Texas Monthly: The National Magazine of Texas

Science News, Articles and Information | Scientific American Magazine - Table of Contents The Thirteenth Amendment forbade slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Crops stretch to the horizon. Black bodies pepper the landscape, hunched over as they work the fields. Officers on horseback, armed, oversee the workers. To the untrained eye, the scenes in Angola for Life: Rehabilitation and Reform Inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary, an Atlantic documentary filmed on an old Southern slave-plantation-turned-prison, could have been shot 150 years ago. The film tells two overlapping stories: One is of accomplishment against incredible odds, of a man who stepped into the most violent maximum-security prison in the nation and gave the men there—discarded and damned—what society didn’t: hope, education, and a moral compass.

The Trouble with 'The Testament of Mary' May is the month in which the church honors Mary; by happy coincidence, it is also the month when secular culture honors mothers. According to the Bible, Mary’s role in salvation history is small but mighty. Through the agency of the Holy Spirit, she conceives the Messiah, gives birth to Jesus and raises him to adulthood. She appears at a few key moments in Christ’s ministry—searching frantically for him and finding him teaching in the temple; urging him to assist the hapless hosts at Cana; and, finally, standing vigil beneath the cross. These brief glimpses into the hidden life of Mary suggest that she was an attentive mother, a bit pushy when she needed to be and faithful to her son in his darkest hour. Admittedly, this isn’t much to go on. A new, and highly unorthodox, depiction of Mary has been in the public eye of late, the Irish writer Colm Toíbín’s play “The Testament of Mary.” And here is where Colm Toíbín lost me.