In a year of isolation, we took solace in stories. And in a year of heartbreak, loss, and conflict, we sought understanding. These are the articles our online readers turned to again and again in 2020.

In the 1990s I made a short documentary film about Lumbee Indian gospel music, a topic that addressed one of the perennial questions about Lumbees: how can we be “real Indians” while looking, acting, and talking so much like other southerners? The best scenes were the ones with the music and the food, at my grandparents’ house, down a dirt road just north of Pembroke, North Carolina.