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 ]
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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With the election days away, this is the perfect time to remember that public libraries exist in a political as well as a civic space. In this episode, hosts David Lankes and Nicole Cooke talk to John Chrastka, head of EveryLibrary, the country’s only political action committee for libraries,... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-10-30 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The Panorama Project, the OverDrive-funded cross-industry initiative devoted to “data-informed insights on public libraries’ role in the publishing ecosystem” has announced the appointment of Daniel Albohn as the new Project Lead, replacing Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, who has taken a full-time... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-10-29 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Joni Eareckson Tada brings a children’s book about heaven to the Good Book Company, an introduction to African American literature lands at IVP, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-10-14 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Image: Sister and Spirit: Plains horses Marvin Bell was introduced to by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. For more than half a century, Marvin Bell has been a movable poetry feast. Everywhere he goes, every day, from The Hamburg Inn #2 to EPB, Day House, Prairie Lights, the public libraries of Iowa,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-03 19:00:52 UTC ]
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On Sunday, President Trump demanded that Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent, take a drug test ahead of (or just after) their first debate, which is tonight. “His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Only drugs could have caused this... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-09-29 12:19:19 UTC ]
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Interviews Adib Khorram is an author, graphic designer, and tea enthusiast. Iranian American, he was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. A theater kid in high school, he went on to study design and technical theater at Southern Illinois... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-09-25 11:55:24 UTC ]
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As the national library of the United Kingdom, the British Library’s mission is to make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment. This means making our own buildings and online offers engaging for everyone, as well as working in partnership... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-24 13:05:14 UTC ]
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In order to fit more texts into my Asian American literature course, I sometimes assign the play adaptation of Jessica Hagedorn’s novel Dogeaters. The novel is canonized within Asian American literature and features an imagined version of the Philippines made from film and radio tropes, found... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-09-17 11:00:54 UTC ]
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Autumn brings cheerful news of good footfall in bookshops, but we do not hear the same bells ringing for public libraries. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-08 12:28:53 UTC ]
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How will public libraries handle being unable to be community centers when their communities are most in need of them? Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-08-13 10:35:00 UTC ]
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Canadian librarians push back against a recently published editorial arguing that public libraries are "a net harm" to literature. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-07-31 04:00:00 UTC ]
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American public libraries operate under white supremacy. It's time to dismantle it. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-07-20 10:31:00 UTC ]
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