Nina MacLaughlin discusses her retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “[In] my very vague high school memories…there was no discussion of the fact that this book is just rape after rape after rape.”
mythology
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Is There a Lost Galleon in the Desert?
Alexander Nazaryan recounts one man’s search for a Spanish galleon that legends say traveled up the Sea of Cortez into California’s desert interior and never got out.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Ancient Myths, Trigger Warnings, and Our Unsafe World
Earlier this year, an op-ed written by members of Columbia University’s Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board argued that Ovid’s Metamorphoses should be taught with a trigger warning because the myths of Daphne and Persephone “include vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault.” Needless to say, a lot of people had thoughts about this. In a recent essay-cum-open-letter for Oregon Humanities, poet Wendy Willis issued an […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Lidia Yuknavitch on Mythologies We Adopt to Make Sense of Violence
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the acclaimed new novel The Small Backs of Children, has a haunting essay up at Guernica about “Laume,” a mythological water spirit and guardian of all children that her Lithuanian grandmother introduced her to when she was young, and about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of violence and […]