Jeffrey Kelly

I’m an early-career journalist and poet.

Articles

Mother Jones •

The history of the NEA is the history of the culture wars

In 2020, four major museums were set to showcase the first retrospective of painter Philip Guston’s work in over 15 years. Spanning five decades, the Canadian American’s work responded to injustices in an ever-evolving style of painting. His art includes a series of paintings made during the ’60s that feature a cartoonish hooded Ku Klux Klansmen as a commentary on the social upheaval Guston saw happening around him. This motif made museums nervous, and they decided to take time to contextualize...
Mother Jones •

What author and poet Victoria Chang learned from trees

Eucalyptus trees have been scattered across California since the 1850s, when they were brought over by Australians flocking to the Gold Rush. The trees are now considered invasive, and their bark contributes to wildfire risk. But even so, they’re a staple of the area, their scent and stature intrinsic to the California coast.

In 2023, author and poet Victoria Chang watched as the massive eucalyptus tree across the street from her home in Los Angeles was cut down. As men lopped off the tree’s li...
Mother Jones •

Celebrating America doesn’t have to mean erasing our history

In the lead-up to the semiquincentennial, President Donald Trump has waged a war on topics he deems “divisive,” from DEI to critical race theory. As a reporter and fact-checker, I’ve examined this attack on our history closely. I’ve interviewed historians about how our past shapes our current moment, observed the spectacles put on by administration, and chronicled an organization’s fight to preserve local historic memorials.

Through this work, I’ve realized how much my own personal relationship...
Mother Jones •

The federal government has made America 250 a spectacle. These states want it to be a moment for reflection.

On New Year’s Eve, fireworks bloomed behind the Washington Monument. Along the side of the 550-foot structure, a birthday candle was projected, flickering as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. This spectacle kicked off Freedom 250’s countdown to the semiquincentennial and was followed by animated neoclassic-style graphics overlaid with audio narrating the nation’s “discovery, expansion, independence, and future.” As the narrative unraveled and onlookers watched Christopher Columbus sail across t...
Mother Jones •

Kimberlé Crenshaw says Juneteenth reminds us "freedom is not a one and one situation."

I first heard the word “intersectionality” during an identity workshop I took in undergrad. Inside our student center, my classmates and I stood under colorful signs naming different aspects of identity—like race, gender, sexuality—as we were asked a series of questions that required us to stand underneath one and talk about how that part of our identity impacted our lives.

Finally, I had a word that could help broach conversations with classmates, colleagues and friends about the parts of my e...
Mother Jones •

Food recalls are good, actually

Over the last few months, Trader Joe’s has pulled thousands of cases of focaccia bread and frozen fried rice from its shelves for potentially having fragments of metal or glass, respectively. If that makes you a little nervous about stocking up on other TJ favorites like cookie butter and Everything But the Bagel crackers, you’re not alone. (Trader Joe’s website notes that the company takes “these matters seriously—personally, even.”)

Monti Carlo, a chef who breaks down food recalls on her Subs...
Mother Jones •

America can’t let go of George Washington’s slave-holding history

During the summer of 2020, as protestors rallied against racial injustice, at least two dozen monuments of Confederate soldiers and slave owners were “torched, occupied, or removed.” In Portland, protestors toppled a George Washington statue on the lawn outside the German American Society, erected to commemorate the sesquicentennial. Six years later, and the Trump administration is fighting in court to remove plaques in Philadelphia that commemorate Washington’s history of enslaving people.

The...
Mother Jones •

A New Film Explores the Not-So-Distant History of Gay Cruising Arrests

Last June, as David was returning from visiting friends in New Jersey, he stopped to use a restroom in New York City’s Penn Station. He told Out Magazine that as he approached a urinal, he noticed one man watching him, while two others traded glances over the urinals’ dividers. David didn’t engage with any of them. However, before he knew it, the first man he noticed pulled out a badge and said, “All three of you are under arrest.” They were quickly escorted out of the bathroom in handcuffs and...
Mother Jones •

Trump wants you to forget that George Washington owned slaves

On Thursday just before noon, bundled up couples and small groups of people wandered through the President’s House on Independence Hall, some snapping photos and others inquiring what was happening as four National Park employees worked in tandem, behind a barricade, to reattach panel after panel of the President’s House slavery exhibits. They worked in the cold, lifting the massive glass squares up onto the brick wall and then screwing them into place. Philadelphia’s mayor Cherelle L. Parker ap...
Mother Jones •

Hero of 2025: Rosalía

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.

Whether it’s AI-generated music artists debuting on the Billboard charts, music labels courting TikTok virality, Grammy-nominated artists using AI to help write lyrics, or streaming services making it increasingly difficult to listen...
Mother Jones •

Alabama's poet laureate reckons with personal and political grief

In 2023, while on a group hike through the Sipsey River, Ashley M. Jones, Alabama’s youngest and first Black poet laureate, sat in a clearing and wrote the titular poem of her new book, Lullaby for the Grieving. Just before she was named poet laureate in 2021, Jones’ father, Donald Lewis Jones, died without warning. He was Midfield’s fire chief, a man who, Jones says, inspired her to always want to leave a place better than she found it. As she wrote, she thought about how similar the hike was t...
BostonGlobe.com •

Black History in Action works to bring Cambridge church back to life amid gentrification - The Boston Globe

However, when Kris Manjapra first entered the church in 2012, its siding was gray wooden shingles, and daylight peeked through the wooden ceiling slats. It served a small congregation of 20. Manjapra said he could sense the church’s grandeur, but even then he could see it beginning to crumble. In 2019, when Manjapra, Stearns Trustee professor of history at Northeastern University, finally became a member of the church, he worked with the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association as a grant writer o...
BostonGlobe.com •

MIT’s Student Lending Art Program encourages students to get up close and personal with art - The Boston Globe

“It’s very rewarding to be able to engage with photography in a totally different context,” Ravi said. “It’s been nice to also understand and transform, in my mind, how something that’s maybe taken for scientific merit is also something that can live as a piece of artwork.” She selected an arresting black-and-white framed photo of “The River Ouse, East Sussex, England” by Patti Smith. The next year, she got “Cornus Nuttallii” by Karl Blossfeldt. Ravi soon realized the photos were having an impac...
BostonGlobe.com •

A queer Black photographer’s journey to acceptance inspires an art exhibition about liberation - The Boston Globe

The exhibition challenges stereotypes of race, queerness, gender, and sexuality, while also pondering what it means to be what Lemons calls a “radical f-----.”With a provocative title, “American F----- Party,” the show intentionally invokes a slur against gay men to defuse the word’s hatefulness and recast it in a positive light. Viewers can see the exhibition until Sept. 28 at a new Provincetown gallery, Stanley, named after the Massachusetts poet Stanley Kunitz and run by art nonprofit Twenty...
BostonGlobe.com •

‘Feel the sweat’: Red Bull’s Dance Your Style East qualifier turns Roadrunner into a battleground - The Boston Globe

For the first round — dancers are told their bracket assignments the night before — competitors are given 30 seconds to win the crowd’s votes with their fully improvised routines. They’ll keep battling, one-on-one, until there are only two dancers left standing. That pair will then go on to the Red Bull Dance Your Style national final in San Francisco in late August. At Roadrunner Boston, 16 dancers from across the country will go head to head to wow crowds with their moves ranging from popping...
BostonGlobe.com •

In ‘The Broken King’ Michael Thomas chronicles his experiences with fatherhood, being Black in Boston, and mental health - The Boston Globe

“My legacy is of broken men, each of whom, at one time, had to transform their own legacy and in doing so transform themselves and the inheritance of those to come,” he writes. Michael Thomas’s new memoir, “The Broken King,” tackles race, trauma, sexual violence, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, parenting, and neurodivergence. He grapples with his past and with his relationships with his father, brother, and two sons.The memoir also emphasizes place. While he currently lives in Brooklyn, Thomas wa...
BostonGlobe.com •

The New England Poetry Club’s new summer series is reframing Americana - The Boston Globe

Consisting of eight bi-monthly Sunday readings — four this summer and four next summer — We (too) The People celebrates the diversity of contemporary poets’ voices and visions, leading up to the United States’ Semiquincentennial in July 2026. Each reading opens with a 30-minute musical performance followed by a 30-minute reading of verse from a contemporary poet. In addition to their own work, each musical guest performs a piece by another artist; a selection they believe reinterprets Americana....
BostonGlobe.com •

I’m new to Boston. Here’s how I’ve turned every weekend into a staycation. - The Boston Globe

A staycation can take many forms. For some, it’s staying in a luxury hotel nearby and eating at a fancy restaurant, while others might enjoy taking in rural landscapes and spending time camping or in a cabin. Others spend as much time as possible in community pools or by other bodies of water. And then there are those who seek to explore New England’s many historic locations.In its summer trends report, Airbnb noted an increase in staycations, with more travelers searching for trips within 300 m...
BostonGlobe.com •

‘Project Runway’ is back with two New England hopefuls - The Boston Globe

What should viewers expect from the returning fashion competition? Malenfant said this season is “bigger, better, and crazier than any other season.”This season, two of the 12 contestants competing for the crown hail from New England: Nantucket native Madeline Malenfant and Rhode Island-born Angelo Rosa. If either wins, it would mark only the second time a designer representing New England had won the show, following the victory of Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumna Erin Robertson in...
BostonGlobe.com •

In Boston, soul line dancing goes beyond ‘boots on the ground’ - The Boston Globe

Floyd, 30, guided the 10 students through two-steps and turns around the room; they gained more confidence in their movements as the song went on.The scene was from one of three free weekly classes that Boston Rhythm Riders offers for community members to learn line dances. Popular choices include Cupid’s “Flex,” Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Before I Let Go,” and the recent viral hit, 803Fresh’s “Boots on the Ground” — all songs that have helped line dancing garner its recent social media visibil...
BostonGlobe.com •

Director Sandi DuBowski used 1,800 hours of footage to make ‘Sabbath Queen’ - The Boston Globe

By 2003, the two had built a level of trust and friendship, and DuBowski started filming a documentary with Lau-Lavie at its center. “Sabbath Queen,” which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2024, chronicles over 21 years of the now-New Yorker’s life as he reckons with being a descendant of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis while embracing his drag performer persona Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, becoming a father of three, and founding Lab/Shul, an “everybody-friendly, God-optional” experimenta...
BostonGlobe.com •

Anderson Yezerski’s new exhibition invites viewers to ‘fall apart’ - The Boston Globe

“I think we all have these moments in our life where we stop and say, ‘Wait, what just happened? Did I just see what I think I saw?’ and maybe no one else is around to corroborate with. This is more about an ambiguity with our perception of the world,” Anderson said. “We may be sitting through the same variation of headlines, social media feeds, group interaction, etc., but of course our perceptions create a completely different lived experience from person to person. Much of this exhibition is...
BostonGlobe.com •

At BAMS Festival, the full spectrum of Black culture takes the stage - The Boston Globe

The rest of the festival was an equally full plate of Black music, dance, food, and art from around the world. The large crowd that filled Franklin Park’s Playstead Field demonstrated an appetite for such a vibrant and joyful community celebration.She said North Carolina underground rappers Little Brother, who are on their farewell tour, were the greens and cornbread. She likened Durand Bernarr, whose dazzling performance was a nod to the long tradition of queer R&B artists who draw on deep gosp...
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