In “The Edge of Water,” A Prophecy Unravels a Nigerian Family’s Pursuit of the American Dream

Olufunke Grace Bankole’s debut novel The Edge of Water opens with a prophecy: “A storm is coming.” The order of things, the Iyanifa tells us, will be disrupted by a soul who defies her fate.  What follows is the story of three generations of Nigerian and Nigerian American women: Esther, who dreams of a different […] The post In “The Edge of Water,” A Prophecy Unravels a Nigerian Family’s Pursuit of the American Dream appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2025-02-04 12:00:00 UTC ]

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11 Books by Bangladeshi Voices Beyond Its Borders

I yearn for a literary world where, as readers, we’re familiar with a wider spectrum of narrative traditions and approaches than what we now think of as the canon. We Bengalis love so much to talk, to weave tales, to let our anecdotes tangle with each other’s into a larger collective... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-11-19 12:05:00 UTC ]
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A Year of Giving Away Banned Books in Florida

Florida is one the most diverse and fastest growing states in the United States. It is also, tragically, the epicenter of book banning in America. Thousands of books have been banned from public schools and libraries in an attempt to silence dissenting voices that explore the experiences of... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-11-13 12:05:00 UTC ]
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9 Books About the Spanish Civil War

If you’ve read only one book about the Spanish Civil War, chances are it’s either Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls or George Orwell’s memoir Homage to Catalonia. And if you’ve read only two, as to what they might be, I’d confidently push all my chips into the center of the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-11-11 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Her Corpse Is a Wild Animal

No Man’s Mare by Djuna Barnes Pauvla Agrippa had died that afternoon at three; now she lay with quiet hands crossed a little below her fine breast with its transparent skin showing the veins as filmy as old lace, purple veins that were now only a system of charts indicating the pathways where... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-11-04 12:10:00 UTC ]
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Naomi Cohn On the Sensory Experience of Reading with Her Hands

Naomi Cohn’s memoir focuses on her progressive vision loss and her embrace of braille as an act of reclaiming her love of reading and writing, along with an expanded sensory and sensual existence in the world. Intertwined with this focus are themes braided and bountiful, including a history of... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-25 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Zara Chowdhary on Coming of Age During Anti-Muslim Violence in India and the U.S.

Zara Chowdhary’s The Lucky Ones is a devastating, timely memoir about survival, reclamation and what it means to exist on the margins of society and within your own familial unit. Zara speaks to us, raw and unfiltered, about growing up as a young muslim girl in Ahmedabad, India, in the aftermath... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Sapphic Undertones Littered L.M. Montgomery’s Fiction, as Well as Her Female Friendships

My favorite book is a pale, mint green, Illustrated Junior Library edition with edges sprayed indigo blue. The girl on the cover wears a white pinafore over a practical plaid dress. Her two orangey-red braids fall around her shoulders, topped off with a wide-brimmed straw hat covered in... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-16 11:10:00 UTC ]
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Book Review: ‘Women’s Hotel,’ by Daniel Lavery

Daniel M. Lavery’s debut novel collects vignettes from inside the Biedermeier, a second-rate, rapidly waning establishment in midcentury New York City. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2024-10-12 09:00:34 UTC ]
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15 Small Press Books You Should Be Reading This Fall

I’ve been reading from outside of Phoenix, where there have been over 120 days of 100 degree temperatures as summer comes to a close.  With Hurricane Helene devastating the Southeast and war spreading in the Middle East, the uncertainty about our collective futures—whether it is from climate... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-11 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Douglas Unger Turns Rapacious Greed and Moral Slipperiness into High Literature

Forty years after the publication of Leaving the Land, Pulitzer Prize finalist Douglas Unger returns with his fifth novel, Dream City, an excoriating tale of hope, greed, and betrayal in Las Vegas. C.D. Reinhart is Unger’s fatally flawed protagonist, a failed actor bent on self-improvement who... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-08 11:05:00 UTC ]
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8 Books About Growing Up Through Ballet

Books about ballet dancers are, invariably, books about growing up. Whether it is a young child desperate to win a place at a ballet school, a ballerina escaping from a dangerous relationship, or a memoir about finding a sense of belonging in the dance world, ballet books return again and again... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-04 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Clement Goldberg’s Debut Novel is Horny, Queer, and Very Revolutionary

In Clement Goldberg’s madcap and campy debut novel, cats, plants, alien intelligences, and a group of human misfits conspire to make us all freer and more joyfully connected. New Mistakes offers a hilarious, surreal, and sexy new vision of queer collectivity—one that involves the living earth... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-02 11:00:00 UTC ]
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I Love Short Stories. Do I Have to Write a Novel?

In 1993, I published my first decent story in a literary journal and a few months later received a letter from an agent whose name I recognized. I’d written short stories in college classes, sent them off, and typically the only thing that came back was a rejection, housed in the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-01 11:10:00 UTC ]
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Our 15 Most-Read Posts Of All Time

Fifteen years ago, Electric Literature started as a print and digital quarterly journal during the glory days of the print magazine era. Our very first issue surpassed 10,000 copies in sales, we were stocked in newsstands and bookstores, and as an e-book. We were one of the first to publish... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-09-27 11:10:00 UTC ]
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Lauren Elkin on Art, Activism, and Lacan

Lauren Elkin’s debut novel Scaffolding traces the parallel lives of two psychoanalysts living in the same Belleville apartment 50 years apart. In 1972, Florence and her new husband, Henry, settle into their new home. But as Florence delves deeper into her intellectual pursuits, she begins to... Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2024-09-26 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Book Deals: Week of September 23, 2024

FSG signs a debut novel by the inaugural recipient of the FSG Writer’s Fellowship, Tami Hoag re-ups at Dutton, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-09-20 04:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Small Press Books About Motherhood You Might Have Missed

When I started to write about motherhood a decade ago, the topic still carried a tinge of shame. Writers tended to fear motherhood would push them into some unsightly box, as if they’d succumbed to something less serious than the laudable material of their (non-mothering) peers. In the Los... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-09-18 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Exclusive Cover Reveal of “When the Harvest Comes” by Denne Michele Norris

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of When the Harvest Comes by editor-in-chief Denne Michele Norris, which will be published by Random House on April 15, 2025. You can pre-order your copy here. In this heart-wrenching debut novel, a young Black gay man reckoning with the death... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-09-18 11:04:00 UTC ]
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A ghost story about new motherhood? A TV writer's debut novel explores the female psyche

Jacquie Walters' debut, 'Dearest,' is a horror novel about new motherhood, including the demands of a breastfeeding infant, as well as how postpartum hormones affect a woman's psyche. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-09-16 10:00:29 UTC ]
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Tracy O’Neill’s Mid-Pandemic Search for Her Birth Mother Became A Globe-Trotting Memoir

Tracy O’Neill’s Woman of Interest is a quest memoir: a voyage there and back, out and in. The book recounts the author’s search for her birth mother during the frightening heights of covid, “a pandemic that had miniaturized life.” Enlisting the help of a PI named Joe, a former CIA operative,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-09-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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