Ibram X. Kendi opens his latest book with his worst memory as a high school student competing in an oratorical contest. Having spent his short lifetime internalizing negative messages about Black people from Black people, from white people, and from the media and culture at large, Kendi delivered a remix of Martin Luther King Jr.’s […] The post A Handbook for Fighting Racism in America appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-28 11:00:52 UTC ]
Writers of literary fiction are supposed to disdain celebrity memoirs. They’re sucking up all the big advances and lowering the bar of what’s supposed to be Literature, right? But I’ve got a dirty reading secret. I love celebrity memoirs, particularly by standup comedians (and not just because... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-20 12:00:00 UTC ]
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That winter, the year Boogie turned 14, we got it in our heads that we could run away, leave Miami Beach and never come back. For months, I’d spent every night lost in a book, read whatever the librarian put in my hands, which usually meant books written by white men, about white people, for […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-20 09:47:43 UTC ]
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These are some important things to know about my dad: every Halloween he dresses up in a different inflatable costume to hand out candy, he’s seen Bigfoot, he watches John Wick about once a month, he wanted to name me Elvis, and when I was younger he read all my favorite books along with me.... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s a confusing thing, being Irish. We’re European with none of the sophistication, and for a tiny island, we have an impressive lack of consistency. That said, we also have an impressive literary output. Our politics, social movements, and religions have born enough conflict to make a canon... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-15 12:00:00 UTC ]
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I first encountered Carmen Maria Machado in 2016, reading her short fiction “Horror Story” in Granta. Her innovative and acclaimed debut collection Her Body and Other Parties had not yet been published, but I scourged the internet for everything I could find. What I found were stories about... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-15 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Virtually none of us will ever know what Ahmet Altan has gone through, and continues to live through. After the 2016 Turkish coup d’etat attempt, the writer was arrested along with his brother on such claims as “sending subliminal messages to coup supporters.” In 2018, they were sentenced to... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-11 12:00:01 UTC ]
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Thomas Morton, an English businessman who had a knack for riling up Puritans, was the author of the first book explicitly banned in the United States. The post The First Banned Book in America appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2019-11-06 21:30:41 UTC ]
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In the middle of Carmen Maria Machado’s new memoir In the Dream House, CARMEN, stylized in all caps like a play script, sits across from the woman with whom she’s been in an abusive relationship (THE WOMAN IN THE DREAM HOUSE). The scene is set (“the curtain rises”) and we’re shown, “the house... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-05 12:00:26 UTC ]
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You go to a coffee shop in order to focus on your craft. What do you order? A. A black coffee. B. An almond milk matcha. What is your critically acclaimed debut novel about? A. A man getting stuck on a subway train and revisiting the weight of all of the mistakes he’s made in […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-01 11:00:37 UTC ]
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Few are able to plunge the depths of familial complexity like Jami Attenberg, and even fewer are able to reflect the nesting doll of desires, secrets, and contradictions the individual becomes when put into the context of family. In her seventh novel, All This Could Be Yours, the New York Times... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-23 11:00:35 UTC ]
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Gabby Rivera’s YA novel follows Juliet Palante, a Puerto Rican teen from the Bronx, who is reckoning with her feminism and queerness. After coming out to her family, she goes to Portland to be a summer intern for her favorite feminist author, Harlowe Brisbane. Juliet believes this will be the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-21 11:00:58 UTC ]
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The Blunt Instrument is an advice column for writers, written by Elisa Gabbert (specializing in nonfiction), John Cotter (specializing in fiction), and Ruoxi Chen (specializing in publishing). If you need tough advice for a writing problem, send your question to [email protected].... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-18 11:00:04 UTC ]
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When I think of literary authors, I often imagine my college reading list — and my lecturer’s pontifications on how their books have been meticulously etched into the canon of cultural significance. I rarely think about storytime with Mom and Dad. So would you believe it if I told you that Nobel... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-11 11:00:05 UTC ]
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The Older Brother in Mahir Guven’s debut novel drives for a ride-sharing service in Paris while his Syrian-born father is an old-school taxi driver. Their Uber politics conflict is further sullied by their religious divergence. Into this, Guven adds a Younger Brother, a talented nurse who could... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-08 11:00:58 UTC ]
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Translating one medium into another is tricky. Music is music and art is art and dance is dance; to try to convey the power of another art in fiction is its own sleight-of-hand. My own first novel takes on that challenge. In A Song For A New Day, musician Luce Cannon was on the cusp […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-07 11:00:15 UTC ]
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If you have a spare 35 grand or so, you now have a shot at a rare copy of the first book banned in America. Christie’s Auction House in New York recently announced that it will be auctioning a copy of New Canaan by Thomas Morton, a 1637 political satire that caused outrage among New […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-03 11:00:38 UTC ]
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Note: Masie Cochran is Jeannie Vanasco’s editor for her memoir Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. “I’ll tell him: I still have nightmares about you,” Jeannie Vanasco writes early in her second memoir, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. The “him” in question is Mark, a man... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-03 11:00:04 UTC ]
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Did you know that there’s an entire genre of books dedicated to white people going to Nepal to find themselves? I didn’t either! But it’s not so surprising since the release of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love, and its 2010 film adaptation, which has caused an uptick in tourism to... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-02 11:00:13 UTC ]
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When you meet Archie Bongiovanni, you may feel as though you already know them. The jorts, the stick-n-poke tattoos, the larger-than-the-room laugh that means you always know where they’re standing. That’s because Bongiovanni’s incredibly endearing energy winds up all over the page in Grease... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-27 11:00:50 UTC ]
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It is next to impossible to read every debut book that comes out in a single year. Even for me, a person who has dedicated the year to reading as many debuts as humanly possible and interviewing newly-published authors for my website Debutiful. Every month, my to-be-read pile grows larger and... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-24 11:00:28 UTC ]
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