Author Archives

Em Perper
Bookseller, writer, editor.

The Business of Books: A Reading List

1. At the small publishing company where I work, the pace these past few months has been chaotic. We send representatives to book festivals in L.A., Tucson, Philadelphia, the D.C. suburbs and New York City. We didn’t get to AWP in Seattle, though, so I was delighted by David W. Brown’s write-up for The Atlantic, “11,800 People Sharing in the Existential Agony of Writing.”

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The Things In Our Diaries: A Reading List

Age 7: Dear Diary, Today I went to Clarisse’s house. It was fun.

Age 13: Dear Diary, We are leaving for Mom-mom’s funeral soon. Mom and Dad are fighting and THE WORLD IS FALLING OVER.

Age 23 [written on this laptop, not my Moleskine]: I am fulfilling my daydream of feeling like a Privileged Artist & sitting in an artisanal coffeeshop, working on my freelance assignment, next to my boyfriend who is drawing Russian-inspired characters for his latest creative endeavoring.

My diaries aren’t all that thrilling and over time, they’ve transformed from hit-or-miss “daily” self-missives to emotional ramblings over the anarcho-Communist boy who was in my 10th grade geometry class to what they are today: a commonplace book full of ticket stubs, lists of anxieties, doodles and observations. Lately, I’ve been inspired by Dear Queer Diary on Autostraddle. But enough about my journaling habits. What are yours?

1. “Reading Other People’s (Fake) Diaries.” (Alanna Okun, Buzzfeed, March 2014)

From the Dear America series to the Princess Diaries, fictional diaries gave the author a set of “emotional blueprints” by which to navigate adolescence: “Finding a way to decode your feelings and figuring out how to spend your days are worthy pursuits, characters like Harriet [the Spy] tell us.” 

2. “My Dementia: Telling Who I Am Before I Forget.” (Gerda Saunders, Georgia Review/Slate, March 2014)

Professor Gerda Saunders’ mind is dementing. She provides excerpts of her own diary and examines her mother’s Day Book, a collection of 27 diary entries written in her native Afrikaans, as she, too, suffered from undiagnosed dementia.

“2-5-2011
During my going-away meeting with Gender Studies, the faculty gave me this journal. In it I’ll report my descent into the post-cerebral realm for which I am headed. No whimpering, no whining, no despair. Just the facts.”

3. “On Keeping a Liary: Anais Nin, Autobiography, and the Lady Narcissism Debate.”(Sady Doyle, Superworse, March 2013)

Oversharing or honesty? Trivial or timeless? The worth of women’s writing rages on, and Anais Nin is a complex character in this drama.

“Let’s start with a few unpleasant facts. First: Anais Nin was a fraud. Fifteen volumes of her diary (which disillusioned fans have referred to as “the liary”) have been published, and all of them are untruthful.”

•••

Photo: Magic Madzik

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Examining the Religious, Economic, Architectural, and Cultural Facets of Gentrification: A Reading List

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Gif via Justin Blinder’s ‘Vacated’ project.

1. “Urban Church Planting Plantations.” (Christena Cleveland, March 2014)

White suburban churches invade urban spaces with no regard for the churches already in place.

2. “Gentrification Sparks Surge In Landlord Sabotage.” (Lauren Evans, Gothamist, Feb. 2014)

Setting fires, locking tenants out and willfully destroying a building’s infrastructure–evil landlords will go to great lengths to dispose of their rent-stabilized tenants in hopes of increasing rent and making thousands off new residents.

3. “Newburgh, N.Y., Seeks Renewal Without Gentrification.” (Lisa Selin Davis, The New York Times, November 2013)

Is a healthy future possible for “the murder capital of New York?”

4. “Gentrification and Its Discontents: Notes from New Orleans.” (Richard Campanella, New Geography, March 2013)

Gentrification might bring New York City or San Francisco to mind, but Campanella takes the reader to “the Williamsburg of the South”: Bywater, New Orleans. He delves into the history of gentrification in Louisiana, which dates back to the 1920s.

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Experiences of Black Americans: A Reading List

As a white woman, my role in conversations about race is to listen and learn. This week, I wanted to include pieces about empowerment, stereotypes and intersection in the realm of race. One reading list cannot encompass the vast array of experiences of black Americans; this is not meant to be exhaustive. Send me your suggestions, if you’d like. Or comment below.

1. “The Myth of the Absent Black Father.” (Tara Culp-Ressler, ThinkProgress, January 2014)

Black dads are indisputably present and involved in the lives of their children. Don’t believe the stereotypes spewed by the media, or insinuated by President Obama, or written in all caps on Facebook by your Tea Party neighbor.

2. “The Impossibility of the Good Black Mother.” (Tope Fadiran Charlton, Time Magazine, January 2014)

Charlton relates the struggles and stereotypes of being a young, black mother in predominantly white spaces: “The curiosity that strangers are so often eager to satisfy when they see me with my daughter is profoundly shaped by stereotypes of Black womanhood. Am I the babysitter? The nanny?”

3. “Growing Up Black in the Whitest City in America.” (Mitchell S. Jackson, Salon, March 2014)

Historically, Portland’s black population has not exceeded 5%. What this means, writes Jackson, is gang warfare inevitably claims the lives of people you know intimately.

4. “I Am, I Am, I Am: Writing While Black and Female.” (Vanessa Willoughby, The Toast, January 2014)

Willoughby slays in this wonderful piece about identifying as a black, female writer in a white-dude-dominated industry. She’s working on a novel, and if this incisive, insightful essay is any indicator, you won’t be able to miss her.

5. “Homeward Bound: Searching for the Island of Black Queer Mixed Femmes.” (Kim Katrin Crosby, Autostraddle, December 2013)

“I have always been a traveler, particularly as an immigrant and as a person with family hailing from Venezuela to Dominica to South India, ‘home’, ‘family’ and ‘belonging’ have always been complicated concepts. But as femme genius Yumi Tomsha says, we mixed folks are ‘layers, not fractions.’ These complications find their solace in my bones, my laugh, my irreverent queerness and my sensitive stomach without even trying.”

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Image from “The Residue Years” Documentary By Mitchell S. Jackson

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Stories About Ghosts: A Reading List

This week is all about ghosts: ghosts that haunt houses, girl ghosts in movies, ghostwriters and Ghostbusters.

1. “If You Believe in Ghosts, You’ll See a Ghost.” (Katie Heaney, Pacific Standard, November 2013)

Katie Heaney writes about the supernatural for Pacific Standard — everything from Bigfoot sightings to seances. In this installment, she visits the oldest home in New York in search of its rumored ghostly matriarch.

2. “The Oral History of ‘Ghostbusters.'” (Jason Matloff, Esquire, February 2014)

“You never expect that big a hit. But there was a great sense that we were doing something special right from the beginning.”

3. “Ghosting Julian Assange.” (Andrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books, March 2014)

A sprawling, spectacular account of O’Hagan’s attempt to help the founder of Wikileaks write his memoir, and the total chaos that ensued.

4. “The Feminist Power of Female Ghosts.” (Andi Zeisler, Bitch Magazine, September 2013)

A shorter piece about the role of malevolent women ghosts in cinema. (Hint: It’s their righteous fury that makes them so angry.)

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Photo: spectrefloat

All Aboard: Four Stories About Trains

Ah, the romance of the rails. I still bear vivid memories of my family’s post-Christmas train ride to New York City when I was an adolescent. I listened to my non-Apple mp3 player and watched, wide-eyed, the people and places passing by. Last year, I hopped commuter train after commuter train trying to bridge the unwieldy path of public transit from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Today, my social media feeds are overrun with my writerly friends pining for a free Amtrak ticket and a quiet place to work. All aboard, indeed.

1. “Small Towns in Southwest Fear Loss of Cherished Train Line.” (Dan Frosch, New York Times, Feb. 2014)

The Southwest Chief train line is a historic fixture in small-towns in New Mexico, and its absence might bring about their demise.

2. “Train in Vain.” (Evan Kindley, n+1, March 2014)

A reality check for the writers salivating over the possibility of Amtrak’s writer residency.

3. “Starchitect Trio: The Men Behind Germany’s Building Debacles.” (Der Spiegel, June 2013)

Billions of euros, year-long delays in construction — just what is going on in Stuttgart’s train station?

4. “How to Spend 47 Hours on a Train and Not Go Crazy.” (Nathaniel Rich, New York Times Magazine, Feb. 2013)

Why do people choose to travel cross-country via train? Meet the passengers of the Sunset Limited.

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Photo: Feliciano Guimarães

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Tell Me A Story: A Reading List

These four fantastic fiction pieces will take you far away from this perpetual winter.

1. “Lost in Transit.” (Leon, The Swan Children Magazine, March 2014)

This story is a beautiful, haunting example of the work produced by the Swan Children, a collective of artists expressing their experiences under “homeschooled, Quiverfull, and conservative Christian upbringing.” The first issue debuted March 1. It is not to be missed.

2. “Touchdown!” (Jerad W. Alexander, Pithead Chapel)

An afternoon of watching football is disrupted by the implications of a kitchen injury.

3. “Conversion.” (Sara Novic, Guernica, February 2014)

Carter isn’t sure what to make of his mother’s fascination with the local evangelical congregation — until it’s too late.

4. “The Unraveling.” (A.N. Devers, Electric Literature, 2013)

A mysterious real estate agent promises a young Brooklyn couple that his unorthodox methods will find the perfect apartment — if they cooperate, that is.

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Photo: Sergey Yakunin

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The Business of Being Born: A Reading List

Beyond the tired binaries of midwife vs. doctor and home birth vs. hospital birth.

1. “How We Made Our Miracle.” (Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC, Feb. 2014)

After political commentator Melissa Harris-Perry shared pictures of her newborn daughter on Valentine’s Day, she wrote about her past health problems, her history with childbirth, and making the decision to pursue IVF and surrogacy.

2. “Why We’re So Obsessed With Natural Childbirth: A New History of Lamaze Explains the Origin of the Mythology.” (Jessica Grose, The New Republic, Feb. 2014)

In her review of Lamaze: An International History by Paula S. Michaels, Grose explores the origins of the desire for an “ecstatic” birth experience and the belief that hospital births are industrial and insensitive. She explains the roots of Lamaze in the the philosophy of a 1930s British doctor, the countercultural movement of the ’60s and ’70s and more.

3. “Why We Must Destroy the Myth of Miscarriage as Women’s Failure.” (Glosswitch, The New Statesmen, Feb. 2014)

“Miscarriage will not be made easier to cope with without changing the way we talk about pregnancy, bodies and women’s roles. The physical work of gestation and labour remains undervalued, yet in parallel with this the superficial celebration of pregnancy insinuates that those who can give birth are more virtuous, more real and more womanly than those who supposedly ‘fail.'”

4. “The Disturbing, Shameful History of Childbirth Deaths.” (Laura Helmuth, Slate, Sept. 2013)

“If you are pregnant, do not read this story.”

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Taking Care of Business: A Reading List

Hackers! Gen Y CEOs! Multibillion dollar success stories! International expansion! Top-secret projects! Cute clothes! Hamburgers! Capitalism is so exciting, and so are these longreads about popular U.S. companies.

1. “In-N-Out’s Burger Queen.” (Patrick J. Kiger, Orange Coast, Jan. 2014)

31-year-old Lynsi Snyder presides over In-N-Out’s $1.1 billion industry, founded by her grandparents in the 1940s. What’s the company secret? Never change. Seem counterintuitive? Not if you’ve ever had an In-N-Out burger.

2. “You Can Explain eBay’s $50 Billion Turnaround With Just This One Crazy Story.” (Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider, Feb. 2014)

A group of six twenty-somethings fly to Sydney, Australia on a secret mission for eBay. Carlson brings the eBay executives and employees to life; I felt like I was watching “The Social Network.”

3. “A Sneaky Path Into Target Customers’ Wallets.” (Elizabeth A. Harris, Nicole Perlroth, Nathaniel Popper and Hilary Stout, Washington Post, Jan. 2014)

Merry Christmas, you’ve been hacked! In the midst of the 2013 holiday season, millions of Target customers received an ominous email; Cybercriminals targeted the store’s credit card machines, stole card numbers and PINs and endeavored to sell the information in the creepy corners of the internet.

4. “The J. Crew Invasion.” (Emma Rosenblum, Bloomberg Businessweek, Nov. 2013)

J. Crew executives hope the brand’s casual-chic niche will find a foothold in London.

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Photo: Kevin Dooley

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Being Gay in Russia Today: A Reading List

Unfinished hotel rooms, terrorist threats, egregious human rights violations and thrilling athletic feats: Sochi’s got it all. But Russia’s dangerous, government-sanctioned homophobia precedes and extends far beyond this year’s Olympic games.

1. “Closed, Destroyed, Deleted Forever.” (Dmitry Pashinsky, n+1, February 2014)

Incredible interview with Lena Klimova, founder of Children 404, a social networking resource for the oppressed LGBTQ community in Russia. As a result, Klimova has been accused of disseminating “gay propaganda.” Now, Children 404 faces deletion and Klimova faces thousands of dollars in fines, all for attempting to create a supportive community of teenagers, parents, psychologists and other advocates.

2. “Inside the Iron Curtain: What it’s Like to be Gay in Putin’s Russia.” (Jeff Sharlet, GQ, February 2014)

The police bring cages to Pride parades. The right-wing fringes have their children beat LGBT activists. Violence is acceptable, even appreciated. Homophobia is sanctioned by the government and the Orthodox church. One gay man compared Russia today to Germany in the 1930s.  (I wept while reading this story.)

3. “On Holding Hands and Fake Marriage: Stories of Being Gay in Russia.” (David M. Herszenhorn, The New York Times, November 2013)

Heartbreaking, powerful personal testimonies from LGBTQ folks living in Russia today.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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