Pandemic New Yorker Covers

The student coming through the Zoom square… My high school students just returned to campus for hybrid last week. We are all traumatized with no space for dealing with feelings. Are we really just supposed to keep teaching content and pretend like we are not in crisis? I saw a student dancing today and it made me want to cry because (1) it was so beautiful, and (2) he was the only one who didn’t look broken.

Beautiful. Some of them gave me goosebumps.

“Shifting Gears” and “Delayed” by R. Kikuo Johnson. So good.

Every single one of those is a genuine work of art and makes me wish I hadn’t let my subscription run out. It’s the kind of thing that gives me great hope for humanity. For me, the people climbing out of the Zoom meeting is filled with humour and positivity and a sense of a new beginning. Art in action.

I just love the one by Jane. I know we’re not there yet, but that bright light she’s walking into looks so beautifully promising.

The family dinner one is my favorite. But maybe I’m being dense…I thought the empty chair represented the grandma who’d passed away but then I see the grandpa is blue, like he’s a ghost. Is he dead and the empty chair represents that grandma is in the hospital with COVID? I’m confused (signed, A. Overthinker).

Regardless, I love that image. There has been so much loss this year, it’s not just about Zoom and working from home. Although I like all of the covers, this one seems to best honor those losses.

Amy Young’s feels the truest to my experience, having lost my dad during the pandemic. We were barely able to say goodbye because of hospital visitation Covid restrictions. When they finally let us in to pay our final respects under a time limit, we found that he wasn’t wearing any socks and his feet were so cold. My brother and I took turns cradling his feet in our hands to warm them up. After a while the nurses told us we had hit our time limit and we had to leave. Joanna, I will always think of something your sister Lucy tweeted– that families are a critical part of a patient’s care team. I will always wonder if things had been different if we’d been allowed to visit before he died. If he’d had someone who noticed he needed socks, who kissed his forehead and held his hand.

I love Amy Young’s illustration because it shows that not everyone will “return” in the same way. For people who’ve lost someone during this, we can’t ever return to the way it was. Not after our vaccination, not in a month, not even in 20 years.

Beautiful and moving covers. We love getting our New Yorker every week:
Immediately I look at the cover and the food review Tables for Two by Hannah Goldfield, my husband checks the table of contents for articles he will read first and our two year old checks the whole magazine for cats – there is almost always a cat.

Oh these are all so good. The family table one… <3

They’re all wonderful but the first is my favorite.
I am addicted to New Yorker covers, and well, also the New Yorker. It’s shaped my sensibilities to a large degree — taught me how to see, how to read — I can’t imagine life without it. And a big part my affection is due to the covers. I play the online jigsaw game just to see the covers and I’m always amazed at how contemporary many of the earliest covers look.

In 1984 I went to an exhibit at the National Academy of Design of New Yorker cover art — startling but rewarding to see the actual art work in real life. And the images without the title was also a surprise. It was a fantastic exhibit. Thank you so much for this post!

Oh, these are so moving. I love seeing these. I live in a part of the country where people are reluctant to get vaccinated, and I miss feeling a part of a reality where people who take the pandemic seriously. These covers capture the times so well. As a side note, I have sound out that some of my healthcare providers have gotten a Covid-19 vaccination, and I feel so much despair and anger. Has anyone else run into this? These covers remind me that many of us actually do understand the gravity of the pandemic from many angles.

These are so beautiful!

cool art assignment, great work. “Love Life” made me lol.. ;)

Picking a favorite seems impossible! Amy Young’s is so heartbreaking – life continuing, but missing a real person. Katrina Catacutan’s and Chenmiao Shi’s are so sweetly hopeful, but Young’s seems to capture more of the real-life picture.

Hi! Though this is a lovely post, I was EXTREMELY moved by the post that was up and then taken down earlier this morning. Will it reappear? I didn’t make a note of the book that the excerpt was from, or the author, before it was removed. Would love to see it again. ?