Essay Photo by Miko Guziuk / Unsplash In his newest book, What Is American Literature? (Oxford University Press, 2022), award-winning cultural commentator, translator, and editor Ilan Stavans, the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, rereads an assortment of American literary classics through the prism of the Trump years, from the poems of Phillis Wheatley to Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. In the primer, written during the presidential election won by Joe Biden—and before the January 6, 2021, sedition instigated by Donald Trump—he also reflects on the role public libraries play in disseminating the nation’s literature, the art of teaching it to new generations of students, and the future of the book as an artifact disseminating knowledge in our graphic-driven age. The volume closes with an epistolary account, in Stavans’s words, of “the Second American Civil War.” What follows is the section on teaching. American literature starts and ends in the classroom. It starts there because whoever is a writer-to-be is likely to discover the magic of literature as an assignment, or else in response to the tedium that comes from feeling disengaged with the educational purpose. And it ends in the classroom because, at a time of precipitous declines in reading habits, books have their largest audiences among students enrolled in... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-02 19:59:22 UTC ]
The Niles-Maine Public Library in suburban Chicago is being destroyed from the inside by politically-conservative Board officials. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-07-15 10:40:00 UTC ]
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With his wife, Jean Hollander, he produced an English translation of ‘The Divine Comedy’ that was hailed as a masterpiece. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-06-17 12:20:06 UTC ]
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New York this week became the second state to pass a bill that would ensure public libraries the right to license and lend e-books that are available to consumers in the state. The bill is now headed to governor Andrew Cuomo's desk. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-06-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The new law requires any publisher offering to license "an electronic literary product" to consumers to also offer to license the content to public libraries on "reasonable" terms. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-06-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Here’s an incredible archival project you might not know about: Reveal Digital is partnering with academic and public libraries to fund an expanding, open access collection of American prison newspapers. “American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices From The Inside” is collecting and digitizing... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-05-28 17:24:30 UTC ]
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A scholar of American literature at Stanford says it’s worth publishing. The agents representing the Steinbeck estate strongly disagree. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-05-27 14:53:04 UTC ]
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At the Chicago Review of Books, Eric Nguyen discusses his new novel, Things We Lost to the Water, and how Vietnamese American literature processes the ongoing influence of colonialism, as seen in two of the book’s characters, Công and Ben. “Công’s narrative is parallel with Ben’s, who doesn’t... Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2021-05-17 20:30:35 UTC ]
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The debut melts down striving immigrant tales, Old West mythology and madcap thrillers to produce an invaluable new alloy of American literature. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-04-06 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Long considered a tool to encourage patrons to return materials on time, in the past few years hundreds of public libraries have decided late fees do more harm than good by keeping away low-income and disadvantaged readers. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2021-02-21 09:00:00 UTC ]
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Arts Council England (ACE) is awarding £152,000 to help public libraries buy e-books and digital audio products after demand soared during the pandemic. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-21 11:35:36 UTC ]
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The free provision of e-books for children by Oak National Academy has been branded a "wake up call" for a sector still awaiting its long-discussed shared website for all public libraries. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-21 04:54:52 UTC ]
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BookLife Elite will offer public libraries access to a curated collection of unlimited, simultaneous-use indie e-books, meaning library readers can access the books instantly—no holds lists. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-01-13 05:00:00 UTC ]
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You can still borrow books for free even when public libraries are closed, though each personal collection has its own character. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-01-08 17:38:20 UTC ]
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If you, like me, could really use some nice library-oriented news right about now, you’re in luck. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the impossibility of going to physical libraries for much of the year, readers borrowed record numbers of ebooks, audiobooks, and digital magazines from public... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-07 15:34:02 UTC ]
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It’s largely accepted as a truism that libraries connect and work together—interlibrary loan, consortia, union catalogs. However, working together and connecting is not a simple task. Add in different histories, cultures, languages, political systems and you begin to get a sense of what... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-12-11 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Take a peek at the most popular under-the-radar books in public libraries across the United States for the 2020 third quarter. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-12-09 11:33:00 UTC ]
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The potential deal would be a breakthrough moment in the library e-book market as Amazon currently does not make its digital content available to libraries. It would also be a major coup for the Digital Public Library of America's upstart e-book platform and its SimplyE library reading app. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-12-04 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Demand an explanation for why Chicago Public Libraries are open to in-person services while COVID positivity rates soar above 15%. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-11-27 15:17:51 UTC ]
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My library is a response to the void of my parents’ house: there are traces of all the public libraries I’ve visited since childhood. Continue reading at The Paris Review
[ The Paris Review | 2020-11-25 15:50:04 UTC ]
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The portrayal of Santa’s Moor servant ‘Zwarte Piet’ is widely seen as offensive. Protesters applaud the decision to remove the character from children’s books Public libraries across the Netherlands are removing from the shelves children’s books depicting a black-faced Zwarte Piet, a side-kick... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-11-15 10:10:52 UTC ]
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