Multifaceted Manifestos: A Conversation with Marlon James and Colson Whitehead
The 1980s is a decade infamous for its chaos, ugliness, and cruelty, but also adored for the art produced by a restless culture. These authors masterfully explore a time where beauty and violence existed simultaneously, and often because of each other. In Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine, a New York City in transition glimmers with promise, […]
Family, Unraveled
All families are complicated, with legacy, personal choices, and societal expectations shaping or breaking the bonds that hold them together. In Jason Diamond’s The Kaplan’s Plot, a son returns home to take care of his dying mother and learns of long-buried secrets and shames from his family’s past. In Katie Kitamura’s Audition, an actress and […]
Hallowed Ground: Claiming a Literary Inheritance
In Where We Stand: Speech, Place, Justice (trans Padma Viswanathan), Djamila Ribeiro issues a rallying cry for Black Brazilian feminists to stake their own ground, inspired in many ways by figures such as Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, and Audre Lorde. Meanwhile, new works by Edwidge Danticat (We’re Alone) and Dionne Brand (Salvage: Readings from the […]