Literature Archives - Page 9 of 13

Literature

Meaty Pleasures

“In the whirlwind of hook-ups I saw every afternoon, that stitching together of Thursday after Thursday with love and desire was the essence of continuity.”

September 24, 2021 • by Mónica Lavín and Dorothy Potter Snyder

The following story, “Thursdays,” is excerpted from Meaty Pleasures, a collection of fiction by award-winning Mexican writer Mónica Lavín, translated by Dorothy Potter Snyder and published by Katakana Editores in September 2021. Meaty Pleasures is available for purchase in print or as an e-book. Thursdays I shouldn’t have done it. But I ...

Colonization

A Pencil For Your Land

Ngũgĩ and Achebe on colonial public school

September 20, 2021 • by Casper Andersen

_____ Oppressed people who retaliate are up against the privileged and powerful. Fighting back often places them outside the system. But what happens when the suppressors’ tools are turned on themselves? Can a colonial education—the underhand offer of ‘a pencil for land’—be turned into an emancipatory counter movement? ‘Colonial mimicry’ describes a ...

Climate & Ecology

A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

Alexandra Kleeman chats with Helen Schulman about her new book, Something New Under the Sun

September 10, 2021 • by Alexandra Kleeman and Helen Schulman

_____ Upon the publication of her new novel, Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth, 2021), New School faculty Alexandra Kleeman sat down with Helen Schulman, faculty and fiction chair at the Creative Writing program, to talk about Los Angeles, the climate crisis, and writing about the very near future. The interview was presented by the Creative Writing ...

A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

Literature

Something New Under the Sun

Drought, Hollywood, and corporate corruption in the age of alternative facts

September 10, 2021 • by Alexandra Kleeman

_____ Excerpted from Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman. Copyright © 2021 by Alexandra Kleeman. Published by Hogarth, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Read an interview between Alexandra Kleeman and novelist Helen Schulman about Something New Under the Sun. _____ Alexandra Kleeman ...

Feminism

More Misandry, Please!

France Needs More Man-Haters—but Pauline Harmange doesn’t seem to be one of them

April 28, 2021 • by Hannah Leffingwell

_____ The cover of French feminist Pauline Harmange’s recent book I Hate Men (Fourth Estate, 2021, translated by Natasha Lehrer) prepares the reader for a salacious world of feminist intrigue, and a no-holds barred misandrist rant for the ages. Arranged in bold block letters over a neon yellow background, the title ...

Literature

Beverly Cleary

Past Present Podcast, Episode 272

April 6, 2021 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: At the age of 104, children’s author Beverly Cleary has died. Natalia drew on this Bulwark article about Cleary’s apolitical appeal, and Niki referred to this Atlantic essay and this Vulture piece about her grasp of children’s emotional landscape. Neil ...

Literature

The Big Cats, Part XII

On Dreams and Dreamers

March 30, 2021 • by Val Vinokur

The platelets of love clog / the arteries of sense...

Literature

Creatures of Habit

From Our First Zombie President to Ling Ma’s Severance

December 17, 2020 • by Russ Castronovo

The main problem with zombies is that they lack self-awareness. The opening words of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals— “We are unknown to ourselves”—could serve as a zombie manifesto. Driven by little more than the impulse to consume, zombies shamble along from meal to meal without ever pausing to ...

Literature

The Big Cats, Part XI

On bones and bonfires

November 17, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

November bonfires roast / the marrow of the lost...

Literature

Poetry to Vote By

Reading Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic on the eve of the election

November 3, 2020 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

How many of us are brave enough for art? At the bakery down the block, polling shows Trump surging ahead. Each purchase of an election-themed cookie—Biden or Trump, with red, white, and blue sprinkles—is tallied by the bakers as a vote in favor for the relevant candidate. “Our forecast is never ...

Literature

Elena Ferrante Returns to Naples

A new novel delights, but reveals decay

October 8, 2020 • by Daniel DiMassa

————— The four novels in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan saga were a literary sensation when they appeared between 2011 and 2015. Now she’s back with a new novel in seven parts, The Lying Life of Adults, with a translation by Ann Goldstein. Though no less compelling than her blockbuster series, the smaller ...

Literature

James Baldwin and the Fire This Time

Good trouble and the courage to hope

September 9, 2020 • by Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride

History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning” (1993) As a guide, as a seer, as a prophet – James Baldwin is a writer we need. As Baldwin said about Beauford Delaney, the Black painter who rose to prominence in the ...