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What I love so much about this book — the trick of it — is that Widow Basquiat is not only about Jean-Michel. It's also about Suzanne Mallouk's experience of Jean-Michel. In working with Clement, she refuses to spin the requisite mythology and reclaims ownership of at least one part of the Basquiat narrative: her own. And by committing Mallouk's story to paper, Clement sets the stage for Suzanne to be seen and understood as a subject in her own right, an artist digesting another artist, not simply another object of Jean Michel's constant craving. Seen through this lens, Widow Basquiat can be read as a powerful female coming of age story.

In the so-called "memoir," Mallouk is watching Basquiat, yes — and we see him grasp the nettle and release it because he cannot stand the pain, we see him die by his own hand in a battle he thought he could win. We see Mallouk seeing him, but we also see her seeing herself. He loves her, he hates her; he trusts her, he blames her for his pain. He is loyal, he sleeps around; he gives her expensive gifts and then demands them back. But all of this comes from the perspective not of a worshipful acolyte, a writer looking to paint a portrait of a famous man, but of a young woman looking back at a great affair — facing the choices she made to love, to stay, to understand, to grow and, ultimately, to walk away.

Widow Basquiat is a portrait of two artists. Mallouk is one of them, and here Basquiat is her endlessly enigmatic muse. It's a harrowing, beautifully told love story about two seekers colliding in a pivotal moment in history, and setting everything, including themselves, on fire.

Rebecca Walker is the author of Ad: A Love Story.

In an open dump, in a village outside of Tacloban in the central Philippines, we're sloshing through rainwater and leachate — that's the goo that comes out of rotting trash — while Tim Walsh surveys the site.

"Just walk on the dry bit," he says. "I've got used to the smell over the years and you get immune to it. But for most people the smell of decaying rubbish is not really very pleasant."

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Attorney General Eric Holder has for the first time directed Justice Department employees to give same-sex married couples "full and equal recognition, to the greatest extent under the law," a move with far-ranging consequences for how such couples are treated in federal courtrooms and proceedings.

The directive specifies that such couples can decline to give testimony in U.S. cases that might incriminate a spouse, known in the law as marital privilege. The guidance says the Justice Department won't object to that even if the state where the couple lives doesn't formally recognize the marriage.

It also means U.S. trustees will take the position that same-sex married couples should be able to file jointly for bankruptcy "and that domestic support obligations should include debts, such as alimony, owed to a former same-sex spouse."

And in federal prisons, same-sex married inmates will have visitation privileges, escorted trips to attend a spouse's funeral and compassionate release policies if their spouse suffers severe illness.

Holder is preparing to make the new policy public Saturday evening at a gala event for the Human Rights Campaign in New York.

"Just like during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the stakes involved in this generation's struggle for LGBT equality couldn't be higher," Holder will say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. "As attorney general, I will not let this department be simply a bystander during this important moment in history."

The new policy follows similar moves by the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS after the U.S. Supreme Court last year invalidated a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act which had defined the institution of marriage for federal purposes as limited to heterosexual couples.

Holder has previously spoken with NPR about his department's role in addressing the repercussions of the Supreme Court ruling.

Jamaican superstar Bob Marley once sang about "Reggae on Broadway" — and now, more than four decades after the release of that song, some of Marley's greatest hits have been incorporated into an off-Broadway musical for children called Three Little Birds. The musical, based on a children's book by Marley's daughter Cedella Marley, opens today at Manhattan's New Victory Theater.

NPR's Audie Cornish spoke with Cedella Marley, who is also CEO of her father's record label, Tuff Gong International, about the show, plus what the song means to her and what it was like growing up in the home of a counterculture icon.