When you think about female superheroes, the images that come to mind might include taut stomachs, skintight bodysuits and hourglass measurements. But Faith Herbert, the flying, telekinetic subject of a new comic book from Valiant, doesn’t meet any of those expectations.

Faith is fat -- plain and simple. Unlike other women typically seen in comics, she has a round tummy, a flowing costume and a pear shape. But the revolutionary part of her character is that you can see her body for yourself. It's not described in words -- no ink in the comic book's pages is devoted to discussing or shaming Faith's body -- but rather, it's projected in stunning visuals. 

So instead of ambiguous language that often pigeonholes body types into strict categories -- think terms like “curvy," “thick" or “voluptuous" -- we have solely the visual representation of her body. Free of these loaded descriptors, readers are able to perceive her as an individual in all of her specific glory.

"In comics there is no hiding," Amy Diegelman wrote for Panels. "So when we see Faith, right there on the cover, we see a fat woman. A fat body ... Faith IS fat. And she is not hiding. And that is so, so important."

“She is someone who wants to be a superhero and has these great role models that she’s trying to live up to, and to me, that’s a much more interesting story than her dealing with people saying crap about her body,” said Jody Houser, the writer behind ‘Faith,’ in an interview with The Huffington Post. 

Faith’s got more pressing things to worry about than society’s narrow body image ideals. Originally created in 1992 as a member of Valiant’s "Harbinger" series, Faith now has her own solo comic book. In the first issue, released in January 2016, she's out on her own for the first time in many ways -- she's left her team of crime-fighters, moved to Los Angeles after a breakup with a hot fellow superhero, and taken on a new job as a reporter.

All these changes aren’t as exciting as she expected, though, which makes her all the more relatable. The job she’s taken as a reporter at a BuzzFeed-like website isn’t as adventurous or stimulating as Clark Kent’s day job. Instead, she spends most of her days making quizzes and listicles. Using her alter ego Zephyr, she hasn’t seen much action in terms of villains either -- at least, not yet.

On top of all this, Houser says, female readers have been able to relate to the fact that she’s plus size. “Women are excited to see a woman on a cover who looks like them -- that means a lot to them,” said Houser. “Her size is an aspect of her character but not the central focus. It’s just part of who she is.”

As a jubilant, comics- and science-fiction-loving geek with a positive attitude, it's easy to root for Faith as she starts a new chapter in superhero adulthood. 

At the end of the first issue, it does seem like she’s going to be taking on a Big Bad of her own in a “be careful what you wish for” scenario. Even though we don’t know what she’s tackling just yet, it’s easy to believe in Faith. Because, just like her lithe superhero sisters, Faith, a fat woman, can be brave, kick ass and maybe even save the day.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Warning: This article contains nude imagery and may not be appropriate for work.

"I have an infant memory of crawling on the floor and coming upon something utterly wonderful that made me shriek with excitement," artist Carolee Schneemann explained to The Huffington Post. "It was my first cat."

Schneemann, now 76 years old, is a feminist performance art goddess who loves cats.

Her 1964 video piece "Meat Joy" depicts a writhing, carnal celebration of flesh, an orgy of men and women rolling amidst chicken legs, paint, sausages and fish. In her 1975 performance "Interior Scroll," she can be seen standing atop a table, her body painted in mud, reading a feminist scroll she extracted from her vagina. 

Aside from turning the body into an uncanny artistic medium, Schneemann foreshadowed more than a few dominant trends of millennial culture. She invented the selfie. She also basically invented the cat video.  

Schneemann has had cats since she can remember -- between the ages of 5 and 14, she had five consecutive kitties named Tommy. From a young age, she loved them, intrigued by their ambiguity, spontaneity, tenderness and intuition. "I loved the look of them, the feel of them," she said. "I seemed to be able to communicate with feral cats and domestic cats, we had these strange invisible cat conversations."

Cats, Schneemann continued, exist between the visible and invisible. On one hand, they occupy domestic spaces, curling up in nooks and crannies of familiar quarters. But they fit into the wild just as comfortably -- hunting, stalking, pouncing. And then they return home, shape-shifted, affectionate and soft.

"I was always filming them, wanting to capture their grace, motion, changefulness," Schneemann said. One video compilation, titled "Infinity Kisses," features 124 self-shot color photos all depicting Schneemann kissing her cats -- first Cluny in the 1980s, then Vesper in the 1990s. What's surprising in the images is the intentionality of the cats, perched assertively upon Schneemann's somewhat nonplussed face. 

"I didn’t invite it but didn’t refuse," the artist said of her first filmed cat kiss. "Cluny would come into bed and put his little cat mouth onto mine, purring, his his paws on my neck. He put his tongue in my mouth. It felt like a mystical lover from a lost time that had come back in the form of a cat."

From then on, when a cat went in for a kiss, Schneemann would grab her Olympus 35mm color camera and capture it. Soon she had dozens of photos, then dozens of dozens. "When Cluny died my next cat was unexpectedly also a kissing cat. They’re rare."

"Infinity Kisses" is one of the films on view in "Mysteries of the Pussies: The Cat Films of Carolee Schneemann," an upcoming screening in New York City, featuring all of Schneemann's cat films. The first, the 30-minute 1960s film "Fuses," features Schneemann making love with her partner, composer James Tenney, as observed by her cat, Kitch.

"I wondered what the intensity of sensations would look like on film," Schneemann said. "Would it look like science or pornography or something else?" Although the cat clearly is not holding the camera, he serves the role of spectator, subject, auteur. Instead of the camera as an extension of the male gaze, offering up the woman's body as a fetishized sexual object, Schneemann delivers the cat's eye view, floating evenly between male and female bodies. 

While "Fuses" was Schneemann's first cat film, her first cat artwork came far earlier. In 1943 at four years old, Schneemann made a drawing she now calls "The Exuberant Cat." In it, a penciled feline silhouette emerges triumphantly from a box, or maybe a table. Arms raised victoriously and seemingly in motion, the cat almost resembles Schneemann during her "Interior Scroll" performance, in all its ritualistic fervor.  

Over 50 years after Schneemann's first feline film, cat videos have become ubiquitous online, with kitties like Lil Bub and Henri, le Chat Noir amongst the web's most revered celebrities. The art world has caught on to the trend, with the Walker Art Museum hosting an Internet Cat Video Festival in 2012 followed by exhibitions like "Cat Art Show" and "Another Cats Show" popping up around the country. 

For Schneemann, this viral moment isn't just a surge of boredom-induced Internet folly, but something of a feminist revolution. "I think of it as some parallel feminist awareness," she said. "Shifting away from the insistence that the only good pet is the responsive, obedient, happy dog. The cat, like female sexuality, has always occupied a place of unpredictability, uncontrollability. Something too soft and fuzzy that also has claws. All these ambiguous aspects of cats had for many years been suspect."

And yes, Carolee Schneemann, unparalleled performance art queen, watches cat vids. "I’m a sucker for everything cat. But I’m not fond of the over-determined dressing them up. It's too much." 

Another of Schneemann's films on view, titled "Mysteries of the Pussies," features the artist and Finnish museum librarian Teija Lammi spontaneously reacting to images of Schneemann's cats onscreen. While they crawl and fawn with cat-like agility, Schneemann lectures on the implications of the word "pussy" as an obscenity. 

"All language has parallel implications and energies," Schneemann told me. "The female body was an aspect of anger and fear because of the degree to which female genitals are not male. Just the difference has been a source of female conflict and confusion, often inspiring violence and hatred. There is a similar history with cats being attacked by adolescent boys. Boys can’t understand it so they choke it and shave it. I’ve always seen violence to domestic cats related to violence with domestic abuse."

That being said, Schneemann embraces the word "pussy" and uses it freely. She went on to say she also uses the word "cunt," which is actually an ancient Syrian word for "sacred crevice," and was once seen as the source of creativity. "Patriarchy and early Christianity took so many positive things and turned them into something monstrous."

In November of last year, Schneemann was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, featuring 350 of her works spanning six decades. When asked about it, she responded cordially: "I feel objective about it." When I asked about her current cat, however, the response was effusive. "Thank you for asking!" she blurted out. "I have an amazing cat! I’m so lucky, her name is La Niña."

When describing La Niña, Schneemann mentions her ability to create art, quickly tacking on an awareness that the statement "sounds ridiculous." Nevertheless, the artist insisted, the kitten composes objects, and she's not the first. Vesper pushed the cable release button on Schneemann's camera, snapping a close-up of his beloved owner's red mouth. Kitch, after watching Schneemann paint for years, made a work of his own using a shoe polish brush. 

And even the cats who weren't artists certainly served as muses to Carolee. "I’ve learned so much from my cats. Improvisation in space -- a lot of my kinetic theater is inspired by cats jumping, leaping. Patience. Paying attention to the subtle elements in nature that are almost invisible. One instructed me to wait at a window while a spider gave birth to thousands of tiny little specks of instant spiders. I would never have paid attention on my own to such a thing."

I understand the sentiment. Taking a breather from writing up this interview, I Google cat videos, landing on one called "BEST MOM & CUTE CAT FAMILY," just uploaded today. In the one-minute video, three baby kittens suckle at their mother for milk. On another day, I might write the whole thing off as a mindless diversion, a brief and utterly forgettable distraction. But the adorable interaction contains, softly, something more. The unknowable gaze of the mother cat, monarch of her cushion on the bedroom floor. The kittens' tangible ambivalence to their owners, to being seen and filmed. The warmth of maternal love, nutritious and plush.

The mindless cat video just may contain within it echoes of a feminist revolution. 

"Mysteries of the Pussies: The Cat Films of Carolee Schneemann" will take place Sunday, February 21, 2:00 p.m. at the Museum of the Moving Image. Queen Carolee Schneemann will be in attendance. Purchase tickets here. 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

As winter storm Jonas bore down on the East Coast on a Saturday in late January, cities announced transport and road closures. People retreated inside to Netflix and chill as snow filled the streets. Stores shut down. And then, Tiler Peck, a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, posted to Instagram a video of the company being informed that the day’s matinee and evening performances had been canceled.

The rehearsal studio exploded with cheers. Peck’s fellow principal Sara Mearns did a giggly little victory dance and soon took to Instagram to post pictures of herself doing arabesques in the snow. It was a charming reminder of something that tutus and pointe shoes are designed to disguise: ballet dancers are people, too. They’re people with jobs, just like you and me. Ballet is hard work, and even when you love your job, you get excited about a day off.

In this series, The Huffington Post profiles some of the best ballet dancers in the world, working in some of the rarest and most unusual work environments imaginable, to try to understand how they deal with the same workplace issues that confront the rest of us mere mortals. Most of us don’t get literal standing ovations from hundreds of people when we do good work. And most of us don’t have to visit the physical therapist at the beginning and end of every work day. But no matter what sector we’re in, the big questions are the same: What does it mean to have your body under scrutiny on the job? How does it feel to be asked to represent your entire race in a company meeting? How do you find the right people to mentor and guide you?

In our first installment, we talk to Marcelo Gomes, principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, about what it means to be a man in an industry that so many people associate with femininity, and how to be such a good team member that people fight over who gets to work with you. 

Marcelo Gomes is running late. The digital clock on the wall of the studio, one of many in the nondescript Flatiron district building that houses the administration and rehearsal space of American Ballet Theatre, shows the minutes ticking by as the piano tinkles in the studio next door. By the time Gomes arrives, it’s a few minutes after noon, but you can hardly blame him for needing a couple of extra moments; he’s been working his body since 8:30 a.m., and he’s still got another two hours of rehearsal in front of him before lunch.

Today, he’s rehearsing "The Firebird," in which he’ll dance the lead role of Ivan opposite ballet celebrity Misty Copeland, who’ll play the eponymous creature. He last performed the choreography when it premiered four years ago, and the purpose of today’s rehearsal is to jog his muscle memory. Ballet mistress Nancy Raffa, once a member of ABT’s corps de ballet, has been watching the video of one of his 2012 performances, and is there to reteach him the choreography, and to remind him how he inflected it with his own personal quirks -- a slow turn of the head here, a slightly deeper bend of the wrist there.

Because there will be multiple casts for this ballet, Gomes is joined in the studio by another principal, Alexandre Hammoudi, who also needs to relearn the steps. Hammoudi is injured today, so he’s not fully dancing. As Gomes practices the choreography, Hammoudi stands 10 feet over his shoulder, half-mimicking his movements like a kind of lazy shadow.

Raffa shows Gomes the first few counts of eight, and he practices them a few times, the leaps getting higher and the pirouettes faster with every run-through. Within minutes, he’s sweating and peeling off his sweatpants to reveal a pair of bright red running leggings, which in turn reveal a pair of quads you might expect to find on a hockey or soccer player. But ballet demands that men develop elegance and grace, as well as the kind of brute strength required to launch yourself into the air and lift your partner above your head. Gomes is clearly immensely strong, and he's also capable of remarkably delicate, tender movements.

As Raffa shows him the next few phrases of choreography, he puts his head in his hands, laughing, "Oh my God, I have no recollection of this." "It’ll come back to you once you hear the music," Raffa reassures him. He runs through it with the music, struggling a bit at the end. The pianist stops, and Gomes and Hammoudi look at each other, hands on hips and eyes wide, Gomes panting slightly. He lets out a sound that's half groan and half laugh, commiserating with his friend over how challenging the choreography is. "And it’s really faster than this," Raffa reminds them.

Gomes, 36, was born in Manaus, Brazil, and started taking jazz dance classes when he was 5 years old. When he was 8, he decided he wanted to learn ballet, a choice that his parents supported immediately, but that raised eyebrows elsewhere. "People made fun of me a lot," he says. He was the only boy in his ballet classes until he left Brazil at 13 to train in Florida, and then Paris. No one in Brazil minded that he wanted to dance; "it was when I wanted to be a ballet dancer that it shocked people."

Trying to explain that shock, he grasps for the Portuguese word preconceito, then reaches for the translation app on his phone. Preconceptions. "There was a bit of a taboo that I did ballet," he explains, in part because it bucked Brazil’s gender norms. "Boys played soccer, and that was it. And I didn’t want to play soccer. I was lousy at it. But I had to go to the matches, I had to go to practice. I still had to play. But I was so devoted to my dance classes that I used to eat lunch in the car and then go straight to the ballet studio from school. And then I was the happiest that I could be because I knew that was the place."

Though men do, of course, dance in Brazil -- a lot -- there’s a difference between street dancing or samba and classical ballet, which is foreign, and widely perceived as a more feminine style of dance. Unlike in Russia, where ballet and machismo are not mutually exclusive, Brazilians, like Americans, largely associate ballet with femininity.

With femininity, and with sexuality. "People are always surprised, when they ask me if everyone in the company is gay, and I say, 'No, actually, everyone’s straight!'" Gomes is gay, though, and in 2003, when he was 23, he became the first ballet dancer to come out on the cover of The Advocate; the headline was "ROMEO IS GAY."

"That was huge for me, because I wasn’t fully established as a dancer at the time. But I was so sick of the little questions from the media about 'are you seeing someone?' They were pushing me to come out, and that was my way to stop the questions that were backing me into a corner." He says he doesn’t ever wonder why all the roles for men in ballet are straight -- "that’s where your acting ability comes in, and when I’m kissing Juliet, I’m not myself" -- but it is a little odd that a discipline that outsiders so strongly associate with gay men is built entirely on a canon of straight love stories.

There’s no room for gay characters and same sex love in "Swan Lake" or "Giselle." As for homophobia outside the ballet world, Gomes acknowledges that if he lived in a more culturally conservative place than New York City, he might encounter more negative responses than he does when he tells people what he does for a living. For the most part, he says, "the response is wonderful."

Still, the demand that men in ballet almost always play straight highlights the many, sometimes contradictory, demands that the discipline places on men. When I suggest that in a lot of ballet, and particularly in pas de deux -- a dance for two people, almost always a man and a woman, and a staple of classical ballet -- it can seem like the man is merely there to make the woman look good, Gomes visibly winces. "Ouch!" he objects. "I think that’s changed a lot."

Now, he says, men are expected to be great partners who can make a ballerina look good, but they also need to be spectacular jumpers and turners, a shift that began several decades ago with the jeté and pirouette pyrotechnics of Mikhail Baryshnikov. And, to be truly world class, they need acting ability as well as technical prowess. Basically, men in ballet are expected to do it all -- but at least they don’t have to do it in pointe shoes.

It’s not unusual for male ballet dancers to find themselves in disproportionately high demand: as Gomes himself discovered from being the only boy in his classes, there’s a shortage of men and a glut of women in ballet. In the junior stages, teachers are often delighted just to have a boy in the room, even if he’s a middling talent. And "it’s always been harder for the ladies than for the men, getting into a company," Gomes says. "There are just so many ladies, and so many great dancers out there."

Even though the numbers favor male dancers, the culture often doesn’t: because ballet is so heavily associated with women, and with gayness in a world where sexuality remains stigmatized, Gomes thinks it still takes enormous determination for boys to become ballet dancers. "It’s not just a mean teacher saying 'no, no, no, no, no,' which is a thick skin you need to have in order to be in the studio… when you get out of the studio, you have to face a whole bunch of other things," from incessant teasing at school to the cost of training.

Though Gomes is technically excellent and a compelling actor, it’s pas de deux partnering he loves most. He prides himself on being a good partner, on making the ballerina look great and feel safe, and ABT principal Gillian Murphy has joked that she and her fellow ballerinas fight over who gets to dance with him. He’s clearly flattered by his status as one of the company’s most sought-after partners.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that his favorite television show to watch at the end of a long day of rehearsals is "The Amazing Race," which, when you think about it, is guilty pleasure TV’s ultimate pas de deux. And when asked about what parts of the upcoming season he’s most excited about, he lists the ballerinas he’ll get to dance with, rather than the roles he'll play. But then, he says, he’s very much looking forward to once again dancing Romeo, the role he was playing when he publicly came out 13 years ago. He's performed it many times since, but as with "Firebird," he’ll have to be reminded of the steps; it’s been over a year since he danced it last.

"It’s nice to revisit it, one year on, one year off," he says. "Once you get it under your belt, the more things you see, the more things you experience, you see it totally differently. It’s like life."

New York City performances of Alexei Ratmansky's "The Firebird" begin on May 18 at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

If a friend or a relative or a paranoid new love interest ransacked your apartment, dredging up the diary you kept in college but never bothered to throw away, the collection of beer caps or stamps or thingamabobs, the extra-lacy underwear, would he be surprised by what he found?

It’s a question on dating sites everywhere, a litmus test for secretiveness. But the truth is, no matter how much we strive for honesty -- factual or emotional -- most of us have sides of ourselves that seldom leave the confines of our own cagey heads, or at least our own search histories. Often, if Tony Tulathimutte’s new novel Private Citizens is to be believed, those selves-within-ourselves can be pretty nasty.

His debut book follows four friends who’ve somewhat begrudgingly reunited in San Francisco a few years after graduating from Stanford. Will is a programmer whose porn addiction could only be cured by his unrelenting obsession with his newish girlfriend Vanya, a super-hot paraplegic girl who devotes most of her time and conversational energy to establishing herself in the startup world. When she jets off to New York to pitch an empowering disabilities site to investors, he busies himself by finally meeting up with one of his old friends again.

Cory is a dorky, well-meaning vegetarian and bike devotee who inherits the startup she’s been working for, Socialize, when her boss dies suddenly, seemingly from stress alone. Faced with the company’s massive debt -- mostly racked up from a refusal to establish an online presence, or, y’know, a mission statement -- she decides to call her father, a self-made biz guru who speaks mostly in indecipherable anagrams.

Although she identifies as queer and is shy about dating women, Cory harbors mild romantic feelings for Henrick, a biology grad student whose research has failed to secure government funding. Overmedicated and under-interested in his field of choice, he reflects on his childhood as a state-hopping trucker’s son, squeezing in autodidactic reading materials to fill the silence of the never-ending car ride. His upbringing might’ve made him socially awkward, but for Linda, a Kerouacian breed of millennial with warring interests in irony and sincerity, but mostly just a self-destructive want to “burn, burn, burn,” he’s the perfect match. The two dated in college, before their explosive breakup obliterated the idea of speaking terms.

Tulathimutte reveals the intimate details of these characters’ lives in winding, disparaging interior monologues, diary entries, email conversations and coffee shop debates. A neurotic rant about the pressure to be a male feminist, but the smarminess of declaring oneself as such sets off Linda and Henrick’s budding romance. A detailed evaluation of yoga as a patriarchal hobby pandering to the male gaze but disguised as genuine exercise frames Cory’s negative thoughts about her roommate. A passive-aggressive fight about Will’s girlfriend’s insistence that eyelid surgery isn’t racist because it was first practiced in Asia is a catalyst for their downfall.

The unpacking of socially accepted logical fallacies might not sound like the stuff of an engaging novel, but, somehow, it is. Tulathimutte punctuates these long-winded critiques, sometimes stuffed uncomfortably into the mouths of his characters, with absurd humor and hilariously uncomfortable descriptions of sex.

This isn’t Franzen we’re talking about. Although Private Citizens sheds light on political issues and the wayward ways we discuss them by relishing in its heroes’ impurities, Tulathimutte likes his characters, and it shows. Ultimately, their unhealthy modes of communication and self-destructive habits triumph over the sheen of living an Instagram-worthy life nonstop. Our gritty, messed up private life, he seems to say, is worth preserving.

The bottom line

A funny, unflinching portrayal of young people today, nasty neuroses and all.

Who wrote it

This is Tony Tulathimutte’s first novel. His writing has been published in Vice, AGNI, Salon and The New Yorker.

Who will read it

Anyone interested in biting satire that’s not too cynical. Anyone who loves to hate Silicon Valley.

What other reviews think

Kirkus: "A satirical portrait of privilege and disappointment with striking emotional depth."

Publishers Weekly: "Tulathimutte exhibits a talent for satire, and a willingness to embrace brutal reality and outright absurdity."

Opening lines

They were on a day trip, a nothing, the four of them in a hot car speeding north. All the passing and now-passed road looked faint through the filthy windows, which threw full light onto their laps. It was ten A.M., any promise of an early start already squandered, and look, peach weather.

Notable passage

After a nap, it was evening, then it was night. She regarded her notebook with groggy dread, with loathing that her bottommost yearning right now was for yogurt. It was absurd that she could articulate exactly how she wanted to write but couldn’t write it: both dirtbag lowbrow and Olympian highbrow (that was how she faced the world: one brow low, the other arched high). Not a voice of her generation, but the voice of degeneration.

Private Citizens, $14.99
By Tony Tulathimutte
William Morrow Paperbacks
February 9, 2016

The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Before he was an outspoken advocate of meditation, yoga and veganism, Russell Simmons was one of the founding fathers of hip hop -- a music-industry mogul working long hours to build his empire. 

By the time he was 26 years old, Simmons founded Def Jam Records -- one of the most successful hip-hop music labels in the world. Nicknamed Rush because of his "frenetic energy," he harnessed that spirit to reach greater heights of success in the music industry.  

So what changed? Simmons took a turn in his life and career when he got sober at age 30 and started practicing yoga. He recalls having an important realization: Happiness comes from within, from the stillness of a quiet mind. 

"You have to take care of the self," Simmons said in a recent HuffPost Originals video. "Now, the only success I could have is to be more still... the stillness in the mind is where bliss arises." 

To find that stillness, Simmons has turned to meditation, yoga and vegan lifestyle (he wrote a book called "Happy Vegan"). But he didn't have to give up his career to find the peace and quiet he sought. Simmons became CEO of Rush Communications, a holding company that invests in entertainment, media, lifestyle, fashion, and empowerment brands. He's founded and launched more than 10 initiatives including Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, Hip-Hop Action Network, GlobalGrind, and Tantris, a yoga and lifestyle brand featuring apparel and studio centers.

"Being present in working always makes you more successful," he said.  

To learn more about Simmons' journey from hip-hop mogul to peace-seeking vegan, check out the video above. The interview is the first episode ofPioneers, a new HuffPost Originals series that profiles leaders in various industries who have redefined success by making it their mission to live more meaningful and less stressful lives.

Also on The Huffington Post: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A war photojournalist finds an unlikely comrade in a poet-playwright in “The Body of an American,” the new off-Broadway play by Dan O’Brien. It’s more extraordinary, still, to learn that it’s all based on O’Brien’s real-life experience.

The play, which is currently in previews at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, tells the story of Paul Watson (played by Michael Cumpsty), a Canadian-born journalist who nabbed a 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography after snapping a grisly image of a U.S. soldier’s corpse through the streets of Mogadishu. Years later, O’Brien (Michael Crane) feels compelled to contact the reclusive reporter after hearing an NPR interview. When the pair finally meet after a lengthly email exchange, both men are forced to grapple with the ghosts of their pasts.

Presented by New York’s Primary Stages in association with Hartford Stage, “The Body of an American” was an obvious choice for Crane, who has maintained a friendship with the real-life O’Brien for nearly two decades. Still, the relationship presented some unique challenges for the actor, who hoped to push his portrayal of the playwright out of the realm of sheer mimicry.

“It’s not exactly Dan — it’s a dramatic character that’s based on him. The neuroses might turned up a few notches,” Crane, whose stage resume includes “Gloria” and “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” told The Huffington Post in an interview. His final portrayal, he said, “has [many of the same] traits and is similar in many ways, but is very much his own thing.”

As dark-rooted as the material is, Cumpsty (“Boardwalk Empire,” “End of the Rainbow”) insists that it’s also life-reaffirming in many respects.

“There’s a kind of a celebration of connection and the recognition of how hard it is to connect under the barriers we put up against connection,” he told HuffPost. “I think what the play is saying to all of us who feel anxious and turbulent and horrified by the dark side of life that we don’t understand…In the midst of the most awful circumstances, there are still ways to build meaning.”

Ultimately, both actors see the show as an offbeat, albeit platonic, “love story” between two heterosexual men with very different life experiences.

“It’s a complicated world, but one way that we can make some order out of the chaos is through friendship, through intimacy and vulnerability with another person,” Crane said. “It’s about war, it’s about family.”

Added Cumpsty, “If you can find common ground with people, there’s an enormous amount of security to be found in that. What we’re searching for is mutual understanding.”

"The Body of an American" opens Feb. 23 at New York's Cherry Lane Theatre. Head here for more details. 

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Afro-Latinos face many challenges when it comes identity, particularly when people refuse to believe that being Black and Latino aren't mutually exclusive experiences.

The Latino identity denotes an ethnicity, which means that Latinos exist in every color and race imaginable -- and explaining the difference between race and ethnicity can be quite a cumbersome task to take on on a daily basis. And yet, many Afro-Latinos are often forced to do so after being told they're not "Latino enough" or being asked to choose between being Black and Latino.

While many Latino actors have been brutally honest about the limitations that come with working in a predominately white industry, Afro-Latino celebrities often face even tougher challenges in Hollywood and beyond.

Take a look at what Laz Alonso ("The Mysteries of Laura"), Tatyana Ali ("Fresh Prince of Bel-Air") and more famous Afro-Latinos have said about being Black and Latino. 

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The 2016 World Press Photo contest announced its winners on Thursday, with a powerful black and white image taken at the Hungarian-Serbian border awarded top prize for photo of the year. The winning image, taken by freelance photographer Warren Richardson, captures an infant being passed under the coils of razor wire that separates the two nations.

Richardson's photo, titled "Hope For A New Life," is an emotional tableau depicting the ongoing refugee crisis that is one of the world's most dire humanitarian and political disasters in recent years. While the image consists only of three figures cast in shadow, it is representative of the struggles faced by over one million refugees and migrants who arrived in Europe last year.

Hundreds of thousands traveled along the so-called Balkan route last year, fleeing countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea, to seek asylum in Europe. They often continued their journey north to countries including Sweden and Germany.  

Hungary, along with several other nations in the region, erected fences in an attempt to deter refugees and migrants from entering their countries. Measures like this, photographer Warren Richardson reported, caused a "cat and mouse" game between authorities and refugees trying to cross the border. 

Much like the widely circulated photo showing the drowned body of Syrian child Alan Kurdi, Richardson's image also highlights the tragedy that children are caught in the crisis. While people who have been critical of the massive influx often argue that most migrants and refugees are men, data collected by the UN actually shows that around 34 percent of those who arrived into Europe by sea this year were children.  

The Amsterdam-based World Press Photo Foundation awards photographers annually who have captured exceptional images in a variety of categories. There were 82,951 photos submitted from 128 countries for the 2016 contest. 

See more of the winning photos from the contest below:

 Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Whether you loved them or hated them when growing up, school uniforms have long been a subtle but important way to show membership of a community and pride of education. We recently teamed up with photo community EyeEm and asked photographers around the world to capture the beauty and cultural pride each uniform displays. 

Check out the photos below and head to EyeEm if you would like to contribute to their next mission. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

If you don't have a soft spot in your heart for Agent Scully's skepticism and general badassery, or Agent Mulder's inexhaustible faith and dad jokes, OR the paranormal cronies spooking up your hometown, I suggest heading to Netflix and rectifying the situation immediately. 

For the rest of us, the "X-Files" Coloring Book is here. 

As the 10th season reboot of the iconic sci-fi television show comes to an end, let the weirdness live on through Lehr Beidelschies' illustrations, officially licensed by the way, just begging for your coloring touch. 

As a person on the Internet, you've probably heard many a time about the therapeutic benefits of coloring as an adult. Short version: it's nostalgic, creative, mellow, soothing. It provides an artistic outlet for those among us who have been blessed with the gift of two left hands. 

And the best part: The "X-Files" Coloring Book is out there. Actually, it's available online here. 

For more coloring books, read on: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which has left thousands of residents with lead-contaminated water, has provoked shock and outrage around the country. While some people have protested or called for the governor to resign, one man expressed his anger in a more creative manner.

Michael Dykehouse, an artist living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said his initial reaction when he heard about the contamination -- which poses ongoing health concerns, particularly for children -- was "horror" and feeling sick to his stomach.

After learning that Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) had thrown an opulent party for his wife, Dykehouse started creating a portrait of the governor he calls "Lead Head." He chose to use a relatively rare type of white oil paint made with lead, which he felt evoked the water crisis.

"The painting was originally done with a lot of anger," Dykehouse said. "I wanted to make sort of an ugly portrait of an ugly guy … something that looked like it might be in a government building, but had darker undertones if you knew what the object was made of and had the reference point of the tragedy of what is happening in Flint."

Dykehouse said he still has difficulty processing the magnitude of the crisis, which began when the city switched water sources in 2014 and failed to use corrosion treatment. Officials were disastrously slow to acknowledge resident complaints, but steps toward significant change have finally taken place in the last few months: President Barack Obama declared a federal state of emergency in January, the city returned to its original water source, and there has been public and private support to help residents. However, Flint water is still unsafe to drink and tests continue to reveal high lead levels.

State and federal investigations are ongoing, but many Michigan residents believe Snyder should shoulder a portion of the blame.

"I have two kids myself, I have a 4-year-old and an 11-year-old, and I’ve heard interviews on the radio with parents. … What a nightmare. It’s unimaginable," Dykehouse said.

Still, Dykehouse saw the humanity in his subject once he started the portrait.

"A person’s face is like a map, and you can see the history of all their wrongdoings and right-doings," the artist said. "I sort of feel that way [when I paint]. I have empathy for the subject, even if it’s a difficult subject."

He posted his painting to Facebook on Tuesday and said he was a little surprised by how much attention it drew. He hasn't decided how to sell the portrait but is considering holding an online auction and donating some of the money to one of the nonprofits responding to the water crisis.  

And what would Dykehouse want Snyder to think if he saw the painting?

"If there is any empathy that shows through, I hope that he is able to also extend empathy toward the people of Michigan, and specifically Flint," he said.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Sulma Arzu-Brown wanted to instill her two young daughters with confidence and high self-esteem, but she faced an obstacle in the form of two simple but damaging words: "pelo malo." 

The Bronx-based writer, born in Honduras and of Garifuna descent, had a run-in with the phrase "pelo malo" (bad hair) when her 3-year-old daughter, Bell Victoria, was getting her hair blow-dried by a caregiver, who suggested that Arzu-Brown chemically treat her daughter's hair. 

Arzu-Brown told her that "bad hair does not exist" and requested that the caregiver not use the term in front of her daughter, "or any child for that matter." 

Respectfully correcting her babysitter's language inspired Arzu-Brow to take her new mantra and turn it into a bilingual picture book of the same name. The goal of Bad Hair Does Not Exist!/¡Pelo Malo No Existe! was simple: to highlight the many beautiful forms that black hair can come in, and dispel the myth that black hair in its natural state is not good enough. 

Featuring vibrant illustrations by artist Isidra Sabio, the book highlights the diversity in the beauty of black hair, including kinks, curls, braids and twists. The book focuses on the black and Latino community, where stigma around black hair and colorism manifests itself in complex ways. 

As Arzu-Brown explained to The Huffington Post in an email, "In Honduras... we have horrible phrases like 'mejorando la raza' (bettering the race) when we marry someone of a lighter race with ocean and sky colored eyes. As if we as a Latino people were not good enough for our own selves in our own multicolored skin and different type of hair. We have plethora of spices within our community that distinguishes us as a vibrant culture -- it's so much nicer when we can appreciate all of our sabores other appreciate about us."

It seems this message of appreciation of all forms of Latino beauty has the potential to go beyond the book alone. Arzu-Brown is currently developing an app to accompany her book, in collaboration with the community organization StartUp Box. Ultimately, Arzu-Brown seems determined to have her message touch far more lives. 

"It looks like a children's book, however the message is a mature one," the author wrote on her website. "Its target demo is from the age of comprehension to adulthood."  

Check out pictures from Bad Hair Does Not Exist!/¡Pelo Malo No Existe! below:

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

If you need any more proof that literature teaches us invaluable lessons about our world -- or that Donald Trump is a problematic part of our presidential election -- look no further than this interview with New Yorker writer David Denby.

Denby is on a mission to get teenagers to see reading as a pleasurable, life-enhancing pastime, a journey he chronicles in his new book Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives. During a Thursday conversation with HuffPost Live's Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani, Denby underscored the connection between classic fiction and critical thinking in quite the contemporary -- and, as he put it, "tendentious" -- way.

"If more people had read Mark Twain, Donald Trump wouldn't have gotten anywhere, because that kind of blustering egomania con artist is all through Huckleberry Finn, and you would recognize that this guy doesn't have any idea what he's talking about," Denby said.

And if reading Twain isn't enough to convince you, a quick sampling of writing by The Donald himself should do the trick.

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with David Denby here.

Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist,birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

Want more HuffPost Live? Stream us anytime on Go90, Verizon's mobile social entertainment network, and listen to our best interviews on iTunes.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The Black Panther Party was founded fifty years ago -- and still, many misconceptions about its revolutionary work run rampant. 

"The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution," a documentary by Stanley Nelson which aired on PBS Tuesday, shined a necessary light on the contributions, convictions and struggles of members in the party. Nelson's informative film took a deep dive into discussing the truth behind the Black Panthers and underscored the heavy institutional backlash the liberation movement received from police and the government. 

From the group's radical inception in 1966 to it's dissolve in 1982, here are a few important things you must know to better understand the Black Panthers.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

On Monday night, I didn’t watch the Grammys. I had an excuse -- watching and live-tweeting “The Bachelor,” which counts as a professional obligation -- but to be candid, I never watch the Grammys. I also never watch the Golden Globes, the Tonys, the VMAs, or the Oscars. I’ve opted out.

People seem baffled by this, like when they ask what I’m doing for the Super Bowl and I say “taking a nap.” It’s accepted that award shows will be watched. The Grammys, following a move to Monday night, took a real hit in the ratings, all the way down to 24.95 million viewers. It’s no Super Bowl, but it’s around three times as many people who watched the “Game of Thrones” Season 5 finale last year! That’s something, right?

The Grammys and its award show brethren have to cope with a huge ratings obstacle: they’re incredibly dull and essentially meaningless. (At least, if you expect them to uphold real standards of excellence in their respective fields.)

It’s not just me saying that. After my colleagues watched the Grammys together on Monday night, churning out coverage and taking in the programming, one of them confessed in a meeting that the show was “boring.” If even entertainment writers aren’t sure they want to watch, who will? Certainly the people of Twitter were not entirely entertained:

Oops, that last one is also my colleague. ANYWAY. Clearly it's a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time (and hate).

Last year’s Oscars beat out the Grammys handily, with over 36 million viewers -- not bad! -- but the popular perception of the show can still be summed up as “too long, too bland, too boring.”

Why do people keep watching a show they profess to find misguided -- remember when "Crash" won best picture? Or "Raging Bull lost it to "Ordinary People"? -- and, even worse, a dull way to spend five hours?

Our attitude toward the major award shows, but especially the Oscars, can be likened to our attitude toward a mandatory school field trip to a municipal water treatment plant: We hope it’ll be tolerable, but are resigned to it being a less-than-ideal way to spend those few hours. We vaguely remember that last year’s excursion wasn’t so pleasant, but who knows, right? We could get out of it, if we were really desperate, but it’s probably not worth the consequences.

No academic penalties accrue to those who skip the Oscars, barring some entertainment-specific electives I’m not aware of, but it’s not without risks. What if Kanye interrupts Taylor’s acceptance speech, and you have to watch it later, without that element of collective shock spicing your pleasure? What if your favorite actress, a dark horse nominee, actually wins an award, and you don’t get to rejoice along with her? As Jonathan Chait pointed out in 2009, even the misfires play into our passion for sorting through the unsortable, trying to define the good versus the bad, and then raging vainly against the triumphs of bad taste.

Besides, more generally, by skipping award shows you’re just missing out on a communion with society that’s grown more rare with the fragmentation of the entertainment-scape. As industry bigwigs say, it's DVR-proof; NPR noted in 2014 that even flawed shows can pull big ratings when viewing them live, and discussing them in real time and the next day are an integral part of the experience. Tens of millions of people are watching the same thing and talking about the same thing -- how bored do you have to be to miss out on that kind of shared experience?

Me, I still opt out.

But award shows aren’t quite the only spaces left for synchronized entertainment consumption and conversation. The rise of live-tweeting is actually supplementing Oscars watch parties and Sunday afternoon football gatherings with more impromptu real-time conversations about what we’re watching now. On Monday night, I was skipping the Grammys, but I was also sharing two precious hours of my week with Bachelor Nation, and I’ve never felt less alone.

You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Sign up to receive it in your inbox weekly.

Follow Claire Fallon on Twitter: @ClaireEFallon

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

For years, scholars thought that the Pyramid Texts were merely a series of funeral prayers and magic spells intended to protect Egyptian royalty in the afterlife. 

But renowned classicist and linguist Susan Brind Morrow has a different interpretation of this sacred literature. She said she believes it's proof of a complex religious philosophy, one that was less about mythology and more about the life-giving forces of nature. She also believes this ancient Egyptian philosophy influenced many of the spiritual traditions that came after it.

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest religious writings that modern scholars have from ancient Egypt -- and quite possibly, the oldest sacred texts in the world. 

Morrow explains her research, and presents a new translation of the full text, in her latest book The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts. 

"These are not magic spells at all," Morrow told The Huffington Post about the Pyramid Texts. "These are poetic verses constructed just like poetry today, sophisticated and filled with word play and puns."

Instead of looking at the Pyramid Texts as something written by a primitive and superstitious people, as she claims many Egyptologists before her have done, Morrow put the texts in the context of Egypt's vibrant literary tradition and its cultural connections to nature. 

What she said she saw in the ancient lines inscribed on the inner walls of the Pyramid of Unas was a "densely compounded but highly precise" map of the stars. The Egyptians studied the stars to determine what time of year the Nile would flood and make their land fertile again. In this earliest form of Egyptian philosophy, Morrow said she believes it's not a goddess or a spiritual personality that the Egyptians worshipped, but the sky itself. It was nature itself that was sacred, and that held the promise of eternal life. 

She offers a new translation of the opening verse of the texts in her book, which she believes describes the soul rising up into the fire, or the dawn sky, beneath the holy ones, or the stars: 

The sword of Orion opens the doors of the sky.
Before the doors close again the gate to the path
over the fire, beneath the holy ones as they grow dark
As a falcon flies as a falcon flies, may Unis rise into this fire.

"I realized I was looking at a very vivid, poetic description of the actual world," Morrow said.

But James P. Allen, an Egyptologist at Brown University who produced a 2005 translation of the texts, isn't convinced. He likened her translation to the work of "amateurs" and called it a "serious misrepresentation" of the Pyramid Texts.

"It is a translator’s job to be as faithful to the original as possible while using words and constructions that make sense to modern readers. Ms. Morrow has not done that," Allen told The Huffington Post. "Her 'translation' is basically a poet’s impression of what she thinks the texts should say, and not a reflection of what they actually say."

For her part, Morrow is convinced that the hieroglyphs aren't something that is only accessible to professionals. Her purpose in bringing this new translation to light was to encourage others to look at the text, and see what they find.

"Whenever people think of hieroglyphs, they see them as something that has to be deciphered, something archaic and ancient," Morrow said.

"But hieroglyphs are an absolutely vivid reading of nature that is very accessible to anybody today." 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Broadway isn't exactly a shining example of diversity, but you aren't going to see #TonysSoWhite anytime soon.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Howard Deutch and John Hughes thought they had "Pretty in Pink" all tied up at one point. The director and writer/producer, respectively, shot the ending, finished the final edit and rolled out a version for feedback.

Much to their surprise, audiences actually really disliked the film's ending, to put it mildly. 

“The ending didn’t work in the test screening … That shocked everyone because the architecture of the story was that love endures and overcomes everything,” Deutch told The Huffington Post about the original ending, where Phil "Duckie" Dale (Jon Cryer) and Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald) end up together. 

“The girls in the test screening didn’t go for that. They didn’t care about the politics; they wanted her to get the cute boy. And that was it. So we had to reshoot the ending," Deutch said. 

That process, though, turned out to be a bit of scramble.

“John had to figure out, ‘How can I deconstruct the whole through-line to this so it feels honest and that there’s a logic to it. And he did. He came to the editing room one day and said, ‘You know, I think that Andrew [McCarthy] (who played Blane McDonough) cannot have a date. He has to go to the prom alone. And that gave him the breadcrumbs to follow the rest of the ending so that they ended up together. But that wasn’t an easy thing to unravel,” recalled Deutch.

 The new ending took about three weeks to pull together. But it was worth it. "Pretty in Pink," which celebrates 30 years this month, had a successful run at the box office when it was released on Feb. 28, 1986, going on to become a fan favorite from the '80s Brat Pack era. 

"Pretty in Pink" marked Deutch’s directorial film debut and Hughes’ first turn as producer behind a major film.

Asked if he ever thought the teen flick would achieve the success it did, Deutch said, “God no! We just thought it was his opportunity to produce his first thing and my first chance to direct a movie. We had no idea it would become what it became. It was a $7 million movie, which was not on the radar … to be a big hit.”

Deutch attributes the success to the Hughes' talent for writing a film about romance, lust and social cliques in high school.

"The character Duckie ... is the universal kind of experience for a lot of guys, and women for the character Molly played," said Deutch, who has recently directed episodes of "Jane the Virgin" and "American Horror Story." "[Hughes'] characters were never really manufactured. I’d be there at night when he was writing. He’d stay up all and night and I would eventually fall asleep. I would wake up at four in the morning and he would hand me these papers where he would mine this kind of gold out of these characters. I’d wake up and sometimes I’d see him crying or laughing as he was writing. Slices of John were in these characters … There was also a sense of truth and humor.”

Haven't seen "Pretty in Pink"? Or want to relive it? HBO Now is currently streaming the film, and HBO Signature will have a special airing of the film on Feb. 25 at 9 p.m. ET.

Meanwhile, check out some of the movie's best moments:

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Celebrated American writer Harper Lee, best known for penning the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has died at the age of 89.

The city clerk of Monroeville, Alabama, confirmed Lee's death to The Huffington Post.

Lee's seminal novel, which became required reading in many middle and high schools, focused a critical lens on themes of racial injustice and traditional class and gender roles. Published in July 1960, the book was an international bestseller. Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the following year.

Nelle Harper Lee was born and raised in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama, on April 28, 1926. She was the youngest of four children born to newspaper editor and lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee and homemaker Frances Cunningham Finch.

Lee grew up a tomboy. She was close childhood friends with Truman Capote, an eccentric child who would later become the famed writer of the acclaimed 1966 non-fiction work In Cold Blood and a lifelong friend to Lee.

Lee graduated high school in the spring of 1944. The following fall, she enrolled in the all-female Huntingdon College before transferring to the University of Alabama. Lee, set on pursuing a career in writing, dropped out of college in her senior year to move to New York City.

The city had a profound effect on the trajectory of Lee's writing career, connecting her with Broadway composer Michael Martin Brown who would become an important financial backer and one of her most avid supporters.

In 1956, she reunited with Capote and began work as his research assistant for a New Yorker article that later evolved into the book In Cold Blood.

That same year, Brown generously offered to financially support Lee for a year so she could focus on writing full time. 

To Kill aMockingbird found immediate success in literary circles. Peppered with autobiographical elements, Lee's debut novel was set in the mid-1930s in small-town Alabama and follows the story of precocious child Scout Finch and her father, Atticus. Atticus, a lawyer reminiscent of Lee's own father, is appointed by a judge to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white woman.

To Kill a Mockingbird documents Robinson's trial and tackles the themes of racial injustice and traditional class and gender roles. The book was enthusiastically received, with the New Yorker touting it as "totally ingenious," and became an international bestseller.

The film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird was released in 1962 and starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. The film won three Academy Awards and earned a spot in the American Film Institute's list of the greatest American movies of all time.

In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Lee to the National Council on the Arts. Though Lee invested time in researching and preparing new work after To Kill a Mockingbird, including a true-crime novel called The Reverend, she didn't publish another book until more than 50 years later.  

In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first of several high honors. She received the National Medal of Arts, presented to her by President Barack Obama, in 2010.

Lee left New York City in 2007 and moved into an assisted-living facility in her hometown of Monroeville after suffering a stroke.

Last July, Go Set a Watchman, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, was released. The highly anticipated novel was Lee's second and final published book. The manuscript, thought to have been lost, was discovered in one of Lee's safety deposit boxes by her lawyer Tonja Cater in 2011.

Lee's failing health, including severe hearing and vision loss, led many to speculate that the author wasn't competent enough to sign off on the publication of Go Set a Watchman. 

The Alabama Department of Human Resources launched an investigation in 2015 to examine whether elder abuse influenced the release of the sequel but ultimately determined the claims to be "unfounded."

Go Set a Watchman revisits a now 26-year-old Scout, who encounters intolerance in her small Alabama hometown while visiting from New York. Readers -- and Scout herself -- are surprised to find that her father, regarded by many literary critics as a fictional crusader for racial justice, has a less-than-progressive stance on race issues. Atticus argues with Scout about civil rights, telling his daughter that "the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people" and that black people aren't ready to vote.

The book received mostly negative reviews, as readers were shocked to find their once beloved civil rights-defending protagonist exposed as a "racist." Many critics agreed the novel could have used several more rounds of edits, calling it "unfit for print" and a "mess." Some said the "rough draft" was published only for the sake of constructing a "phony literary event." 

Lee is pre-deceased by her parents, two sisters and one brother.

The author lived a private life. She never married or had children, and she rarely gave interviews. 

"I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me," Lee said in 1964. "I would like to leave some record of the kind of life that existed in a very small world."

Andy Campbell contributed reporting.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Harper Lee, the beloved American writer best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has died at the age of 89 in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. 

During her lifetime, Lee produced one of the most popular bits of required reading, a book filled with profound quotes from unforgettable characters like Atticus, Scout and even Miss Maudie. While Lee was famously media shy, rarely granting her fans the privilege of hearing her speak in public, To Kill a Mockingbird -- and her more recently published work, Go Set a Watchman -- stand as reminders of Lee's ability to stop readers in their tracks with just a few words.

Here are 12 quotes that embody the legacy Lee leaves behind:

"I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks." -To Kill a Mockingbird

"Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts." -To Kill a Mockingbird

"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived." -To Kill a Mockingbird

"You just hold your head high and keep those fists down.  No matter what anyone says to you, don’t let ‘em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change … it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning." -To Kill a Mockingbird

"Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends." -Go Set a Watchman

"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who -- who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results." -To Kill a Mockingbird

"As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons." -Go Set a Watchman

"'Atticus, he was real nice.' 'Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.'" -To Kill a Mockingbird

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.