The Persistent

4 days ago | thepersistent.com | Megan Clement

Note: This piece deals with difficult issues including sexual assault and dying. In 2020, I was prepared for my father to die. He had been receiving treatment for cancer for seven years, and by the end of 2019, the chemotherapy had stopped working. My father lived in Melbourne, and I lived in Paris—at the end of 2019 this did not seem insurmountable. But then the pandemic hit, and borders around the world began to shut.

1 week ago | thepersistent.com | Ruchi Kumar

This story deals with issues of marital violence and abuse. Anita* was still at university when her parents arranged for her to be married to a boy of their choosing. But Anita, then a teenager, had bigger hopes for her future: She wanted to study, get a job, maybe one day have a career. After the match was arranged, her parents told her to forget about her studies and get to know her future husband, instead.

2 weeks ago | thepersistent.com | Emma Haslett

Birth Control — 10 min read In April 2021, as rumors swirled on social media about the supposed risks of the Covid vaccine, a doctor appeared on British breakfast television in an attempt to dispel the myths. Anthony Harnden, the deputy chair of Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, was frank. Yes, he admitted, AstraZeneca’s version of the vaccine had been shown to put a person’s chances of getting a blood clot at about one in 250,000.

1 month ago | thepersistent.com | Emma Haslett

It’s 7:50 on a Sunday morning and my husband and I are loading our two small daughters and a vast bag of snacks onto a creaky double-decker bus.

1 month ago | thepersistent.com | Francesca Donner

Culture — 11 min read We’ve all heard them: the messages—sometimes subtle, sometimes overt—that you don’t quite measure up. Perhaps you’re not smart enough. Or your ideas aren’t all that. Or your skills are slightly lacking. You’re good, let’s be clear about that. In fact, you might be very good. You’re just not good enough. Lilly Ledbetter certainly heard it in her nearly-two decades at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.