7 Books Written as Letters to Family Members

When I began writing my unborn son a letter in 2018, a book was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t trying to unpack the countless ways in which the words “all men are created equal” have failed us in this country. Instead, I was thinking that I would write a letter, something that […] The post 7 Books Written as Letters to Family Members appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2024-03-05 12:00:00 UTC ]

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Why Writing a Memoir is Like Making Kimchi

In Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner—also known as the indie-pop musician Japanese Breakfast—writes of her mother’s battle with terminal cancer and the caretaking process. The mother-daughter relationship is the beating pulse of this memoir, presented in all of its uncomfortable complexities.... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-04-22 11:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Memoirs About Unraveling Family Secrets

There are as many different kinds of memoirs as there are novels, maybe more. The public-figure memoir. The witnessing-history memoir. The survivor’s memoir. The addiction memoir. The let-me-set-the-record-straight memoir. The travel memoir. The memoir about one specific family member. The... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-04-09 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Potion Made of Stolen Gold to Achieve the Indian American Dream

Sanjena Sathian’s debut novel Gold Diggers is set in the Indian American suburbs of Atlanta—a world of competitive debate and spelling bees, of racing to get into the most prestigious academic summer camps, of Miss Teen India pageants—all roads leading to the promised land of America’s most... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-04-09 11:00:00 UTC ]
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I Work in a Bookstore. Why Am I Still Shelving “Mein Kampf”?

When Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would no longer be publishing six of Dr. Seuss’s books which have aged problematically, the bookstore I work at in Scranton, Pennsylvania had a flurry of very concerned customers. People were coming up with stacks of his books along with an... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-04-07 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Lolita, Fashion Icon

From LOLITA IN THE AFTERLIFE, edited by Jenny Minton Quigley. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Essay copyright © 2021 by Robin Givhan. Compilation copyright © 2021 by Jenny Minton Quigley. The... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-03-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Canceling My Book Deal Was the Best Career Move I’ve Ever Made

I started querying agents for my memoir, Negative Space, in 2012, after two years of writing and revising. I got a few rounds of passes, including several friendly rejections in which agents said they just didn’t “know how to sell” my book. I heard this refrain enough times that I started... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-03-11 12:00:00 UTC ]
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“Justine” Is a Coming-of-Age Novel for the Tamogotchi Set

Perhaps it’s not surprising that even the prose in illustrator Forsyth Harmon’s debut novel Justine is deeply imagistic. Reading this short, powerful story feels like wandering through a museum exhibit about teenage girlhood on Long Island in the summer of 1999. Narrator Ali and her friends feed... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-03-02 12:00:00 UTC ]
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We Can’t Believe Survivors’ Stories If We Never Hear Them

When we started sheltering in place at the beginning of the pandemic, in a burst of energy and optimism I haven’t experienced since, I started a social distance book club. I selected Lara Williams’s debut novel Supper Club, which I’d recently read, because I thought a book that centered on women... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-03-02 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Lauren Oyler’s Narrator Is Unreliable, but So Are All of Us Online

Lauren Oyler’s debut novel brings the reader down a rabbit hole of endless, mindless scrolling, online identities, and conspiracy theories. Fake Accounts follows the journey of a young woman after she discovers that her boyfriend is running an Instagram account spouting dangerous conspiracies... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-02-26 12:00:00 UTC ]
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An Argentinian Underworld Haunted by the Ghosts of the Disappeared

In Daniel Loedel’s haunting debut novel Hades, Argentina, Tomás Orilla returns to Buenos Aires—“a city made for forgetting as much for nostalgia”—ten years after fleeing the military dictatorship whose regime disappeared upwards of 30,000 thousand political opponents, including Isabel Aroztegui,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-02-25 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Queer Historical Figures Who Need Books Written About Their Lives

These queer historical figures each lived fascinating lives and deserve to be highlighted in nonfiction. Join me in exploring their legacies. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2021-02-25 11:34:00 UTC ]
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A library staffer has been fired for burning Trump and Ann Coulter books in his free time.

Cameron Williams, a former staffer at Chattanooga Public Library and a local Black Lives Matter activist, has been fired from his library job three months after being accused of “improperly” burning books written by Donald Trump and Ann Coulter. In December, as the Chattanooga Times Free Press... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-17 17:26:28 UTC ]
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7 Books About Break-Ups and Heartbreaks

The best way to get over a breakup is to throw yourself into art and experience the catharsis of observing someone else’s pain. For some, this might be listening to Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours on repeat. For others, perhaps a double feature of  Lost in Translation and Her. For readers, the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-02-12 12:00:00 UTC ]
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How to Write About Kink Without Going Full “Fifty Shades”

It is hard to talk about sex and literature without making some sort of Fifty Shades of Grey reference. But where Fifty Shades shows a caricature of S&M, the new anthology Kink is a celebration of the range of human desires. From the power of control and the titillation of voyeurism, this... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-02-12 12:00:00 UTC ]
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A New Graphic Novel Shows the History of the Black Panther Party

David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s graphic novel The Black Panther Party may be the first introduction to the revolutionary party for some. For others, it will provide additional context to the history. The graphic novel spans from the founding of the party by Huey P. Newton and Bobby... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-01-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Let Us Be Negative Role Models for Each Other

For me, reading Torrey Peters’ debut novel Detransition, Baby is akin to listening to your favorite hometown band headlining their first stadium concert. You end up marveling over how experiences you thought you knew well are rendered in utterly unexpected ways, and realize how patterns from... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-01-15 12:00:00 UTC ]
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There Are as Many Americas as There Are Pedros

“The world will come between you,” writes Marcos Gonsalez in the prologue of his memoir Pedro’s Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land. The you here refers to both the author and his father, an immigrant from Mexico, captured in a photograph from the author’s childhood. “Hundreds of years of... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-01-12 12:00:00 UTC ]
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My Life Is a Result of the Legacy of Colonialism

I first read Nadia Owusu’s debut memoir Aftershocks in June, as the United States—led by the white nationalist backed Republican administration—was several months into a still ongoing unchecked global pandemic which was disproportionately killing Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous Americans.... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-01-11 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Abeer Hoque Is Going to Be Nice to You and You’re Going to Like It

In our series “Can Writing Be Taught?” we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This time we’re talking to Abeer Hoque, author of the memoir Olive Witch, who’s teaching a two-week seminar on one of the most... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-01-08 12:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Contemporary Novels About the Victorian Era

It’s a truism that historical fiction reveals more about its own age it than the one it portrays. We can’t escape or even perceive our own biases, the reasoning goes, so we end up helplessly projecting them onto a past where they don’t belong. But the past is not a museum, and contemporary... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-01-08 12:00:00 UTC ]
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