I think Nicole already put this in one of her link roundups, but frankly I'm not done being excited about this yet. What's most appealing – and perhaps surprising – about the sequel to the 2012 hit is the overriding sense of inclusiveness and acceptance. The film's already been called 'body positive' and 'sex positive', praised for its focus on diversity and female desire. For what's essentially a buddy road…
One of my favourite Twitter accounts is the frustrating and important @AfAmHistFail, run by an anonymous (for obvious reasons) docent who gives slavery presentations at a historical plantation. She shares the ups and downs of her job, the struggles to keep composure in the face of racist questions and monologues, and the difficulty of puncturing the romanticization of the antebellum South. She was kind enough to answer some questions for us. To what degree…
Welcome to THE DOUGH, an occasional series in which Manjula Martin talks with women in creative professions about money and work. When I called AB Chao on the phone, she was in New Orleans painting the kitchen cabinets in her new apartment. The cabinets had been “a gross, rental off-white” and Chao was in the middle of a lengthy process of repainting them bright white, not being pleased with the results, then repainting them again.
How important is it to see people like you in the media you consume? For your children to see themselves? Thanks to Claudia Kim's brief but welcome appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron and the bewildering decision to cast white actress Emma Stone as “1/4 Hawaiian, 1/4 Chinese” Allison Ng in Aloha, the issue of Asian/Pacific Islander visibility in pop culture has been on my mind more than usual. I wanted to know what this lack of representation -- and the slow but (one…
I learned about Meredith Talusan's fascinating life and trajectory through none other than the wonderful world of Twitter. Not only are we both Comparative Literature nerds, but we also are deeply involved in thinking about selfhood and all that it entails.
Tell me a little about yourself. You have such a rich history, both personally and educationally. Considering your background, what drew you to the visual arts as well as literature?
We'll get this out of the way first: yes, it's irritating and vaguely infantilizing when a young person makes a big show of how sassy and sharp an elderly person is. THAT IS NOT THIS. Or, if there is an element of it to be found here, I apologize. Someday old age will come for me too, and some young person will try to explain to me how great it is that I'm still telling it like it is and putting…
This piece is brought to you by Maddie, whose hair puts mine to shame. Paul! We are friends, in real life, and I have gotten to see you develop your game Fat Cat In A Top Hat IN REAL TIME, as if we were on an episode of Silicon Valley. Can you tell me a little bit about how you first came up with the idea for it? Mallory! I came up with the…
You have probably heard, by this point, the news that Harper Lee is finally releasing a companion novel for To Kill A Mockingbird after over 50 years. Pretty exciting news, right? Her publisher has probably had a lot of time to figure out their publicity rollout and has also definitely made sure that she wants them to publish said companion novel, yes? Especially since Harper Lee has always made it very clear that she would not release…
Pt. I can be found here. When I discovered that my new friend, Carrie, had been a finalist in the 1992 Sassiest Girl in America contest, I screamed and freaked out and she handled it much more nicely than the 1990 Sassiest Girl, who to be fair was not my friend and I had ambushed her in the creepiest way possible on the first day of school. She showed me the magazine, and I remembered…
Leaving aside the fact that "have you ever had a lesbian fling" and "have you ever slept with a woman" are two entirely different questions, let's take a minute to try and guess what woman Cher slept with (dare we say dated?). And don't come at me with "stealing a horse and dating a woman aren't really comparable," this is Cher and she comes from a different era and she is doing her best, damnit.
Maya Schenwar is Editor-in-Chief of Truthout, an independent social justice news website. She has written about the prison-industrial complex for The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Jersey Star-Ledger, Ms. Magazine, Prison Legal News, and other publications. She is the recipient of a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Chi Award and a Lannan Residency Fellowship, both for her writing on prisons. Prior to her work at Truthout, Maya was Contributing Editor at Punk Planet magazine…
Oh man, this is just a straight-up Blog Post because I loved this interview over at Vulture so much and I want you to read it to. This is how blogging works, right? When I'm not just making jokes about books, it's just "here's something that somebody else wrote and you should read it because you trust me"? Anyhow, you should trust me and read this.
Lynn Lurie is the author of Corner of the Dead, winner of the 2007 Juniper Prize for Fiction, University of Massachusetts Press (2008) and Quick Kills, Etruscan Press. We recently had a delightful conversation about her writing, which I am happy to share with you. You can read Part I of our conversation here. Quick Kills (and Corner of the Dead, for that matter) resonated so much for me with the experience…
I first encountered Katie Coyle’s fiction in her story “Fear Itself” (published by One Story), which features teenage girls being stalked and emotionally abused by a possessed wax figurine in the shape of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is not the kind of story one takes lightly: it’s creepy, it’s strange, it’s totally absorbing. And so I was thrilled to learn that Coyle’s debut Young Adult novel Vivian Apple at the End of the World…
