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TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ SU C

BY CAITLIN GIBSON

AND CLYDE MCGRADY

It was the day after an 18-year-old
gunman massacred 19 children and two
adults in Uvalde, Te x., and Shane Paul
Neil kept imagining what it might have
felt like if his 15-year-old daughter or
9-year-old son had endured that type of
violence. As Neil sat in his home office in
New Jersey, reflexively scrolling for new
updates, he paused to read a Facebook
post from his town councilman — an
announcement that there would now be
an increased police presence and more
frequent patrols at local schools in the
aftermath of the shooting.
Nothing about this news brought Neil
any measure of comfort. Instead, as a
parent of Black children, he found him-
self confronting the nexus of two unique-
ly American fears: the possibility of ran-
dom gun violence, and the consequences
of racially biased policing. He shared his
reaction in a tweet that soon went viral:
“A s a black father I now have two poten-
tial threats to be concerned over.”
When Neil, a 44-year-old freelance
writer and photographer, scrolled down
to the comments unfurling below the
councilman’s post, he was surprised —
and somewhat relieved — to see that local
parents were overwhelmingly opposed to
the presence of more police officers. “For
SEE PARENTS ON C4

Adding school

police worries

Black parents

BY EMILY HEIL

Many people pride themselves on the
generosity of their families toward
guests, particularly when it comes to
food. And so a conversation about
whether, i n fact, young guests in Swedish
households would expect to be fed by
their hosts roiled social media last week.
What came to be dubbed #Swedengate
started with an innocent callout on a
Reddit board. “What is the weirdest
thing you had to do at someone else’s
house because of their culture/religion?”
one user prompted.
Since that recent post, more than
16,000 people have responded, many
offering tales of removing shoes or
saying an unfamiliar grace. But one
comment got particularly noticed. “I
remember going to my swedish friends
house,” a commenter recalled. “A nd
while we were playing in his room, his
mom yelled that dinner was ready. And
check this. He told me to WAIT in his
room while they ate.”
Others chimed in with similar stories,
or secondhand ones, about guests denied
food at Swedish homes. The discussion
soon moved to Twitter, where Swedish
SEE HOSPITALITY ON C3

Chill, Swedes’

young guests

are just fine

BY JANE SMILEY

Perhaps Iceland can stake a claim to
being the world’s “most intriguing”
country. It is a thriving independent
democracy on a small volcanic island
that dangles like a locket from the Arctic
Circle. It has a long
and complicated Scan-
dinavian history, and
for about a thousand
years, it has been
churning out produc-
tive and original writ-
ers. One of my favor-
ites of these is Halldor
Laxness, who was
born in 1902 and died
in 1998, and won the
Nobel Prize for Litera-
ture in 1955. Maybe it
is no coincidence that
he was born on Wil-
liam Shakespeare’s
birthday. His best-
known novel in English is “Independent
People.” But this new one, just retrans-
lated and published by Archipelago
Books, is “Salka Valka,” which was
written when L axness was in his late 20s
and focuses on the spunk and inner life
of a woman who has to make it on her
own in a small village in the north of the
island, and is, though different from
SEE BOOK WORLD ON C4

BOOK WORLD

In Iceland, a

hardy town

and heroine

SALKA VALKA
By Halldor
Laxness,
translated by
Philip Roughton
Archipelago
Books. 626 pp.
$23

The Manhattan audition destined

to change 21-year-old Myles Frost’s

life came to a sudden, scary halt. And

it was his mother, 230 miles away,

who charged to the rescue.

Armed with her son’s EpiPen,

Charmayne Strayhorn hopped in the

car with Frost’s teenage sister, Mor-

gan Peele, and drove 31 / 2 hours from

Montgomery County, M d., to a service

area near Exit 8A on the New Jersey

Turnpike. There, she handed the me-

dicinal auto-injector to Frost’s man-

ager. He delivered it to the budding

young actor, who, during the audi-

tion, had felt his throat closing and

then broke out in hives. He had to

retreat to his hotel room, struggling

to bounce back.

Frost most certainly did when the

tryout resumed the next day. A nd that

is how a Broadway neophyte won the

role of pop megastar Michael Jack-

son.

There was also, of course, that

other minor detail: When the aller-

gies attacked, Frost was in the midst

of blowing away Lynn Nottage and

Christopher Wheeldon, the book

writer and choreographer-director of

“MJ,” the bio-musical that has been

playing to wildly enthusiastic full

houses at Broadway’s Neil Simon

Theatre since December. When the

Tony Awards nominations were an-

nounced last month, “MJ” racked up

10 nominations, second only to the 11

for “A Strange Loop,” and included

nods for best musical and for best

actor in a musical: one Myles Frost.

“We were beginning to despair of

finding someone who fit the role,”

Nottage recalled recently of that fate-

SEE FROST ON C2

BY PETER MARKS

IN NEW YORK

THE TONYS?

‘I’LL BE

THERE,’

H E SAYS.

‘MJ’ star Myles Frost’s Broadway journey is a Cinderella story with a sequined glove instead of a slipper

ANNA WATTS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Maryland native Myles Frost, onstage at the Neil Simon Theatre, has been nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of Michael Jackson in “MJ.”