New York Times Opinionator

This is a new piece for the NY Times about a young midwestern woman who moved to Bedstuy Brooklyn to pursue a writing career and develops a complicated friendship with an aspiring young rapper. When He is arrested for theft, she struggles to define the nature of their friendship, and the degree to which she is willing to become involved with him and his family. Meanwhile Hurricane Sandy bears down on New York as her focus and concern shifts to the city's responsibility to those incarcerated on Rikers Island. Do the criminals there need to be locked up and prevented from breaking out in the event of a catastrophe even in spite of their own safety, or are they people that need the same protection as the rest of society? It's a wonderfully short and complicated piece where the narrators struggle to comprehend her connection to her neighbor is mirrored in the city's relationship with it's incarcerated.