Bodies in Space: Teaching after Trauma
Turning onto my street and looking south I feel the ground drop beneath me every time—I turn the corner and the sidewalk falls. I feel invisible then, as if I’ve vaporized. ...more
Posts Tagged: Afghanistan
Soldiers-Turned-Authors on War Literature
For NPR Books, Quil Lawrence talks with a handful of soldiers-turned-authors about the genre of war literature that has been catalyzed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These authors want their audiences to know that war is not all Hollywood-scale battle scenes, and warn against the glamorization of war stories and hero-worshipping of veterans.
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Letters to Laura from a McDonald’s in Brooklyn
Tonight my loneliness is infinite and I could eat dinner or dance with my limbs wild because there is no gravity keeping me grounded. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Whitney Terrell
Whitney Terrell discusses war, gender, and fiction vs. reality in his new novel, The Good Lieutenant, about a female soldier in Iraq. ...more
War Narratives #7: Turning a Corner
As we sat around telling the funniest stories we could remember from our time in Iraq, I noticed that the easy cynicism of our twenties was gone, and so was the rigid hierarchy of the military. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: 69 Love Songs
Everywhere people are shoving things into the ground—time capsules not to be opened until the year 2100, the more optimistic postmarked for 3000—letters to the future in the language of the now. ...more
A Letter to My Father That He Will Never Read
What would I even say if I was to answer that long-awaited phone call? Would the light of forgiveness carry me fearlessly into tomorrow? ...more
Literature Out of Pain in Afghanistan
As part of Electric Literature’s The Writing Life Around the World series, Fazilhaq Hashimi discusses the influence of pain and social activism on the literary landscape in Afghanistan:
...moreIn Afghanistan, we do not write for fun, passion, or money but to express the immeasurable pain inside.
American Ambiguity
My racial awareness, perhaps even my awareness of myself as a person, self-consciousness, is a three-pronged paradox of shame, pride, and indifference. ...more
War Narratives #4: Meet the Civilians
Each character achieves independence in his own way, but independence winds up looking a lot like loneliness. ...more
War Narratives #3: The Rumpus Interview with Matt Gallagher
Matt Gallagher on blogging during his time in the Army, his memoir Kaboom and forthcoming novel Youngblood, and what makes for good literary fiction about wartime. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Colin D. Halloran
Writer and former US Army infantryman Colin D. Halloran on his new collection, Icarian Flux, how he used experimental narrative to explore his life with PTSD, and why he doesn't want to be known only as a "war poet." ...more
War Narratives #2: Trauma Writing
[I]f we don’t explore wartime trauma in literature, we will never understand war’s impact in personal or social terms; never understand the incredible variety of responses to trauma, with all its nuances and exceptions. ...more
War Narratives #1: Truth and Fiction
The notion that the truth about combat cannot be described in a book goes back to the American Civil War, at least. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Elliot Ackerman
Elliot Ackerman discusses his debut novel Green on Blue, fighting with the Marine Corps in the Second Battle of Fallujah, and being labeled as a journalist . ...more
This Week in Short Fiction
On Wednesday evening, Phil Klay’s Redeployment won the National Book Award for fiction, making it the first short story collection to win the award since Andrea Barrett’s Ship Fever in 1996. That’s 18 years. But what’s maybe more startling is that the collection, which takes multiple perspectives of people involved in and returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stands nearly alone as a fictional account that has risen to the national level of attention since the war in Afghanistan began in 2003.
...moreStretching the Truth
...moreIt is simple math—if she is caught, no one eats. And every day she fears discovery. All that Niima is ordered to do, she does very quickly.
Bedrooms of the Fallen by Ashley Gilbertson
I lost my photo. Part of it, anyway. I lost some of the painless pride of ownership, the selfish satisfaction of creation. ...more
The Girls Do Cute Things
Her parents, in the past, tried to surrender her to the state, asking the state to force her to go to school. They didn’t want to be held responsible for her any more. Now, it’s Maya who wants to live somewhere else. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Masha Hamilton
Journalist and novelist Masha Hamilton sits down with Maud Newton to discuss the influences behind her latest book, What Changes Everything, the intricacies of writing about conflict, and how her work in war zones has helped shape her fiction. ...more
How Do You Say “Ollie” in Pashto?
In Kabul, Afghanistan, Oliver Percovich runs an NGO unlike any other: a skateboarding school for kids, called Skateistan.
Interestingly, in a country where girls are generally not allowed to ride bicycles (and are even sometimes attacked for going to school), almost half of Skateistan’s students are female, which this blog post calls “the highest rate of female participation in skateboarding out of any country in the world.”
Rock on, sk8r bois and grrrls.
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Shit Turd and The Purple Light
With this much self-awareness and meditation, residents such as myself tend to forget – or, rather, concentrate on forgetting – that Encinitas is also a half-marathon’s distance from the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island ...more
Longing for Peace
“On Sept. 11, 1948, my father, Khalilullah Nuristani, was born under the same burden of greatness. In retrospect, he must have believed that he could fulfill what had been his father’s unfulfilled destiny. My father became a tireless fighter for a free Afghanistan.”
Afghan writer Kakail Nuristani compiled photos, letters and documents from his father’s life, working with Adam Klein to tell a fascinating story that spans three-generations.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Megan Stack
The six years Megan Stack spent in the Middle East reporting for the LA Times began as a sort of emergency assignment and ended with Every Man In This Village Is A Liar, her indelible memoir of an education in war and war reporting.
The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Good morning! I’m up against a pretty nasty deadline, so blogging might be a bit light today. In the meantime, here’s some links for you from the book blogs.
What is the state of reading among the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?
...moreMorning Coffee
Today is a good day for map based infographics: charting the 250 greatest movies of all time and the 7 deadly sins.
Miniature architecture fashioned from re-purposed kitchen and hardware items.
Illustrating New York Missed Connections.
Photographing the war in Afghanistan.
...moreAfghan Star: A Conversation with Tamim Ansary
Pop Idol has been widely imitated throughout the world [American Idol here in the states] , but Afghanistan is possibly the only place where the mere existence of a televised, Western-style talent show amounts to a political statement.
The Afghan Women’s Writing Project
After visiting Afghanistan for the second time last year, the novelist Masha Hamilton started the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. The project connects Afghan women with American writers and teachers and gives the women space on the blog to share their stories.
...moreThe Irresistible Illusion
Rory Stewart’s LRB article “the Irresistible Illusion,” analyzes the language current Western leaders use when speaking about Afghanistan. Then he compares it to similar speeches made by others since 1868.
Spoiler: Nothing new has been said in over 140 years.
If anything, according to Stewart, our rhetoric has gotten worse.
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