Reading Ferlinghetti in the Age of Trump
This lesson feels especially relevant to our moment: that it’s possible to be both a frustrated activist and also a present and joyful human being.
...moreThis lesson feels especially relevant to our moment: that it’s possible to be both a frustrated activist and also a present and joyful human being.
...moreKashan stares out at the crowd. “Saddam was hard. This is also hard.”
...moreThat a bumbling demagogue would be able to take this institutional racism and weaponize it is, then, not really a surprise. The seeds for this hate were planted a long time ago.
...moreMaybe I was only in the eighth grade, but I was ready to stand up to anyone who tried to threaten the ideal of intellectual freedom.
...moreAs Sentilles makes clear, she is against the wars the United States is currently involved in, and war in general, but she’s critical of what that means.
...moreThere is no singular Muslim story, no definitive identity for the entire religion. […] Here, four women discuss what it’s like to be a minority in America in 2017, post-9/11 and post-Trump.
...moreAs we begin our own Age of the Strongman, Hussein’s almost effortless manipulation—of soldiers expecting exactly that behavior—shows how susceptible we all might be to the sheer force of a big personality.
...moreIn the face of colossal and destructive political lies, we need a more nuanced understanding of the world than simply truth versus lie.
...moreMicah Perks talks about her new novel, What Becomes Us, America’s cultural and mythical heritage, and why every novel is a political novel.
...moreWelcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit in fighting for social justice. If we’re going to move our national narrative away from […]
...moreWhitney Terrell discusses war, gender, and fiction vs. reality in his new novel, The Good Lieutenant, about a female soldier in Iraq.
...moreGarrard Conley, author of the new memoir Boy Erased, discusses growing up in the deep South, mothers, writing for change, and political delusions.
...moreWhen you’re writing fiction, you can follow your own ignorance. You can write something and realize how flawed you are.
...moreBut those who subscribe to the Surge narrative have to work very hard to choose and order their supporting facts.
...moreEach character achieves independence in his own way, but independence winds up looking a lot like loneliness.
...moreMatt 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[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.
...moreStanton re-gathered himself, still wearing a smile after being shot in the face, and went back to work.
...moreElliot 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 .
...moreThe Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Tom Sleigh about his new book, Station Zed,, how reportage and the surreal can combine inside a poem, and secularizing the mysteries of death, redemption, and resurrection.
...moreBrian Turner discusses his new memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, the Iraq War, poetry and prose, and his family’s long history of serving in the military.
...moreOn 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 […]
...moreEmily Gray Tedrowe, author of the forthcoming novel Blue Stars, exploring the complexities of the Iraq War through the families left behind, debuts a powerful new story set in Iraq.
...moreThe incinerator burned amputated body parts. It sat immediately next to the barracks in Baghdad.
...more“Fiction is, of course, serving rearguard here; the last decade has seen Iraq War films, poetry collections, documentaries, and non-fiction books too numerous to list, but part of what’s appealing about examining American Iraq War fiction now is that there isn’t that much yet. A common perspective unites this early wave of American Iraq War […]
...moreA collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “Magic.”
...moreWhat did I turn to when I needed to channel my frustration with this corporatized Republican state against which I could only kick my small angry feet? The music of Gen-Xers from another country.
...moreBut I had deployed only once to Iraq. When so many others, including friends of mine, had suffered two, three, four, five, or more deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, why should I be the one enjoying the comfort of flying first-class?
...more“Here are some of the things you need to know.” Gooding handed Pilley a card, laminated to slip smoothly into and out of his wallet, with a bulleted list of do’s and don’ts. Pilley stared at the card like it had the answers to the algebra final exam. He licked his white lips and coughed […]
...moreJulian Assange may have more sidekicks than we know of. You can read about how Bradley Manning, a gender-questioning soldier, came to subvert the American military’s authority over information regarding the war in Iraq. He has simultaneously earned the title of WikiLeaks hero and U.S. traitor, on account of the classified information he leaked over […]
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