What Exactly Does Woke Mean, and How Did It Become so Powerful?
Many on the right blame \u201cwokeness\u201d for all of America\u2019s ills\u2014everything from deadly mass shootings to lower military recruitment. Florida\u2019s governor, Ron DeSantis, recently signed a so-called Stop WOKE Act into law, and made the issue the center of his midterm victory speech. In Washington, there has been talk in the House of forming an \u201canti-woke caucus.\u201d \u201cI think \u2018woke\u2019 is a very interesting term right now, because I think it\u2019s an unusable word\u2014although it is used all the time\u2014because it doesn\u2019t actually mean anything,\u201d the linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne, the author of \u201cDictionary of Contemporary Slang,\u201d tells David Remnick.\xa0\nPlus, the poet Robin Coste Lewis talks with the staff writer Hilton Als about how suffering a traumatic brian injury led her to a career in poetry. Her most recent book, \u201cTo the Realization of Perfect Helplessness,\u201d was published last month.