Jaquira Díaz witnesses her father’s rebellious fight for a better life, and her homeland’s fight for its place in the world.
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Culture, Essays & Criticism, Feature, profile, Story, Writing
Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes: On Novelist Nettie Jones and the Madness of ‘Fish Tales’
Edited by Toni Morrison, the 1983 novel ‘Fish Tales’ by Nettie Jones was supposed to set the literary world on fire. It didn’t.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Culture, Essays & Criticism, Story
Frenzied Woman
Cinelle Barnes considers how the chaos and discipline of dance kept the disparate parts of her being stitched together.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, History, Nonfiction, Story
The Corpse Rider
“I could see the ghosts,” recalled Lafcadio Hearn about his early childhood. Late in life, he became a celebrated chronicler of Japan’s folk tales: stories of strange demons and lingering visitations.
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
A Green New Jail
What does environmental justice look like in a landscape overrun by prisons? Where the incarcerated suffer from unusually polluted surroundings, and prisons are a toxin in their own right?
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Was Being Used in Slivers and Slices’: On Feminism at Odds With Evangelical Faith
“I wasn’t unified in my being. I wasn’t able to bring my whole self to the table,” says Cameron Dezen Hammon about her life as a worship leader for an evangelical megachurch.
Posted inNonfiction
A Fresh Look at The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1998 Album Adore
Loved and loathed in equal measure, one thing critics can’t take from this influential 90s band is their willingness to evolve musically.
Posted inStory
‘I Was Interested in the People Who Are Stuck With These Memories.’
Steph Cha discusses her new novel “Your House Will Pay,” the LA Riots, the Korean American Angeleno community, her 3,600 Yelp reviews, and pushing back against gatekeepers in publishing.
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Surviving the Shattering of My Mind and My Marriage
Andrea J. Buchanan contemplates the way illness and pain can freeze a sufferer in time, as if encased in glass.
Posted inBooks, Commentary, Science & Nature, Uncategorized
This Month In Books: ‘One Degree Is About the Uncanny’
This month’s books newsletter is suspended in a state of anticipation.