners from Russia. Yet, the most interesting aspect may be how his announcement was first released (on X, formerly known as Twitter) and when (while most of DC was sitting down to Sunday brunch) and then how it was subsequently covered. This opinion piece from Poynter's Tom Jones gives a thorough and rounded out summary of which outlet fumbled, which outlet scored, and what happened in between. 

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The Library Is a Commons

In These Times, July 15, 2024 

Outgoing president of the American Library Association (ALA) Emily Drabinski authored this feature article for the socialism issue of In These Times (which SFPL subscribes to in print). Drabinski, who ran for ALA president on a platform of being a queer Marxist, lays out the history of how U.S. public libraries came to be one of the most unique institutions in the world in that they are free for anyone to use and are wholly organized around contributing to the common good. Her main argument is that librarians are fighting capitalism by producing a public good every day they open the library.

What We're Reading: June 2024

At the end of June, following the June 28 presidential debate, we got totally absorbed in reading op-ed pieces calling for Biden to step down as the Democratic presidential candidate. Regardless of our (or your) opinions on the presidential candidates, it is important to know you can get these news articles through SFPL resources and/or with the help of a Magazines and Newspapers Center librarian.

To attempt this yourself, your first stop should be the Libary's Periodical Finder tool, which will tell you which resource to look in for which dates of a publication. If you get stumped, don't hesitate to reach out to us for help. 

The Hill

On June 30, the news site The Hill published an annotated list of outlets that ran pieces calling for Biden to surrender the Democratic nomination ("These major media outlets have called for Biden to drop out," by Nick Robertson). Here, we offer direct links to the pieces through SFPL resources, so whip out your library card and get ready to login. 

The New York Times

The Hill: The Times, which has battled with Biden’s campaign for months over its coverage of the president, said that Biden should step aside to “serve his country,” in a searing editorial on Friday.

In case you hit the NYT paywall through The Hill's link, allow us to remind you that SFPL offers several ways to access the NYT. Here is a direct link to the "searing editorial" in the text-only version via ProQuest.

The New Yorker

The Hill: David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, evoked Mark Twain to describe Biden’s performance in last week’s debate, remarking on the president’s age.

This piece is an online-only read as of July 6, 2024, which means you should be able to access it openly on the New Yorker website. However, just a note to say that SFPL has several options to access the content of the New Yorker that appears in the print publication, including through Flipster, which completely simulates the experience of reading the print magazine. 

The Economist

The Hill: Britain’s largest current affairs magazine doubled down on its repeated calls for Biden not to run again on Friday. Its own editorial said in stepping down, Biden “would help rescue America from an emergency.”

Like many of the periodicals on this list, SFPL offers several ways to access the content of the Economist. The article referenced by The Hill can be read in full through a database called Gale Academic OneFile. As the Hill makes clear, this isn't the first time the Economist has beat that drum. Check out PressReader, where you can read back issues of the Economist and the new July 6 issue, which is almost exclusively devoted to the topic (see the Leaders section on page 9).

Chicago Tribune

The Hill: The Tribune, the Midwest’s largest newspaper, said last week’s debate should be met with just one word: “Enough.”

Read the text-only version of the article, which in this case is available in ProQuest. 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Hill: The Journal-Constitution’s editorial board also did not mince words. “It’s time for Biden to pass the torch,” the piece is titled.

Georgia's major newspaper is available in a text-only version from several SFPL databases. Here is a direct link to the article via ProQuest.

Other calls

The Hill: Other newspapers weren’t as direct. Both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal editorial boards said bowing out should be seriously considered by the president, though neither went as far as to explicitly recommend it.

Pop quiz! Try finding the articles from The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post yourself. Use Periodical Finder to search for the name of the newspaper, and then click through to connect to the database. Try searching for a phrase from the article if a search for the title of the article isn't doing the trick. 

Stumped? Leave a comment and we'll get back to you with the direct link.

What We're Reading: May 2024

This edition of What We're Reading is the prison writing edition. The four things mentioned below were written by individuals who have spent time behind bars, whether it's as employees or as incarcerated persons. 

The Diary of a Rikers Island Library Worker

The New Yorker, May 12, 2023

Author and illustrator Medar de la Cruz is the recipient of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for this piece published last year reflecting on his work bringing books to incarcerated people at Rikers Island. The link above goes to the public New Yorker website, which is the only place this piece was published. Side note, you can access the New Yorker several ways through SFPL--it's on Flipster, an e-magazines platform SFPL provides, and we have it in print on the 5th floor of the Main Library, to name a few options.

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Surgery in Shackles

Lux, Winter 2023

Originally appearing in the print version of Lux issue 9 (Winter 2023), this article by Carla Simmons and illustrated by Huanhuan Wang is now freely available on the Lux website. Simmons describes the inhumane and inadequate treatment she received through the course of experiencing abdominal pain while incarcerated in Georgia. She is not alone. Her experience is indicative of the universal need to overhaul the prison medical system.

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He carved himself with an ID card and I just felt numb. 

Sunday Times, April 28, 2024

As a teenager, author Gen Glaister had a strange career aspiration to work in a prison, and in this excerpt from her forthcoming book, The Prison Officer, she describes the wonderment and repulsion she felt as she got to know the inmates at the prison where she took a job as a young woman. While SFPL does not (yet) have Glaister's book in the collection, you can read the Sunday Times excerpt online through our database subscriptions (hyperlinked in title) or in the print newspaper available at the 5th floor page desk. We keep the print edition of the Sunday Times for three months, so you will have to come by the end of July to see it in print.

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Hulihia

Fall 2013

Hulihia is serial publication from the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua, HI which has been digitized as part of Reveal Digital's American Prison Newspapers open access digital collection. This issue from 2013 has the theme of "Conversations with myself," and the contributed pieces are responding to the great works of literature studied in the prison's creative writing class. Looking at the American Prison Newspapers digital collection as a whole, Hulihia is one of only a half dozen newspapers that come from a women's correctional facility and is the most current of that subset, making it a timely and important addition to the genre of women's prison writing.