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HELLO and welcome to the 119th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about tigers! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

*Hey Mama (March 2014), by Kiese Laymon for Guernica – “You are a grown man, but you’re still a black boy from Mississippi to people that want to hurt you. Speaking and writing in a respectable way is just one small way to protect yourself. How do you not understand this?”

The Secret World of Fast Fashion (March 2014), by Christina Moon for The Pacific Standard – “From 1960s Korea, through Brazil, to today’s Los Angeles: Inside the world that brought you Forever 21—and those skinny jeans in your closet.”

Fangirl (January 2014), by Elizabeth Minkel for The Millions – I feel like I understand television fandom in general so much better now that I have read this essay! This girl is big into Sherlock.

The Lady and the Tigers (February 2002), by Susan Orlean for The New Yorker – The tigers have since been taken away, just so you know. She lived in New Jersey and owned all these tigers, this wild lady.

Flight of The Birdman (March 2014), by David Kushner for Rolling Stone – I don’t play games on my phone, I barely know how to use it to make phone calls, so this was very educational on so many levels. It’s about Dong Nguyen, and why he built Flappy Bird and why he decided to stop selling it.

The Indian Sanitary Pad Revolutionary (March 2014), by Vibeke Venema for BBC World Service – This dude rules! “A school dropout from a poor family in southern India has revolutionised menstrual health for rural women in developing countries by inventing a simple machine they can use to make cheap sanitary pads.”

Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem (March 2014), by Yiren Lu for The New York Times – About the cult of youth and youth in tech and software vs. hardware and the relative value of college and the connections from the Ivy League and all the stuff that’s happening with these dudes on the Google busses and those who came before them and are still here now.

The Cold, Hard Lessons of Mobile Home U (March 2014), by Gary Rivlin for The New York Times – About titans of the mobile home (aka “trailer”) industry, which is becoming more popular and profitable as low-income housing becomes harder and harder for low-income Americans to find.

How To Be a Good Bad American Girl (March 2014), by Anna Holmes for The New Yorker – On the connections between Scout Finch, Harriet the Spy, and Lisa Simpson. I think you’ll really like this one. It’s about feminism and pop culture, so.