[{"id":259035,"date":"2026-09-28T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=259035"},"modified":"2026-09-28T10:09:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:09:03","slug":"how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Write a Palestinian Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My new novel\u2014my fourth but the first to draw from my Palestinian heritage\u2014is about a Gazan immigrant to Chicago. As I was writing, friends kept referring to it as my Palestinian novel, which sounded strange to me. Very strange. Was I writing a Palestinian novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My paternal family came from Haifa, fleeing into Lebanon to escape the fighting during Al-Nakba in 1948. Because they were Christian, they received Lebanese citizenship within a few years. The majority of Muslim refugees were not so lucky, and to this day many remain, like those in Gaza, stateless\u2014barred from social services, from owning property, and from most desirable jobs. My uncles became civil engineers in the Gulf and Libya, booming because of the oil industry, making their fortunes. My father died before he could, and my Irish mother left their home in Beirut to return to London, where she raised me and my brother alone. When I was younger, my father\u2019s family rarely mentioned Palestine, but I remember a couple of my aunts and uncles gathered about the television in Nice one summer. Watching Menachem Begin\u2019s inauguration as Israel\u2019s prime minister, my Aunt Estelle clapped her hands lightly up and down as if clearing them of dust, and said, \u201cBye-bye, Palestine.\u201d A year later in Beirut, my Aunt Dima mirrored this gesture during the Camp David Accords: \u201cBye-bye, Palestine.\u201d It was as if they were watching a World Cup soccer game, their tiny country being crushed by one of the European powerhouses. They couldn\u2019t look away, couldn\u2019t turn it off, couldn\u2019t quite lose hope for a miracle comeback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncle Hanna  was the uncle I saw most. My brother and I would spend summers with him and his family in Libya or Nice, and a couple of times, during breaks in the civil war, a bombed-out Beirut. As a teenager, I once asked him how he felt about the Nakba. Clearly troubled by my question, he began by qualifying that he\u2019d been active with the Palestinian movement in the early years. Then, quietly, as if afraid he might be overheard, he said that if the Nakba had never happened, he probably would have spent his life running his father\u2019s restaurant and ice cream parlor in Haifa. Instead, he\u2019d experienced a life he could never have imagined, starting his own construction business, travelling the world, becoming a millionaire, and ultimately retiring to Monaco. He rested his hand on my shoulder, concerned for me. \u201cYou\u2019re English now,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t look back.\u201d I never thought of myself as English, Irish, or Lebanese\/Palestinian. And being deeply unhappy as a child, it was strange to think of being “English” as an escape or blessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncle Hanna asked me to not repeat what he\u2019d said to anyone, particularly his brother Faris. The secretiveness of this exchange puzzled me until I came to realize that his shame and circumspection was a combination of survivor\u2019s guilt and a betrayal he felt deeply. Suffering and samood<\/em>, steadfastness in the face of oppression and violence, has become what it means to be Palestinian. As a Palestinian, he was tied not just to that, but also to Palestinians becoming aligned with anti-colonial revolution or (depending on your politics) terrorism. From a hotel room in Amsterdam on a business trip, he\u2019d watched members of Black September holding hostage and ultimately murdering 11 Israeli athletes at the \u201972 Munich Olympics, an experience that felt vertiginously surreal to him, a bad fever dream. In response, Israel launched airstrikes against PLO bases and refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, killing somewhere between two and three hundred Palestinians, mostly civilians. This was the violent and asymmetrical call and response that continues to characterize the Palestinian\/Israeli conflict. If anyone asked, Uncle Hanna told people he was Lebanese.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncle Faris, on the other hand, always said he was Palestinian. Far more emotional and reactive than Uncle Hanna, he felt each Palestinian setback like another arrow in his body. At university in America, he got into a shouting match with a Jewish history professor who read aloud Mark Twain\u2019s description of the Holy Land before the arrival of the Jews: a barren wasteland peopled by a squalid swarm of fleabitten humanity. \u201cHow they beg! How they whine! How they lie! How they curse! How they cling!\u201d For a political science course with another Jewish professor, every student had to produce a paper to be read out in the auditorium before the lecture class. Faris decided to write what he felt was the truth about the Israeli\/Palestinian situation. He was in an America that believed Israel was a plucky David standing up to an Arab Goliath, where \u201cPalestinian\u201d and \u201cterrorist\u201d would soon become synonymous, where the biggest bestseller since Gone with the Wind<\/em> was Leon Uris\u2019s Exodus<\/em>, adapted into a blockbuster movie with Paul Newman. The professor warned him to change his topic, but he delivered his paper anyway, the professor shouting him down, accusing him of being a Nasserite propagandist (for this, read Nazi), and demanding he return to his seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told me these stories in his vast and sepulchral marble-floored villa in the Beirut mountains, the two of us sitting in green leather chesterfield armchairs in a kind of display room. It held antique qanuns, ouds, and buzuqs beneath photographs of him with Fairuz, Thekra Mohammad, and the Rahbani brothers; in glass display cases hung beautiful thobes or jillayeh, with exquisite embroidery unique to specific Palestinian towns. A massive taxidermized swordfish arched over a wall displaying photographs of his fishing triumphs. Another wall held pictures of his family, fading daguerreotypes of his grandparents during their village weddings beside glossy glamor shots of his grandchildren. Though an old man now, sitting in a room that might have been his own pharaonic funerary chamber, these memories of defending Palestinians still evoked his anger, remaining like a dolorous wound at the heart of all this joy and success. I mentioned the Oslo Accords. He shook his head, disgusted. \u201cIt\u2019s just theater. Nothing will get better for the Palestinians.\u201d He said the treatment of the Palestinians, their continued sacrifice and demonization, was unjust. Rubbing his generously proportioned stomach dyspeptically, he concluded: \u201cInjustice: you can\u2019t digest it. You just can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncle Hanna, determinedly looking forward, and Uncle Faris, who remained afflicted by the past (and present) suffering of the Palestinians, combine into a Janus, that Roman god with two heads looking in opposite directions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a young person, I absorbed this Janus as a particularly Palestinian predicament, one very much at the heart of my Palestinian<\/em> novel. And yet, such a Janus lives in many of us\u2014escape your past, you cannot escape your past<\/em>; escape who you are, you cannot escape who you are<\/em>. This is especially true if we have a traumatic history or are torn between identities; if our pasts are too full of love to cauterize, too full of pain to integrate. But even when this is not the case, our past experiences shape how we emotionally respond to\u2014and initially categorize\u2014new people and situations. We all negotiate a way to our futures through<\/em> our pasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This applies equally to nations. Consider Israel, also a Janus, torn between looking back at two millennia of antisemitism culminating in the Holocaust, and looking forward\u2014but to what? What is the dream of Israel? A light unto all nations, or a fortress, a final refuge? Theodore Herzl\u2019s utopian novel, whose title, Altneuland<\/em> (Old New Land), is perfectly expressive of the Janus, dreamed of an Israel where Arabs and other ethnicities enjoy equal rights with Jews, a multicultural and pacifist paradise. The novel\u2019s antagonist is the backward-looking Rabbi Dr. Geyer, a populist politician who seeks to exclude Arabs and other minorities from the new society. Is Herzl\u2019s dream still viable? Was it ever? Was Herzl\u2019s more practical sense that a few Arabs might have to be \u201cspirited away\u201d to establish his new Zion the serpent in his Edenic vision?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born in England, a stratified society where excessive ambition was frowned upon. In my early twenties, I emigrated to an American culture obsessed with dreams: the dream of a nation rooted in inalienable rights, of a shining city on a hill, dreams as the means to personal transformation, the American dream. But a dream appropriated by those without imagination quickly petrifies into a plan<\/em>. In his essay, \u201cMyth and Education,\u201d Ted Hughes describes the danger of a person without imagination. He speaks of this person as having to work on principle, or orders, or by precedent, a person marked by extreme rigidity, because they\u2019re moving in the dark. If they have strong temperaments, Hughes says, they end up destroying their environment and everybody near them. The terrible thing about those without imagination, he claims, is \u201cthat they are planners, and ruthless slaves to the plan\u2014which substitutes for what they do not possess. And they have the will of desperation: where others see alternative courses, these people see only a gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herzl had a dream that was Israel. Do those in charge now hope to maintain that dream? Or have they replaced it with a plan? Religious and ethnic fundamentalists on both sides of this conflict, it seems to me, are those with a plan, one that imprisons the very animating force of the imagination that created their cultures and faiths, just as the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky\u2019s Brothers Karamazov<\/em> imprisons the returned messiah. The brutality that created and then sustained the Palestinian\/Israeli conflict has destroyed imagination, just as any individual\u2019s imagination, that most fragile of human faculties, can be repressed or destroyed by trauma, fear, or anger. Without imagination, there is no capacity for empathy or intimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Stanford many years ago, I attended a question-and-answer session with Philip Roth. A student from a Jewish religious organization on campus asked the writer what his Jewishness meant to him: An ethnicity, a culture, a faith<\/em>? Roth shook his head, shrugging sadly, and said, \u201cIt\u2019s my predicament.\u201d Some people remain deeply rooted in the identities into which they were born, echoing God\u2019s declaration at the burning bush: I am what I am<\/em>. For others, such inherited identities are their predicament: I am not what I am<\/em>. This latter is a destabilizing declaration. Shakespeare placed it in the mouth of Iago. It\u2019s why the Devil is protean. It\u2019s why gay or transgender people are demonized. It\u2019s why artists are a threat to authoritarians. I am not what I am<\/em> undermines not only the stability of a person, but of a society, a nation, challenging those differentiations that began when God split the first human, his \u201cearthling,\u201d into two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of Adam and Eve in the West is the foundational myth of human consciousness and all that derives from it: our separation from God, from each other, and from ourselves. The Fall is the origin story of human estrangement, beginning with the first man and woman becoming shamefully aware of each other\u2019s nakedness. Once that original couple were flung out of Eden, this separation by sex ramified into every other division of self from other, us from them: tribe, race, religion, ethnicity, culture, and nationality. And yet the Fall is also the origin story of human intimacy. Any moment of real intimacy, whether between young lovers trying to merge their bodies, or with a stranger you connect to briefly on a train, or in that instant your eye is drawn by a drift of milkweed floss illuminated by the sun, is a surfacing of the Eden that exists beneath every moment of our lives, the sacred ever pressuring up through the profane. We are always in Paradise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we are always in Hell. While some might declare I am not what I am<\/em>, none of us can escape the historical, cultural, and political context in which we live. Since I arrived in the U.S. in the mid-\u201980s, this country has felt, more or less, like a democracy. But, as I write this now, I\u2019m living in a Chicago \u201coccupied\u201d by ICE. When Gaza was entirely under Israeli occupation following the 1967 war, the Israelis took over an administrative building in Gaza City, the Majlis<\/em>, turning it into a kind of fortress, their center of operations. For the Palestinians, this was an ominous f hive, out of which Israeli patrols would emerge in their oversized jeeps to assert control. Chicago now has its own small version of the Majlis<\/em>, the ICE facility in Broadview, a dozen miles west of downtown Chicago. The various federal agents there are an absurdity, heavily burdened with camo military gear no doubt left over from our various desert wars, carrying pistols in holsters and machineguns, their faces often masked. Such are the men used not to fulfil a dream but to execute a plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ICE patrols beetle around Chicago\u2019s streets in fleet vehicles with shaded windows, ready to invade apartment buildings, churches, and schools, searching for people they suspect to be undocumented, whom they arrest often with extreme violence. In Palestinian villages before 1948, the villagers used to respond to any member of their village being attacked with what was called ta\u1e6dw\u012bq<\/em>, \u201cencirclement,\u201d meaning that everyone in the village charged out of their homes encircling and threatening the attacker to protect their fellow villager. This tradition continued in the Gazan refugee camps. IDF soldiers chasing someone into the camps would find themselves suddenly surrounded by the camp women (the men being too much at risk). This is exactly what\u2019s happening in Chicago. When ICE patrols arrested landscapers or mothers picking up their children from kindergarten, they were instantly surrounded by Chicagoans filming, blowing whistles, and calling to the arrested person for their name, date of birth, and the number of someone they can contact on their behalf, reassuring them that they will receive help, that their community is with them. Being played out right here in Chicago is the eternal battle between estrangement, manifested in hatred for and oppression of the \u201cOther,\u201d and intimacy, connectedness, expressed in communities who welcome and know themselves to be enriched by the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Palestinian\/Israeli conflict is a prime contemporary example of the horror of absolute human estrangement resulting in complete dehumanization. At the writing of this, over 70,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, 20,000 of them children, have been killed as a result of Israel\u2019s response to the killing of 1,195 Israeli civilians and soldiers, and the kidnapping of 149 by Hamas and other militant groups. Now, more than ever, I feel a sickening and helpless sadness about the blind cruelty and madness of the Palestinian\/Israeli conflict. But even before I knew that my father and his family were Palestinian, I experienced a species of sadness that isn\u2019t at heart different from this one. The sadness I would be afflicted by so often as a boy in the working-class London neighborhood where I grew up in the \u201970s and \u201980s. One invoked simply by the human condition. The sadness I felt when I saw what lay in the shopping basket of the old lady standing in front of my mother and me in the supermarket line: the can of Heinz baked beans, the bar of Cadbury Fruit & Nut, the bottle of Whitbread barley wine; an image of lonely nights with a tray on her lap in front of the television. A sadness about how ultimately alone we all are, how easily and irrevocably damaged, how trapped in the identities we are born into, how ill-equipped so many people are to connect to others, how cruel life is, how unfair in its apportioning of beauty, opportunity, intelligence, courage, and perhaps most crucially, imagination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a boy, I examined that old lady, noticing the stain on her tight babushka, the uncontrollable shaking of her left hand, the belligerent misery of her face as she chewed the cud of her ill-fitting National Health dentures. My mother, as she always did if we were in line somewhere with anyone who looked sad, lonely, or down on their luck, engaged her by making some comment about the weather or the slowness of the queue. As the old lady turned to my mother, it was like watching the time-stop film of a wilted plant given water. Within moments, she and my mother were in a conspiratorial confab, the two of them clutching each other, laughing. As a boy, I hated it when my mother talked to strangers. I found it embarrassing and boring. It never struck me, not until decades later, not until I began to write, that I was witnessing a miracle. Have I written a Palestinian novel? In a more specific sense, yes: Just to bring to life a nuanced Palestinian character is to push back against three quarters of a century of ignorance about or outright demonization of Palestinians in America. However, whether my novel is about a Palestinian or not, the writing process is the same. I write through all the difficulties of this human life, of our failures of courage, of connection, of community, of empathy, of love, toward the narrow gate of that miracle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a young person, I absorbed this Janus as a particularly Palestinian predicament, one very much at the heart of my Palestinian novel. And yet, such a Janus lives in many of us\u2014escape your past, you cannot escape your past; escape who you are, you cannot escape who you are. This is especially true if we have a traumatic history or are torn between identities; if our pasts are too full of love to cauterize, too full of pain to integrate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139812,"featured_media":259036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88931],\"author_categories\":{\"88931\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"139812\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88931,\"display_name\":\"Naeem Murr (naeem-murr)\",\"is_guest\":0,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[81576],"tags":[675],"ppma_author":[88931],"class_list":["post-259035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","tag-essays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Do You Write a Palestinian Novel - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As a young person, I absorbed this Janus as a particularly Palestinian predicament, one very much at the heart of my Palestinian novel. 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And yet, such a Janus lives in many of us\u2014escape your past, you cannot escape your past; escape who you are, you cannot escape who you are. This is especially true if we have a traumatic history or are torn between identities; if our pasts are too full of love to cauterize, too full of pain to integrate.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How Do You Write a Palestinian Novel - The Rumpus","og_description":"As a young person, I absorbed this Janus as a particularly Palestinian predicament, one very much at the heart of my Palestinian novel. And yet, such a Janus lives in many of us\u2014escape your past, you cannot escape your past; escape who you are, you cannot escape who you are. This is especially true if we have a traumatic history or are torn between identities; if our pasts are too full of love to cauterize, too full of pain to integrate.","og_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/","og_site_name":"The Rumpus","article_publisher":"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","article_published_time":"2026-09-28T15:06:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1357,"height":2049,"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/everyexit.webp","type":"image\/webp"}],"author":"Naeem Murr","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@the_rumpus","twitter_site":"@the_rumpus","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Laura June","Est. reading time":"14 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/"},"author":{"name":"Laura June","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/8804da4cef13b67b2e6481a811275430"},"headline":"How Do You Write a Palestinian Novel","datePublished":"2026-09-28T15:06:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/"},"wordCount":2904,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/everyexit.webp?wsr","keywords":["essays"],"articleSection":["Essays"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/","name":"How Do You Write a Palestinian Novel - The Rumpus","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/everyexit.webp?wsr","datePublished":"2026-09-28T15:06:00+00:00","description":"As a young person, I absorbed this Janus as a particularly Palestinian predicament, one very much at the heart of my Palestinian novel. 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This is especially true if we have a traumatic history or are torn between identities; if our pasts are too full of love to cauterize, too full of pain to integrate.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/everyexit.webp?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/everyexit.webp?wsr","width":1357,"height":2049},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/how-do-you-write-a-palestinian-novel\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How Do You Write a Palestinian Novel"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/8804da4cef13b67b2e6481a811275430","name":"Laura June","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/37791de20a3952ab2ec02115c17790779d57dfdb2331680ac8d2df61dcb16a08?s=96&d=mm&r=g3a3a7267f25f9b4c18d957ba4943c3c0","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/37791de20a3952ab2ec02115c17790779d57dfdb2331680ac8d2df61dcb16a08?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/37791de20a3952ab2ec02115c17790779d57dfdb2331680ac8d2df61dcb16a08?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Laura June"},"description":"Writer and bookseller.","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/laurajunetherumpus-net\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":88931,"user_id":140128,"is_guest":0,"slug":"naeem-murr","display_name":"Naeem Murr","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/949578f41638a782735151d71a58f414e4f71a0fd1bb4198cedc152e8c3aecf3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"Murr","first_name":"Naeem","job_title":"","description":"<p><span data-sheets-root=\"1\">Naeem Murr is the author of four novels:<em> The Boy<\/em>, a <em>New York Times<\/em> Notable Book; <em>The Genius of the Sea<\/em>; <em>The Perfect Man<\/em>, which was awarded The Commonwealth Writers\u02bc Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; and <em>Every Exit Brings You Home<\/em>, which was just published by W.W. Norton. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, among his awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/everyexit.webp?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259037,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259035\/revisions\/259037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259035"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=259035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258633,"date":"2026-09-28T10:50:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258633"},"modified":"2026-09-15T07:46:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T11:46:43","slug":"falling-scales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/","title":{"rendered":"Falling Scales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alice liked D.C best when the sludgy Potomac was still a mirror, a few rowers scratching the surface like skimmers or <em>heteroptera gerridae<\/em>, legs spread wide enough to balance on surface tension alone. Before consultants and lobbyists and other parasitic wasps trickled into the streets during morning rush hour. Marble cool and limestone still. Columns and statues and steps dissolving softly, dripping back into the tidal floodplain. Chalk to chalk, the water always wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Packing her rod and spare lines and a net and a cracked cooler full of ice, she was the one making weak coffee this morning. Not Debbie at the Moultrie Courthouse who always called her <em>hon<\/em> and saved stale muffins because they both made $17 an hour or Brenda in the legal aid office who could tell when it was going to rain because she had been under so much pressure for so long her knees had become perfect barometers. Mercurial guidance was not needed, the sky a ripe fuzzy blue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By 5:00 a.m. her mug was in the sink and permit double-checked and folded in a pocket. She smiled at the soft reverberation from reverse to drive in the lever behind her steering wheel, traffic lights flashing yellow, still-full trash cans on the curb. A hawk balancing on the nape of a gargoyle\u2019s hunched neck at the National Cathedral watched for wobbly rats, poison-drunk and easy to catch in the last few hours before they bled themselves to death from fiberglass shards folded into their bait.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By now she was well bored of fishing parts of the upper Potomac: Point of Rocks, with its shallow fast current and eager smallmouth bass, nestled in a part of Western Maryland, once with more horses than people but now dotted with new-growth trees reclaiming old farmland a bit more every year in a game of cat and mouse against cookie-cutter townhouse developments for city transplants with fake names like <em>Gambrill Glenn<\/em>. The lower Potomac, when she had been too depressed to travel far, brackish and slow. The few stripers caught there worked better than any SSRI\u2019s when pan-fried with brown butter and capers, some parsley and lemon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As she drove through Georgetown toward Key Bridge, a truck backfired in the distance, offloading frozen fish from Thailand by way of Baltimore. Made her foot twitch on the brake, nerves still shot from a case earlier in the week. Client lunging over the desk mid-hearing toward the judge. Nail file shiv. Fish and human blood smell the same. Rust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She needed to get out of the city, to fall into the current and watch <em>isonychia<\/em>, quill gordon, and march brown mayflies hatching. To feel how the afternoon makes fields of buttercups glow like distant stars and how when thunder is about to roll the cold air whips leaves upside down, flashing shades of celadon. How clouds mirror the wings of small moths and you taste a storm before lightning and fish will only ever see rain from below, water hitting water, a song in braille, chorus rattling their bones. And if today didn\u2019t work to clear her head, well, she could always put river stones in her pocket and slip away, skin greying and greening like a rainbow trout returning home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was a close race against the sunrise into Virginia. Past a stream called Difficult Run and the North Fork of Moormans River. By Dulles and mansions with fifteen rooms and gated drives and the long empty stretches of Loudon County where the train stops running and the road narrows and windowless data centers sprout in block after block of thrumming metal and pulsing wires. Surrounded by endless fences catching naive birds in their barbed wire. Sparrow wings caught in metal burrs. Red-tailed hawks after the broken sparrows. Turkey vultures after self-gutted hawks. Heads on spikes. But warning whom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The parking lot at the Luray Caverns was empty when she slipped into Shenandoah. Windows in the motels hugging the park still curtained. She remembered thinking they were charming at first, how comforting wood paneling and the sweet ammonia smell of decaying insulation could be when walls and locks feel safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was barely past eight when she reached the trailhead on Skyline Drive, the main road cresting this slice of the Blue Ridge Mountains, air thick with sassafras and the sharp perfume of nettle. The hood of the car burned her hand when she touched it. Her own fault for getting her bearings from faded instructions written on a small piece of paper folded to the point of softness. She almost missed the half-hearted red blazes on the trees marking the path at first, walking around the gravel perimeter of the road pull-off with a slight headache. <em>You ok hon<\/em>? No free coffee here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She juggled the now-leaking cooler on her hip, fingers slippery with sunscreen as the early morning fog burned off. The trail was overgrown. Brambles and mock strawberries creeped over fallen trees. Two squirrels chased each other, chittering. An eagle circled. Shadow dimpling the path, more rock than dirt. Almost fell twice. But even in the shadows of deep forest, the river couldn\u2019t hide. Sweetness in the air and dirt softening and darkening until it gives the game away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She set down the cooler and rod, left arm numb. Her nylon jacket rustled as she unzipped and carefully folded it, hotter than expected. The water\u2019s edge was uneven. She paced up and down the bank and then, making sure her net was secured across her chest and rod was perched against a green sapling, stepped down with a sigh. <em><\/em>Her boots filled with fast-moving water, sliding on the pebbles under the surface.  Everything seemed to be multiplying in the heat\u2014birds, rabbits, weeds, gnats, drops of sweat, prickling rash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The only trick beyond luck to get a bite in the hole was to know where to look, behind drowned logs or large rocks, on the edges of currents, in shadows. Shy fish getting lazy, gorging before the leaves burned off in the November cold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She learned that from Charles. Perhaps the only thing that ever really stuck. Never able to focus when he tried to teach how to cast, leaning instead into the cigarette breath tracing the back of her neck. His line melted into the brook while hers looked like a toddler throwing a stick. Her first try she caught the lure on a maple sapling over her shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEasy does it, girl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m not a horse, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou wish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNeigh.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It took an hour before she felt tension on the rod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think I got one!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLet me help you.\u201d He waded over, water cresting the thighs of his waders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOk, so this is the rare species of <em>granitas pebbleus<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It took two more hours for her to finally catch a small brook trout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSet!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She flicked her hand up, lodging the line\u2019s hook into a thin cheek, using the panicked thrash of the trout against itself. The rod bowed and Charles grabbed his net. The fish was still a baby, eager and fat. The fly too deep to remove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCharles?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He put a wet hand on her shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her first domestic violence civil protection order case involved a mother of three in southeast D.C., worried about safety after threats from the father. Barely twenty. Won the order and was about to call. Court sergeant radio trilled. <em>Mass homicide, domestic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Charles was drunk off morning beers and forgot his pliers in the truck the last time they went to Shenandoah. Took too long with a bright adolescent bluegill. Tried to revive him with an urgency she had never seen before, slapping the fish in the water. He stood silently afterward, facing upstream. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They stopped fishing together after that but a box was still left on her desk after he died, abandoned in his locker, trail instructions folded under an old parking pass and a spare tie for trial. He always wore paisley to disarm the jury. <em>No one worries about the guy in purple.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She prospected toward the shivering horizon, casting across and up the river. A sharp-shinned hawk joined the eagle flying overhead. At least they thought she might catch something. Tenacious mosquitos fought through her layer of DEET. Stoneflies bobbing on the surface, fueled by the warmth, laying eggs before dying from exhaustion. No clouds in the bleached sky made it easier to watch the expressions of the water\u2019s surface. Bubbles in a small corner, changes in rivulets from precocious tree roots, moments when the river talks to itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He gave her back the apartment key with a shy hug. Maybe it was because a case went wrong and he was to blame, though it could have been the pretty new intern or his ex who always called when she was sad. Could have been the wrinkles beginning to strangle her neck or a fault line buried deep inside her collarbone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But even now, when she closed her eyes, he still flashed. Netting gorgeous sunfish, black crappie, and channel catfish. Cooking them over a crackling fire at dusk. Curling up together in the thick humid summer night as an owl hooted sonnets. Fireflies watching as they slept. Voyeurs on a tent\u2019s screen. A jumble of legs and arms becoming a low steady hum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To forget him she went on a trip in remote Montana with a shaggy-haired guide named Rhett. Dimples instead of frown lines. A gentle voice. Saving up for a seaplane license. Was happy to take her out for a few extra hours beyond their agreed upon rate but the water was chocolate milk after a week of record rain. No bites. He took off his net and unhooked his waders. She slid off her shirt and he grabbed her hips. Interrupted by a thirty-person forest service crew sent to clear a nearby ridge who started to watch, she yelled <em>nothing wrong with skinny-dipping.<\/em> All four of her cheeks blushed redder than the sunburn she\u2019d wake up with the next morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It didn\u2019t work, of course, despite a few subsequent visits to Rhett\u2019s camper van and the bathroom at the old movie theater whose handicap stall sink they almost broke off the wall. She had always been good at trying. Not quite as good at following through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By now it was noon and still nothing. A ham sandwich was nestled back in the cooler. Wrapped in tinfoil. The thought of a slimy bite made her stomach turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next time she saw Charles she didn\u2019t notice him at first, a tall figure downstream in the Little Occoquan Run near Great Falls. But it only took a few minutes for her to realize it was him, with another woman, hands guiding her arm. For the first time since she was thirteen she felt like a souvenir of skill. Mounted on the wall with a plaque, <em>look what I did.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She walked upstream toward a fallen pine. The trout must be sleeping, though she didn\u2019t know how. Was it against barriers, gently pushed against an edge to rest on, nestled still? Was it in motion, pillowed by the current, dreaming of June in January and January in June?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To get out of sadness, one of the hard ones she could not self-medicate with sugar and butter and cheap wine, she went with the Chesapeake Women\u2019s Anglers on a backcountry fishing trip to Laramie. Their fishing guide got arrested at the local dive while they were on the plane. The horse-packer, Finn, a shy kid barely nineteen, was forced to tap in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She only knew what happened because she got a few beers to help with jetlag, leaving the rest of the women to their own devices. The jukebox couldn\u2019t play music but had enough flashing lights to make even sober barflies see double. She could count the age of the wood bar from the water rings sanding off the varnish. A small crunch underfoot came from beer bottles and peanut shells and shaken-off road dust from hunters who had been alone so long they started to twitch like their hounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She pulled Finn aside next to the 24-hour bait vending machine outside. <em>Nightcrawlers.<\/em> The metal box hummed with refrigeration. <em>Baitfish.<\/em> Cups and bags instead of candy bars and chips. <em>Crickets.<\/em> A picture of a fish looming over an airbrushed yellow backdrop was big enough to beckon drivers heading to the nearby stocked municipal lake. <em>Call Vending Solutions and Reel in the Profits<\/em>. Worm machines gave her the creeps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He clumsily lit a cigarette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat\u2019s the worst that can happen? No one is going to die.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He tried to muster a smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next evening when they reached the campsite, Finn set up the tents and the women started to rig up. The unofficial leader of the group, a tall dyke named Bex who used to manage the floor of a cleaning supply factory and had a permanent scowl that looked like she could still smell the solvents to show for it, asked what they should tie on. Finn looked at Alice. She nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI always go with a yellow-bellied warbler.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019ve never heard of that,\u201d Bex\u2019s voice hardened by years of experience with bullshitters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finn solemnly walked over to the rock where he had perched his tacklebox and stared in deep contemplation. Held up an orange butt carpet caddis dry fly, fingering the imitation egg sack before scoffing and throwing it back with its siblings, hiding a small cut on his thumb from the hook\u2019s lip. Rolled two copper john flies in his palm, checking that the brass bead nymph head would stay on in the thrumming, swollen stream. Finally pulled out a yellow bugger, as fluorescent as a cat toy or arcade prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis one. It hits every time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bex laughed but caught a whopper on the first cast. Held the glistening fish like a newborn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alice swallowed the urge to call Charles and tell him he had been right, that confidence is all that matters in everything but death, but instead zipped her phone inside the waterproof pocket of her waders and gave Bex a whistle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> That night she dreamed she was a trout, watching from below the way light drips and waves push around immovable objects, feeling more than seeing the fingerprints of a riverbed. A step upstream becoming a mushroom cloud echoing in a semi-sphere, a prism of pressure and heft. A fly on the surface etching a message into the water. <em>Come, find me, I\u2019m here, waiting. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She flipped her line up and down in the fading afternoon and tried not to think about who she had tried to save, as fragile as a gill out of water, shivering and silently screaming to breathe. She could use that yellow-bellied warbler today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A cramp crawled up the inside of her calf behind her knee. The tea-stained sky hummed with gnats. Shadows from oaks on shore creeped longer and longer. She could barely feel the ground and her foot snagged on a root under the surface. Was barely able to grab a young sapling trunk in time. Water pooled in her waders. Tired and cold, she let her body float in the current.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Brenda told her about Charles\u2019 funeral over a piece of stale coffeecake. She threw up in the bathroom while a teen mom with an ankle bracelet took a shit in the stall next door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jumped off Chain Bridge. Didn\u2019t leave a note. She wondered if he second-guessed himself at all in the shimmering moments between choice and impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The longer she stayed in the water, the better the numbness felt. She dipped her head back. How easy it would be to slip in just a little bit further.  Clothes swollen with silt and midges and snow fleas. Heart rate slowing. Hair wrapping around her neck. <em>Watch yourself bitch.<\/em> A common refrain in the courthouse parking lot. If those men could see her now they would piss themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Being depressed is a luxury when you know you\u2019re going to wake up the next morning<\/em>, one of her clients told her after losing a custody case, holding a dinged paw patrol water bottle with a neck bruise still blooming purple and green. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Most of these rulings depend on what the judge is looking for, what they think they know<\/em>, Alice tried to explain. The mom gave a half-hearted smile, revealing a gap from a gold tooth sold for baby formula. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A horsefly slit her wrist, jagged pinch jolting her back into her body. She took a deep breath. Got a foothold. Scrambled up the bank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Evening bugs gossiped midair, small black bodies glinting. A few flew into her mouth and she spit them out as she dried the line and wrung out her hair. She kicked brown mud off her boots. Looked back at the water. Calm and clear. Her skin goosebumped. Time to head up. It was always easier leaving. The hard part was knowing when.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She loaded gear in the back of the car and sat down, exhausted. The hotboxed seat-belt fabric burned her skin and warmth settled in. Tomorrow she would see Debbie and Brenda and drink watery coffee and talk about the weather but today she was nowhere. Alone in a dinged car in an overlooked pull-off. This was the last thing Charles gave her, the only thing he couldn\u2019t take back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The peace of the right place at the wrong time. The beauty of close but not enough. The comfort of would have. If only. Catch and release. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Thump.<\/em> Something slammed on the roof, loud as thunder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She opened the door and stepped up on the sunbaked frame, the smell of iron and iodine slamming her before her eyes could focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A monster trout. Dropped by a clumsy eagle still circling overhead. Bigger than any she had ever caught. Slime and egg viscera sprayed across the roof. Eyes popped out. Face degloved and grinning on the trunk. Scales from the impact scattered in orbit around the car, glinting in the sunset. <em><\/em>Taking off her shirt and wrapping what was left, she cradled the mangled body against her breast and laughed until the tears carved a stillborn river under her feet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The longer she stayed in the water, the better the numbness felt. She dipped her head back. How easy it would be to slip in just a little bit further. Clothes swollen with silt and midges and snow fleas. Heart rate slowing. Hair wrapping around her neck. Watch yourself bitch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88899],\"author_categories\":{\"88899\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88899,\"display_name\":\"Genevieve Bentz\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[23715],"tags":[1206],"ppma_author":[88899],"class_list":["post-258633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Falling Scales - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The longer she stayed in the water, the better the numbness felt. 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Watch yourself bitch.","og_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/","og_site_name":"The Rumpus","article_publisher":"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","article_published_time":"2026-09-28T14:50:48+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2560,"height":1707,"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bhargav-panchal-xyVkXjRvcME-unsplash-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Genevieve Bentz","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@the_rumpus","twitter_site":"@the_rumpus","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Juliana Luna","Est. reading time":"15 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/"},"author":{"name":"Juliana Luna","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4"},"headline":"Falling Scales","datePublished":"2026-09-28T14:50:48+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/"},"wordCount":3095,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bhargav-panchal-xyVkXjRvcME-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","keywords":["fiction"],"articleSection":["Fiction"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/","name":"Falling Scales - The Rumpus","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bhargav-panchal-xyVkXjRvcME-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","datePublished":"2026-09-28T14:50:48+00:00","description":"The longer she stayed in the water, the better the numbness felt. She dipped her head back. How easy it would be to slip in just a little bit further. Clothes swollen with silt and midges and snow fleas. Heart rate slowing. Hair wrapping around her neck. Watch yourself bitch.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bhargav-panchal-xyVkXjRvcME-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bhargav-panchal-xyVkXjRvcME-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"Photo Credit: Bhargav Panchal via Unsplash"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/falling-scales\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Falling Scales"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4","name":"Juliana Luna","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=gc90dbb975d959e35091c18702a00709e","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Juliana Luna"},"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/jnluna\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":88899,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"genevieve-bentz","display_name":"Genevieve Bentz","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genevieve Bentz is a lawyer living in Washington, D.C. Her work can be found in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">McSweeney\u2019s Internet Tendency<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Citron Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Feminist Food Journal<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Nassau Literary Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and on Substack. She has previously worked as a staff writer for the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brooklyn Quarterly <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and a ghostwriter.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bhargav-panchal-xyVkXjRvcME-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258634,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258633\/revisions\/258634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258633"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258500,"date":"2026-09-28T08:57:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T12:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258500"},"modified":"2026-09-14T07:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T11:58:19","slug":"nothing-is-too-small-to-contain-the-world-a-conversation-with-david-naimon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/28\/nothing-is-too-small-to-contain-the-world-a-conversation-with-david-naimon\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing is Too Small to Contain the World: A Conversation with David Naimon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In January 2018, just a few weeks before Ursula K. Le Guin passed, David Naimon had received her final copyedits and notes in pencil for their upcoming book, <em>Ursula K. Le. Guin: Conversations on Writing<\/em>. Naimon, writer and host of the \u201cBetween the Covers\u201d podcast in Portland, Oregon, and Le Guin had sat down for three conversations on fiction, poetry, and non-fiction over the previous years. The book, published by Tin House in early April 2018 with an In Memoriam by Naimon, was an edited written version of those chats about craft, imagination, the \u201cwave in the mind,\u201d the sounds and rhythms of writing, story, ego, the future of the world, the fantastic, writing as exploration, and so much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A new edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/577400\/ursula-k-le-guin-conversations-on-writing-by-ursula-k-le-guin-and-david-naimon\/\"><em>Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing<\/em><\/a> (Tin House, 2026) has just been released. Who else but one of the wisest and greatest to have done it to guide us not just in our personal writing journeys, but also in the journey we must all undertake, as global and local communities, to create better, more sustainable, and equitable futures, even as we resist all the forces that want to destroy it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">David Naimon and I corresponded via a shared Google document, but instead of all my questions being present in there from the start, I was thrilled when he suggested a more dynamic and organic flow, which is so rarely possible given hectic schedules and deadlines, not to mention time difference. I would add a question which he\u2019d answer, with my following question then having the opportunity to be informed by the same, and so on. We chatted about his relationship with Ursula, how their original conversations came about, the ways in which they changed him and his life in unexpected ways, what makes a good interview, Ursula\u2019s wisdom for our current times and lives, making art, the power of imagination, and the importance of small choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"350\" height=\"456\" src=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-350x456.jpg?wsr\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-258589\" srcset=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-350x456.jpg 350w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-1024x1335.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-800x1043.jpg 800w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-1178x1536.jpg 1178w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-1571x2048.jpg 1571w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-1320x1721.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677-600x782.jpg 600w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Conversations-on-Writing-cover-FIN-_9781638934677.jpg 1680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> This is probably the most-asked question when it comes to the book, but how did the original interviews come about? Were they intended to be both an introduction to and an overview of all of her writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>David Naimon:<\/strong> Our entire relationship, Ursula and mine, grew from a lucky guess on my part. I was volunteering at a community radio station in Portland, hosting a book show, when an expanded and revised edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/steering-the-craft-a-twenty-first-century-guide-to-sailing-the-sea-of-story-ursula-k-le-guin\/d17fb47e25f712f5?ean=9780544611610&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Steering the Craft<\/em><\/a> (Harper Perennial, 2015), her book about writing, was published. I thought to myself, \u201cI wonder if this legendary writer of science fiction and fantasy novels ever gets asked about her work outside these books?\u201d I imagined not only that she didn\u2019t, but also the possibility that it would be very welcome. Little did I know how true my intuition would turn out to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Buoyed by the success of our first deep dive into writing craft, I asked her to return again to discuss a newly arrived collection of her poetry [<a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/late-in-the-day-poems-2010-2014-ursula-k-le-guin\/ad42c667e1e16b51?ean=9781629631226&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Late in the Day<\/em><\/a>]. And it quickly became clear that not only did she welcome these discussions about this work at the margins of her public reputation, but that these writings of hers were central to her writing practice and to her sense of herself as a writer. Having had two conversations now, one about the craft of writing stories, and another about the very different practice of writing poems, the third conversation suggested itself. When her next book of nonfiction [<a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/words-are-my-matter-writings-on-life-and-books-ursula-k-le-guin\/7c84f1fc04e1e2f6?ean=9780358212102&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Words are My Matter<\/em><\/a>] appeared, an essay collection, we completed this journey through the genres and I said to her\u2014in the upstairs reading room of her home, where we recorded this last conversation\u2014something like: \u201cI can\u2019t imagine who else I could\u2019ve done this with, not only looking back across a half century of one\u2019s writing life in one genre, but in all three.\u201d It was then she suggested we make it into a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the book itself begins from these three conversations, which we polished together into a conversationally written form. But also where we interweave examples referenced in our conversations, whether passages by Woolf or Tolkien when discussing syntax, or translations of hers of the Chilean Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, and of course excerpts of various essays and speeches she gave too. Lastly, we both wrote material specifically for the book, most notably her introduction, with the amazing title \u201cFear and Loathing in the Interview.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> It\u2019s such a great introduction too! I loved how straight to the point she got in terms of her experiences with interviews and what makes a good one: \u201cIt\u2019s the one you wish could go on. It’s a conversation between people who have thought about what they\u2019re talking about, and are thinking about it now in the light of what the other person is saying. This leads each of them to say things that they may be just discovering.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the introduction, she also mentions that you both love talking shop. Going back to the original interviews, how did you prepare? You were already someone used to interviewing big names when you recorded the interviews with her, so I\u2019m assuming you had a sort of routine or process by then. Did you need to change any of it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Naimon:<\/strong> This is yet another lucky happenstance of our encounters with each other, or put another way, another example of how our interviews felt charmed in a certain way. I didn\u2019t come to these conversations knowing in advance that Ursula loved to talk shop, nor that we would find pleasure together in doing so. But I did have a sense that these conversations shouldn\u2019t be from a bird\u2019s-eye view, about her importance to the history of science fiction and fantasy. Instead I allowed the book we were discussing each time to both set the terms of our conversation and serve as a useful constraint for it, one that preferenced depth over breadth. In other words our conversations weren\u2019t retrospectives, but in-the-moment engagements with the questions that animated the book that we gathered to discuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Did these conversations change you as a writer, an interviewer, as a person? What did you take away with you that you carry still?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Naimon:<\/strong> It would not be an exaggeration to say that these three conversations with Ursula, our making of them into a book, and its arrival into the world, changed the trajectory of my life. We were in the final copyedits of the book when Ursula died. There happened to be one spare page at the beginning of the book where I could speak to this sudden and unexpected loss as the book went to press. I had always imagined we might\u2019ve had an event together at the flagship Powell\u2019s in downtown Portland to celebrate the book\u2019s arrival with our shared community. To have a public conversation about our conversations. But it wasn\u2019t to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, because this was one of the first books by her to arrive in a world without her, and one of the last books she worked on in the final months of her life, I was approached frequently to write about her. I suspect this happened based on the presumption that I was either an expert on her or a close friend, neither of which were true. But for the next year and a half my writing life became Ursula-centric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A rabbi I studied under once said to me that grief is the highest form of praise. And in a way, I felt like the praise I was practicing during that time was also a form of mourning for me. As I stepped up to these solicitations of my thoughts, I discovered that the more I learned about her the more I wanted to learn. A good example of this was when the Poetry Foundation commissioned me to write an essay (ultimately called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/articles\/148040\/always-beginning\">Always Beginning<\/a>\u201d) that explored what Ursula\u2019s lifelong poetry writing practice told us about her more known and celebrated works in science fiction and fantasy. I quickly learned that there was little to no scholarship on this aspect of her life and went to Port Townsend to interview the editor of her final work of poetry, published by Copper Canyon Press. Coming up with a thesis about how her poetry practice differed fundamentally from her storytelling, and also the ways they interrelated and cross-fertilized her writing life, did shed new light on her works of prose. As well as, I hope, provide a first attempt of many future ones to take this aspect of her writing life with the seriousness it deserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This all led to the development of the 2022 limited series on my podcast, done in collaboration with the Le Guin estate, called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/milkweed.org\/between-the-covers?category=2230&search=\">Crafting with Ursula<\/a>\u201d where I invited twelve writers to discuss their own work in relation to one aspect of Ursula\u2019s\u2014whether Maria Dahvana Headley talking about feminist translation and classical retellings, Isaac Yuen about nature writing, or adrienne maree brown about science fiction and social justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The more I learned, the more there seemed to be to discover, not less. This wasn\u2019t self-evident at the outset, that her concerns\u2014feminism, ecology, anti-capitalism, anarchism, Taoism, to name a few\u2014would be not only so far reaching but also evolving over time within her own life. And while my own writing life is not so intensively orbiting her world as it was for many years before, even last year I was asked to write for an anthology on Ursula\u2019s relationship to maps\u2014something I knew little about at the onset, and now can\u2019t stop thinking about!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> I\u2019ve just made a note to look up the maps anthology because that sounds fascinating! It seems like your relationship with Ursula\u2019s work as a whole has been and perhaps will continue to be\u2014given the context surrounding the publication of your conversations with her and the breadth and depth of her interests making it so there are many underexplored areas for you and likely for others\u2014a journey of discovery even though she is no longer with us. What questions do you wish you could ask her today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Naimon:<\/strong> One of the things that has particularly kept my interest over the years is Ursula\u2019s own relationship to her past self, to her limitations and imperfections, to being wrong. She was changing and growing across her writing career, and she chose to reevaluate and revise herself in a really unique way. Namely, she did so publicly and without disowning her previous work. For instance, when she revised her essay \u201cIs Gender Necessary?\u201d she annotated the original, so one can see the journey she took. When she re-entered the world of Earthsea\u2014for books four, five, and six\u2014she retroactively changed the rules of the world from the first trilogy, without stepping away from it. This feels like a really generous thing to do, to reevaluate and change in this public way, within one\u2019s own writing, facing the world. And I wonder if this was a difficult thing, if it required courage, if she debated not doing so in this way. I would ask her how she came to this relationship with herself and her readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> This is such a great point. My next question is in two parts. There are so many areas and issues today where I feel like we could really use her wisdom, whether in publishing, politics, culture, technology, and more. What lessons from your conversations do you find helpful today, and feel would similarly help others? Looking back on your conversations with this reissue, are there any new insights from your current vantage point, so to speak?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Naimon:<\/strong> Perhaps one of the greatest things I appreciate about Ursula\u2019s exploration of writing craft is itself two-fold. For one, she teases apart the elements of writing advice which are genuinely helpful to learn, from other aspects of \u201cproper\u201d writing which are really veiled ways to defend and uphold a status quo, whether around gender or class or otherwise. And secondly, because she was writing over such a long span of time, she saw many writing trends come and go. Taking a longer view she suggests you resist the pressure of whatever is most en vogue (e.g. the upswell of writing in present tense) and truly consider a wider array of options, including ones that are, in the moment, less popular, but that might be the better tool for your particular story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As far as thinking about those conversations from my current vantage point, I think about how she was well aware of how the pressures of capitalism\u2014of thinking of your book as a commodity before you think of it as a work of art, of what length the book should be to best find a market for instance\u2014was the great enemy of the writer. She spoke of this in her 2014 National Book Foundation speech. An event sponsored by Amazon with Amazon execs sitting at a table just below her podium, and her repeatedly calling out their influence, and lamenting writers who let \u201ccommodity profiteers sell us like deodorant.\u201d Likewise, she resigned from the Author\u2019s Guild after forty years of membership, protesting their support of the Google Book Search Settlement which she called a \u201cdeal with the devil\u201d due to its widespread digitization of books without regard to copyright. Ursula is not around for all that is happening with AI since then. But it feels like it is all of a piece with what she did protest. That we can learn from her around this, and speak out rather than capitulate to the large-scale theft of artists\u2019 work and vision. What could be more dystopic than AI companies (including Amazon) being accused of buying up large quantities of rare books to train their AI models on, and then destroying the books?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been wondering what Ursula would have made of generative AI (I can take a guess based on what we know about her views and what she stood for!) and the advice she would have given us to navigate it, and everything that comes with it. In your memoriam thoughts, you note that one of the things that made Ursula stand out as a writer was how she imagined we could live a better future. You say, poignantly, that it\u2019s now up to us to imagine the world we want, \u201cto create the language that reflects it, to honour Ursula by honouring the Earth she has attended to so well.\u201d How can we begin to harness imagination, which was vital to her, to help us achieve a better world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Naimon:<\/strong> I\u2019m going to sidestep this question as I wouldn\u2019t want to try to paraphrase what the book itself is, in part, about. That said, <em>Conversations on Writing<\/em> does touch on how these big impossible questions can be found within the smallest choices we make as writers, within syntax, voice, point of view, and narrative. And the gestures toward a different world can begin with what seem like small choices there, on the page. I\u2019ll quote Ursula herself rather than try to answer this myself: \u201cWe will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.\u201d And: \u201cWe live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable\u2014but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> I should have clarified that I was also wondering how you, if you had done, were imagining a different world, a better world, using Ursula\u2019s words and practices as inspiration. You referring to the small choices and gestures offers me the perfect segue into the next question. In your In Memoriam, I found it moving and inspiring to read about how Ursula put \u201cnothing being too small to contain the world\u201d into practice in her own life and work. Could you elaborate on some of the ways in which her legacy lives on, and how we, readers, writers, creatives of all stripes, can continue to honour the same?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Naimon:<\/strong> Thank you for clarifying, Anushree. Let me try to answer the last question, as you hoped I would answer it, alongside this new one. Shortly after Ursula died I wrote a piece for Lit Hub that they titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/ursula-k-le-guin-editing-to-the-end\/\">Editing to the End<\/a>\u201d but whose original title, my title, was \u201cThe Holographic Universe of Ursula K. Le Guin.\u201d I used the framing of holographic film as a way to capture this notion that you mention of nothing being too small to contain the world. Because if you take a holographic film of some image, let\u2019s say a chess board, and you cut that film into tiny pieces, you can choose any of those pieces, shine a laser through it, and it reproduces the entire image. I think Ursula viewed herself within an ecosystem, a literary one and a literal one, both. And that she was constantly doing small things outside the spotlight to nurture, sustain, and recreate the whole she was a part of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For one, we would\u2019ve never talked in the first place if she didn\u2019t have an affinity for the small radical community radio station I did my show at. The station didn\u2019t have a large listenership; it wasn\u2019t the local NPR affiliate. No one would\u2019ve slighted her if she had wanted to maximize her impact by picking opportunities with the greatest reach. But she gave countless interviews for community radio, published with feminist sci-fi micropresses and small anarchist presses, showed up at the public library, taught classes at Malheur Wildlife Refuge field station, was dedicated to her writing groups with peers, corresponded with and encouraged women writers in the field early in their careers, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a way I feel like, if there is a lesson to be learned about imagining a different world, it is by living it now, in our everyday choices. Of course you need to imagine the world you want to be able to make these choices, but it is still ultimately about the way we move through the world and across the page right now, today. I think of the quote from <em>The Dispossessed:<\/em> \u201cYou cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I hope this might answer the second question\u2014that you could look to her works or to her life lived, look to her relationship to community with her readers or her writing peers; her relationship to herself and her own evolving and self-reevaluating imagination, or to the worlds she conjured, whether of gender-fluidity or Indigenous sovereignty, of animal and plant intelligence or human collective justice, of the power of language and names, or the power of women, and the promise within of a different potential relationship to everything from how we organize society to how we relate to the land to how we explore what we don\u2019t know to how we resist forces destroying what we love. There is so much there, being thought through, all of it in the process of being thought and re-thought. And because it is a process, not a manifesto, we are all invited to take part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conversations on Writing does touch on how these big impossible questions can be found within the smallest choices we make as writers, within syntax, voice, point of view, and narrative. 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You can find her latest short story, \u201cHeartland,\u201d in Between Worlds: The IF Anthology of New Indian SFF, Vol 1 (edited by Gautam Bhatia) by Westland Books.","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/anushree-nande\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":84803,"user_id":119483,"is_guest":0,"slug":"anushree-nande","display_name":"Anushree Nande","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2cedd621ac5c3802155cb8cdc5b2eb12dba351cf6e52a419662ed93e9379d8a8?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<p><span data-sheets-root=\"1\">Mumbai-based Anushree Nande is a writer and editor, with work in <em>The Hindu Sunday Magazine<\/em>, <em>Vogue India<\/em>, <em>Strange Horizons<\/em>, <em>Hindustan Times<\/em>, <em>HT Brunch<\/em>, <em>The Rumpus<\/em>, <em>Football Paradise<\/em>, and others. You can find her latest short story, \u201cHeartland,\u201d in <em>Between Worlds: The IF Anthology of New Indian SFF, Vol 1<\/em> (edited by Gautam Bhatia) by Westland Books.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/David-Naimon-headshot-photo-375x500-1.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119483"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258590,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258500\/revisions\/258590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258500"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258990,"date":"2026-09-27T09:22:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T13:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258990"},"modified":"2026-09-26T12:33:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T16:33:26","slug":"overnight-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/27\/overnight-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Overnight Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The sleep is incantory, our dreams are spells. They think we are joking at first. That we\u2019ve fallen down a rabbit hole. Paid someone too much to read our palms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We let them believe this. We go the course alone, us two, spelunking in sleep. Tunneling in our dreams. We contort like underwater gymnasts. We are suddenly zoologists, go caving, feed fruit bats sugarwater from miniature syringes. Turn the sugarwater into expert formulated skincare. We grow extremely fertile. We are super wombs. We conjure orgasm on command. We menstruate painlessly and our blood is glitter and heals cuts and scabs. We no longer have underbites, no longer require Invisalign. We eat candy with no caloric effect. Our cowlicks correct, our loose ligaments tune like guitar strings. Our enemies grow large zits on their wedding days and the boys that teased us in middle school come down with hand foot and mouth disease as full grown adults. Our cheekbones perform and our skin is so dewy. Our bloodwork is perfect. We are medical marvels! We sing opera. We sell digital products on Etsy and we start businesses and side hustles and side-side hustles of our side businesses, for which we do our own accounting. Our skin self produces sunscreen. We are protected as we photosynthesize. We are solar powered with balanced solar plexuses. Our throat chakras unblock. We read poetry aloud as people weep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The more we sleep, the more we gain special skills, all of which monetize without lifting a finger. In our sleep, skills flow to us like water. I soon have the credentials to teach at-home animal butchery, bee-keeping, and clarinet theory and I have not once experienced imposter syndrome in doing so. No pausing, no doubting. No blinking, just my eyes moving bilaterally. Just our spellbound REM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Soon they seek our secret sauce. How have our crows\u2019 feet disappeared? How have we mastered such influxes of cash? How have we not lifted a finger? How are we so multifaceted? How are we jacks of all trades and masters of all? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>We tried to tell you<\/em>, we say. We really did. We are nothing if not generous with our gifts. We explain our situation as facts, though they are heard like proverbs you could believe in or not. They, decidedly, do not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We fall asleep so beautifully. We fall asleep from every angle. We sleep upside down and sideways and on park benches, on plush and goose down feathers. The location doesn\u2019t matter, really. We try to explain this. We are cultivating it anywhere. We are sorcerers of sleep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are asked to give lectures. People want to connect, want to have dinner. They want our financial literacy tips, our astrological chart readings, our Jupiter in retrograde predictions, our manifestation techniques, our Law of Attraction-ing best practices, our favorite teas for debloating. <em>How are we never bloated? How are we making so much money literally overnight? With absolutely no effort? How have we garnered millions of followers on social media? How are we so abundant? How do our teeth look so white? How are even our darkest thoughts so linguistically beautiful? How have we monetized our hobbies so seamlessly? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How to pass on the magic? <em><\/em>It is a slippery kind, it evades all questioning. They ask <em>Is this the moment I\u2019ve fallen asleep? How do we know it\u2019s begun?<\/em> To which we say, if you are asking the question, you have not. They are not satisfied. <em>This is new to me,<\/em> I want to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We continue in our sleep. We teach courses on reproductive freedom and earthquake safety and Japanese plot structure and literary scenes of yore. We flip-turn, somersault, lay brick. We hand blow glass and crochet and re-wire lamps. We swing from monkeybars, we bodybuild. We measure space and time and chart constellations and become masters of the smokey-eye and monetize that too, we are make-up artists for intergalactic screenplays and we start an in-print fashion magazine and we pen perfectly plotted mysteries and memoirs and garner such attention that we win every award and then we win awards for being the most decorated award winners that the planet has ever seen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They are interviewing us in wakefulness today about our success we have while sleeping, filming for prime airtime with a live audience. <em>Literal Overnight Success<\/em>, they love to say. <em>Taking \u201cMaking Money While You Sleep\u201d To A Whole New Level!<\/em> They love our smokey eyes, though I\u2019ve stopped meeting mine in the mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Can you try to explain to us mere mortals? How is this all happening literally in your sleep? Way to make us all feel like underachievers! What do you do with your hours of the day?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are silent for a long time. I trace my palm\u2019s lifeline. <em>I\u2019m not sure I understand your question.<\/em> I paint a smile. As though my days are threadbare. As though his days burst at the seams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Well, when it\u2019s all done,<\/em> he says, <em>what do you feel then? Are you ever bored or sad during the day? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I look to my companion in sleep magic and she has closed her eyes. She has fled to dream. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Well, no problems with insomnia here! No problems at all, it seems! <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I look at the crowd. The hollowness of words, how incapable they are of holding something like this. I meet the eyes that are on me, the helm, all the wide-eyed girls, I will them to suck spare bits of magic from the air, so there\u2019s nothing left for him. <em>This is the moment you are falling asleep<\/em>, I think, that little twitch, the tumble of unconsciousness, ringing in our ears. <em>While he clips his fingernails over the toilet, we will be doing what he could never dream of.<\/em> While he\u2019s thinking of <em>hard work<\/em> and <em>pay off<\/em> and <em>why why why why you,<\/em> it will never be him. It will only be us. I feel it, the collective phantom slip on ice, the alpha waves.. I open my eyes, and one by one, each member of the audience slumps, a ripple of bodies in the crowd, joining us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Yes<\/em>, <em>no problems here,<\/em> I nod, bubbling over, nearly levitating, just as he subtly points to the camera crew to adjust me, reposition my eyeshadow, fix me with brushes as I have started to cry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We grow extremely fertile. We are super wombs. We conjure orgasm on command. We menstruate painlessly and our blood is glitter and heals cuts and scabs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":259006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88927],\"author_categories\":{\"88927\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88927,\"display_name\":\"Lucy Rees\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[23715],"tags":[1206],"ppma_author":[88927],"class_list":["post-258990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Overnight Success - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We grow extremely fertile. 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Her work appears in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gordon Square Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">HAD<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flash Fiction Magazine<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Chicago Review of Books<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. She is on the Associate Board of StoryStudio Chicago, and she is working on a novel. Find her at lucymrees.com.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/susan-wilkinson-JBIbhdk3iBM-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258991,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258990\/revisions\/258991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258990"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258975,"date":"2026-09-25T10:50:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258975"},"modified":"2026-09-25T13:13:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T17:13:02","slug":"today-the-september-rumpus-book-club-selection-the-odyssey-with-emily-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/25\/today-the-september-rumpus-book-club-selection-the-odyssey-with-emily-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"Rescheduled: The September Rumpus Book Club Selection: \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d with Emily Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our fourth installment of the relaunch The Rumpus Book Club* has been postponed due to weather and travel delays. The conversation will now take places this Sunday, September 27, at 4:00 PM ET. Host Debbie Millman will be speaking with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.emilyrcwilson.com\/\">Emily Wilson<\/a>\u00a0about her New York Times Bestselling translation of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.emilyrcwilson.com\/the-odyssey\"><em>The Odyssey<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Written in iambic pentameter verse, Emily Wilson\u2019s Odyssey is a lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer\u2019s \u201cnimble gallop\u201d and brings an ancient epic to new life. The New York Times named Wilson\u2019s translation as one of its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2018\/11\/19\/books\/review\/100-notable-books.html\">100 notable books of 2018<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Debbie will be joined this month by Roxane Gay, and together they will be speaking with Emily for 45 minutes and then will open up the conversation to include questions from the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Emily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classics.upenn.edu\/\">Classical Studies<\/a> at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classics.upenn.edu\/\">University of Pennsylvania<\/a>, holding the <a href=\"https:\/\/almanac.upenn.edu\/articles\/emily-wilson-college-for-women-class-of-1963-term-professor\">College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities<\/a>. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aarome.org\/society-of-fellows\/directory\">American Academy in Rome<\/a> in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macfound.org\/fellows\/1053\/\">MacArthur Fellow<\/a>, and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gf.org\/fellows\/emily-wilson\/\">Guggenheim Fellow<\/a>. She has published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.emilyrcwilson.com\/books\">four books<\/a> on ancient literature, philosophy and translation, an edited volume on tragedy, and many essays and articles, as well as verse translations of Seneca, Sophocles, Euripides and Homer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/us02web.zoom.us\/webinar\/register\/WN_Lp0Ri836Sq6lHlrwE9EtEg\">register here and join us<\/a>\u00a0at 4:00 PM ET on Sunday<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<strong>PSA: <\/strong>There have been some scam e-mails purportedly sent from <em>The Rumpus<\/em>, soliciting authors for our book club for a fee. Please disregard these e-mails. Official <em>Rumpus<\/em> e-mails will always come from therumpus.net, from a senior editor on our official masthead, and we do not charge authors to be featured in our book club. Money flows to the writer. Never forget!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written in iambic pentameter verse, Emily Wilson\u2019s Odyssey is a lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer\u2019s \u201cnimble gallop\u201d and brings an ancient epic to new life. The New York Times named Wilson\u2019s translation as one of its 100 notable books of 2018. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139812,"featured_media":258983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[88675],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[88345],"class_list":["post-258975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Rescheduled: The September Rumpus Book Club Selection: \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d with Emily Wilson - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Written in iambic pentameter verse, Emily Wilson\u2019s Odyssey is a lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer\u2019s \u201cnimble gallop\u201d and brings an ancient epic to new life. 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Poemas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>RA\u00cdCES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Me oculto en el espesor de la selva<br \/>donde he vivido milenios<br \/>en la mirada hambrienta del jaguar<br \/>en la lengua b\u00edfida de la serpiente<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Soy ra\u00edz hoja lluvia<br \/><em>lengua madre<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Me encuentro en las ruinas de mis pasados<br \/>que son los tuyos<br \/>en las coronas pulverizadas de los pueblos poderosos<br \/>que olvidaste<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Estoy en tu piel<br \/>en los p\u00e1rpados que esconden tu mirada indiferente<br \/>en tu lengua<br \/>que ha olvidado sus ra\u00edces<br \/>y ahora llora en el idioma for\u00e1neo del ultrajante<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Encu\u00e9ntrame<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">En el fuego que has alimentado con codicia<br \/>h\u00e1blale a \u00e9l y al r\u00edo<br \/>p\u00eddeles que te recuerden qui\u00e9n soy<br \/>qui\u00e9n eres<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perm\u00edtenos rugir contigo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Ya temi xoa, a\u00ea, \u00eaa<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> A\u00fan estoy vivo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>SOY PORQUE FUIMOS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hondo en m\u00ed<br \/>me abr\u00ed paso entre la selva<br \/>y encontr\u00e9 a mi tatarabuela<br \/>moliendo ma\u00edz en el patio<br \/>con las rodillas manchadas de tierra<br \/>y el sudor brillando como ofrenda<br \/>al sol del mediod\u00eda<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Escuch\u00e9 el canto que no aprend\u00ed<br \/>pero mi cuerpo a\u00fan pronuncia<br \/>la lengua robada que arde<br \/>el grito que mi boca olvid\u00f3<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Pashomou<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">En la espesura<br \/>tambi\u00e9n vi a los otros<br \/>quienes trabajaron el barro<br \/>y sembraron ca\u00f1a,<br \/>los que continuaron rezando al sol<br \/>para no olvidar del todo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Yo no nac\u00ed sola<br \/>fui parida por un continente<br \/>y cada rostro ajeno<br \/>me revela un pedazo que cre\u00ed perdido<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regreso al peque\u00f1o apartamento<br \/>donde mi abuela frota Vicks en sus manos<br \/>y lo unta en el pecho de mi hermana<br \/>como si pudiera ahuyentar con mentol<br \/>las penas del mundo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tambi\u00e9n ella conserva los hechizos<br \/>los cuidados suaves y persistentes<br \/>de esas mujeres iletradas<br \/>que levantaron imperios de ternura<br \/>con los pies llenos de barro<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cuando me busco<br \/>ellas me miran<br \/>desde todos los espejos<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>BAJO LA PIEL DEL TIEMPO<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2013 Poema para Carlota<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">M\u00e1s all\u00e1 de este camino<br \/>hay un gran bosque<br \/>donde el tiempo dej\u00f3 de ser r\u00edo<br \/>y se abri\u00f3 en espiral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despertaron tus pupilas infinitas<br \/>que guardan un centenar de galaxias<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Loba de mar<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Destejiste la oscuridad ancestral<br \/>de la luz que te habita<br \/>tus cuerdas vocales parieron un ave<br \/>d\u00e1ndole voz al dolor<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ra\u00edz<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eres amazonas<br \/>un cosmos contenido por tendones y piel<br \/>tu lengua besa la lengua de tus antepasados<br \/>tu cuerpo semilla<br \/>ahora es trueno<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Encu\u00e9ntrame en el fuego que has alimentado con codicia<br \/>\nh\u00e1blale a \u00e9l y al r\u00edo\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88920],\"author_categories\":{\"88920\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88920,\"display_name\":\"Angie Roby\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[88860],"tags":[88861],"ppma_author":[88920],"class_list":["post-258946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poesia","tag-poesia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tres Poemas - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Encu\u00e9ntrame en el fuego que has alimentado con codicia h\u00e1blale a \u00e9l y al r\u00edo\u2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/25\/tres-poemas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tres Poemas - The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" 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Su obra explora la identidad, la memoria, la migraci\u00f3n, el instinto y la vida interior. Es cofundadora, junto a Carlota Roby, de la comunidad cultural Vocales Verticales, cuya misi\u00f3n es hacer de la poes\u00eda una parte de la vida cotidiana.<br \/><br \/>Su escritura est\u00e1 influenciada por la literatura latinoamericana, sus ra\u00edces venezolanas y la relaci\u00f3n entre el cuerpo, la naturaleza, la ancestralidad y la espiritualidad. A trav\u00e9s de la poes\u00eda, Angie busca crear espacios donde la literatura se sienta viva, capaz de devolvernos a nosotros mismos.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/5F397F2F-CC08-4154-9CD7-176BD7AD9B75-Angie-Roby.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258969,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946\/revisions\/258969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258946"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258958,"date":"2026-09-25T08:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258958"},"modified":"2026-09-24T15:39:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:39:30","slug":"like-my-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/25\/like-my-father\/","title":{"rendered":"Like My Father"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Like My Father<\/strong><br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I will spill my bag of allen wrenches<br \/>on the garage floor, remain even<br \/>as the mowed lawn. My father<br \/>smiles when he\u2019s coated<br \/>in oil. Cars remind him<br \/>there\u2019s always something<br \/>to be fixed. He chooses<br \/>not to replace what he can<br \/>resurrect. I\u2019ve seen him<br \/>swim in motor oil, turning<br \/>his drawn-out body<br \/>to coat every scar<br \/>and knotted muscle.<br \/>Silence, he\u2019s taught me,<br \/>is the ultimate surrender<br \/>to the realities of love.\u00a0<br \/>Slim aluminum sheets,<br \/>we are all bent<br \/>with desire,<br \/>but we can still be<br \/>fixed by the quick<br \/>mallet of gravity.<br \/>Science is spiritually<br \/>significant: There is always<br \/>a ritual to answer to. Romance<br \/>is a question of humor,<br \/>grace. His father pulled<br \/>a hamstring trying to race him.<br \/>Humility is an embrace of the red<br \/>oil that flows out of us all. In the end,<br \/>I will hold his soldering iron against<br \/>the empty room, fuse my breath to his<br \/>absence. I will press my forehead into<br \/>every oil stain on the concrete floor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> \u2026\u2026\u2026.My father<br \/>\nsmiles when he\u2019s coated<br \/>\nin oil. Cars remind him<br \/>\nthere\u2019s always something<br \/>\nto be fixed. He chooses<br \/>\nnot to replace what he can<br \/>\nresurrect. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139812,"featured_media":258959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88923],\"author_categories\":{\"88923\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"139812\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88923,\"display_name\":\"Lucy Murrell\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[10691],"tags":[667],"ppma_author":[88923],"class_list":["post-258958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Like My Father - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u2026\u2026\u2026.My father smiles when he\u2019s coated in oil. 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They recently received an MFA in poetry from The Bennington Writing Seminars. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, they received their Bachelor of Science in Philosophy and Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. Lucy has contributed pieces to a number of literary journals and magazines including the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unbound Journal<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oregon Voice<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Evocations Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">manywor(l)d<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">s.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Lucy-Murrell-Author-Photo-Lucy-Murrell.png?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258966,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258958\/revisions\/258966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258958"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258850,"date":"2026-09-24T12:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258850"},"modified":"2026-09-25T02:52:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T06:52:53","slug":"the-mexican-trojan-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/the-mexican-trojan-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mexican Trojan Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many disliked the blunt disregard for Homer\u2019s epic poem in Christopher Nolan\u2019s adaptation of <em>The Odyssey<\/em>, altering and even eliminating altogether some of its most famous passages. It is true that in Nolan\u2019s adaptation, there is little of Odysseus\u2019s hubris, his contradictory ways, his cunning survival, and even his love exploits with nymphs and goddesses. Instead, Nolan plays a trick on us: He makes the hero look inward, in deep and painful agony, far from Homer\u2019s protagonist, presenting a guilt-ridden Odysseus with an anachronistic, Christian anti-war stance. He must reckon with the sack of Troy because it has precipitated a spreading horror. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Famously, Homer\u2019s Odysseus builds the wooden horse as a clever device to breach the otherwise impenetrable wall of Troy. It is a peace gift from the retreating Greeks, a sacred offering to appease the goddess Athena. A majestic scene in the film shows a gigantic, apparently harmless wooden horse half-sunk on the beach, recalling the ending of <em>The Planet of the Apes<\/em> (1968), when the Statue of Liberty sticks out of the sand on the beach of what used to be New York City. It echoes the sense of the apocalyptic. The wooden horse was a monstrous deception signaling the end of an era. It\u2019s an unprecedented abomination, violating all conventions, disavowing the shared religion with the Trojans, and even betraying his own comrades to conduct collective punishment against innocents inside their own homes. The sequence of the soldiers enduring the heat, the rising tide, and their own bodily fluids as they wait inside the horse emphasizes the barbarity. An unforgivable war crime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I will not be the first to notice the parallel between this version of the Trojan War and the forever war the United States has unleashed across the world. But I want to focus on one single perverse gift the US empire has offered its southern neighbor: the war on drugs. We may call it a <em>Mexican<\/em> Trojan Horse, as it was a ruse that caused\u2014and keeps causing\u2014death and destruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Implanting a War <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is often repeated that Felipe Calder\u00f3n, then Mexico\u2019s president, decided of his own accord to launch the now-infamous war on drugs in December of 2006, soon after winning a dubious, widely contested presidential election. As I argue in my book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/717742\/la-guerra-en-las-palabras-una-historia-intelectual-del-narco-en-mexico-1975---2020--war-put-into-words-by-oswaldo-zavala\/\"><em>La guerra en las palabras<\/em><\/a>, the idea was implanted in Calder\u00f3n, who never campaigned on a drug security platform, but nevertheless called for a national antidrug militarization strategy days after taking office. Calder\u00f3n underwent a process of inception\u2014in Nolan\u2019s sense of the word\u2014through which the US persuaded him to escalate the drug war instigated with virulence for at least three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Starting in 1975, the US pushed for a military campaign to <a href=\"https:\/\/kellogg.nd.edu\/operation-condor-war-drugs-and-counterinsurgency-golden-triangle-1977-1983\">attack poor peasants<\/a> in Northern Mexico, spraying herbicides to defoliate poppy and marijuana crops, resulting in the exodus of thousands while failing to curb drug production. In 1989, the US forced Mexico to accept that drug organizations were a \u201cnational security\u201d threat, even creating a new intelligence institution to repeat those false claims. In 2007, Calder\u00f3n negotiated a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.everycrsreport.com\/reports\/IF10578.html\">cooperation agreement<\/a> with then-President George W. Bush: the M\u00e9rida Initiative, which funded a national military campaign against so-called cartels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">President Calder\u00f3n recalls how, to enhance the drug war in M\u00e9xico, he personally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cfr.org\/event\/conversation-felipe-calderon\">asked<\/a> President Bush for the \u201cinstruments\u201d of Jack Bauer, the counterterrorist agent in the TV series <em>24.<\/em> As US cultural productions shaped the Mexican president\u2019s mind, the US also trained thousands of police officers and soldiers in the art of killing. The US government has since spent over $3.6 billion on military equipment and training through the M\u00e9rida Initiative, which has contributed to the killing of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cfr.org\/backgrounders\/mexicos-long-war-drugs-crime-and-cartels\">460,000<\/a> people and more than <a href=\"https:\/\/versionpublicarnpdno.segob.gob.mx\/Dashboard\/ContextoGeneral\">134,072<\/a> disappearances, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/report\/2025\/02\/19\/double-injustice\/how-mexicos-criminal-justice-system-fails-victims-and-the\">disproportionate number<\/a> of them young, poor, brown men, in what at times appears to be a targeted social cleansing campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The M\u00e9rida Initiative was modeled after Plan Colombia, a US-backed $10 billion aid package to instigate counternarcotics operations from 2000 to 2018. Journalist Dawn Paley calls the Latin American drug war a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/24574871\">neoliberal Trojan horse<\/a>\u201d with transnational military policies meant to bring peace and security, in reality, instrumentalizing violence to access resources and untapped markets. This type of binational agreement, Paley argues, \u201ccombines terror with policy making in a neoliberal mix, cracking open social worlds and territories previously unavailable to globalized capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Kill the Narcos<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The drug war has been told as an epic in which modern heroes\u2014DEA agents, brave Mexican soldiers, even if only a few\u2014have fought the barbarians, the Mexican narcos. In the 2018 Netflix series <em>Narcos: Mexico<\/em>, Walt Breslin is a persistent DEA agent who journeys into a land of many adventures and horrors, who fights his share of battles, and who mourns his friends killed in action. It is a story that transforms other men\u2014frequently poor Mexican men\u2014into rats and peasants into bloodthirsty armies, the lotus flower into valuable cocaine and marijuana shipments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The plot is simple: In 1985, DEA agent Enrique Camarena is kidnapped and killed in Mexico by Mexican traffickers in retaliation for his investigative work, which led the authorities to one of the largest marijuana busts in history. At the end of season one, agent Breslin crosses the southern border posing as a tourist and drives an RV to smuggle a small arsenal of weapons. Once in Mexico, he gives a group of other agents\u2014or perhaps mercenaries\u2014a hit list of Mexican traffickers. \u201cWe knew we were in a war,\u201d Breslin says. \u201cNow it was our turn. Pretty soon, they were going to know they were in one too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aligned with the official US narrative\u2014a DEA agent directly intervened in the production, to the point of offering <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-news\/narcos-mexico-real-dea-agent-what-expect-season-2-1170213\/\">spoilers<\/a>\u2014the series distorts the events and naturalizes the killing of traffickers as a type of justified war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mexican viewers will point out that Breslin did not need to breach a wall to sneak into Mexico, as it is mostly defenseless against invasions from the north. The DEA agent comes from the country that built the only standing fortification, so it is hard to believe that he had to smuggle weapons when the US armed the Mexicans traffickers he now intends to kill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The plot becomes even more distorted when you learn that, according to the DEA officer assigned to investigate the agent\u2019s murder, the CIA <a href=\"https:\/\/english.elpais.com\/elpais\/2013\/10\/15\/inenglish\/1381856701_704435.html\">tortured and killed<\/a> Camarena after he learned that US covert agents used drug money and properties owned by Mexican traffickers to sponsor the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua. It is also documented that US-trained Mexican soldiers committed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/27\/world\/americas\/mexican-militarys-high-kill-rate-raises-human-rights-fears.html\">extrajudicial killings<\/a>, and that the militarization has enabled lucrative gas, oil, and mining <a href=\"https:\/\/phenomenalworld.org\/analysis\/militarized-business\/\">projects<\/a> across Mexico, with transnational energy companies working undisturbed even in those regions most ridden with drug-related violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Narcos: Mexico<\/em> omits all this, of course, and like its DEA protagonist, it smuggles back its distorted narrative, blaming the traffickers while erasing all the alleged CIA tracks in the crime. This Mexican Trojan Horse is not a trick to win one war: It is the fundamental mechanism of a forever war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>All the Trojan Horses<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Barbarous tricks are found in most US interventions since World War II. We see it in the <a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2024\/02\/1146332\">false evidence<\/a> of weapons of mass destruction presented at the United Nations to justify the invasion of Iraq, and more recently, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/05\/us\/trump-venezuela-drug-cartel-de-los-soles.html\">made-up<\/a> drug cartel that the Department of Justice used to legitimize the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, with the resurgence of right-wing governments across the region, the US has expanded its violent interventionism by creating the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/map-shows-all-shield-of-the-americas-nations-as-trumps-alliance-grows-12320331\">Shield of the Americas<\/a>,\u201d a \u201ccounter-cartel\u201d coalition of Trump sympathizers. They claim Latin American drug cartels are now popping up everywhere in the region, much like the faceless \u201cpeople of the sea\u201d in Nolan\u2019s film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of now, nineteen countries have joined the alliance. With the political and financial backing of the US, Colombia\u2019s right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella\u2014the newest member, a millionaire with dual US-Colombian citizenship\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/abelardo-de-la-espriella-us-pledges-1-billion-security-assistance-colombia\/\">promised<\/a> to bomb cocaine labs in the jungle and to build megaprisons in the style of those built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. The Trump administration has dramatically intensified violence by designating drug cartels as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/01\/24\/g-s1-44644\/trump-drug-cartels\">terrorist organizations<\/a>, justifying unilateral strikes in Latin America as part of a program the Pentagon calls \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/23\/trump-operation-total-extermination-ecuador-colombia-cuba\/\">Operation Total Extermination<\/a>.\u201d It has already killed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/u-s-forces-strike-vessel-in-pacific-killing-2-accused-of-trafficking-drugs\">223 people<\/a>\u2014many still unidentified\u2014off the coasts of the Caribbean and the Pacific. Ecuador <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/24\/world\/americas\/us-ecuador-drug-camp-bombing-dairy-farm.html\">bombed<\/a> a dairy farm that US intelligence identified as a \u201cnarco terrorist camp,\u201d while the CIA is reportedly running another bombing operation against fishing boats near the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands, <a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/cia-involved-in-covert-strikes-on-ecuadorian-boats-report-says\/\">killing<\/a> at least eight men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we pay attention to all this violence, we will soon see the identity of the \u201cpeople of the sea.\u201d They are the ones willing to kill their own citizens for \u201cnational security\u201d reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Gift of Death<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Mexican Trojan Horse, however, inverts the premise of <em>The Odyssey.<\/em> As Helen explains in the film, the Greeks used her affair as a pretext to attack Troy and displace it as the region\u2019s hegemon in control of all trading routes. Conversely, the US pretends to generously help Latin America to maintain its century-old political and economic dominance in the region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The \u201cwar on drugs\u201d is a double-edged sword gift that literally kills you twice. It ignites the conflict from a distance by flooding Mexico with the annual contraband of as many as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/17\/world\/americas\/mexico-us-guns-trafficking-cartels.html\">500,000 guns<\/a>, many of which end up in traffickers\u2019 hands. Then, it gifts money and training for the Mexican army to go after the criminals the US armed in the first place. As it pushes for antidrug militarization all over Latin America, the US takes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unodc.org\/documents\/wdr\/WDR_2010\/1.3_The_globa_cocaine_market.pdf\">85% of the profits<\/a> from illegal narcotics sales in the country, leads the world in <a href=\"https:\/\/taxjustice.net\/press\/us-tops-ranking-of-real-estate-destinations-for-dirty-money\/\">money laundering<\/a> schemes, and maintains the single largest drug market on the planet. The US is considered, in fact, the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/worldpopulationreview.com\/country-rankings\/drug-use-by-country#which-country-consumes-the-most-illicit-drugs\">drug capital of the world<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The war\u2014the killing\u2014happens in Mexico. The drugs and the money remain in the US. There are no enemy walls to penetrate, but the US has built its own to curb undocumented migration fleeing the violence and the uninhabitable Latin American regions torched by the \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d The US wall is breached daily, but the migrants are not foreign invaders\u2014they make a cheap labor force that fuels the economy, pays taxes, yet is still criminalized, scapegoated, and marginalized. Unsatisfied, the US exploits Mexico\u2019s precarious labor force on both sides of the wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is true, as Grant Morgan writes in <em>Jacobin<\/em>, that Nolan makes a <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2026\/08\/nolan-odyssey-conservatism-liberalism-trump\">conservative turn<\/a> as he imagines the empire repenting for its crimes without calling to subvert imperial politics. Odysseus finds forgiveness while allowing the next generation to inherit the throne and continue ruling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The current state of politics in the US, however, is closer to Homer\u2019s wicked poem than to Nolan\u2019s wishful adaptation. It is led by a bragging king, ready to cause the demise of others because he cannot stop himself from mischief, from taunting the Cyclops, from hearing the Sirens\u2019 song, from destroying the prosperous Troy over a man\u2019s wounded pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There Is No Epic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his poem \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/users\/00\/pwillen1\/lit\/art.htm\">The Art of Poetry<\/a>,\u201d Jorge Luis Borges compares Odysseus\u2019s island of Ithaca\u2014and not his epic journey home\u2014with the essence of art: \u201cThey say Ulysses, wearied of wonders, \/ wept with love on seeing Ithaca, \/ humble and green. Art is that Ithaca, \/ a green eternity, not wonders.\u201d Like Borges, Nolan\u2019s rewriting of <em>The Odyssey<\/em> does much more than present Odysseus as a sober old man ready to make amends: It interrupts the very logic of the epic, it robs the hero of his adventurous <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2026\/07\/film-review-nolan-odyssey-epic\">landscape<\/a>, it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/the-paper\/v48\/n14\/emily-wilson\/an-uncomplicated-man\">uncomplicates<\/a> the complicated hero, it even decapitates the gods. In sum, it relocates art in the green eternity of the land and the sea, away from the wonders of imperial killing. Stripped of its magnificent mythology, the film reduces Western culture to a society of murderous thieves craving the next bloody plundering, with only a few good men willing to admit that they are in desperate need of forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For those of us on the outskirts of the Western tradition, watching the film from the perspective of the conquered, there was a certain relief in looking down on the gringo Odysseus accepting his <em>mea culpa<\/em>, even if it\u2019s only done to allow the empire to wash away its sins the old Christian way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Matt Damon\u2019s Odysseus makes us realize who the real \u201cpeople of the sea\u201d are and what kind of destruction they are bringing to our city gates. The film\u2019s leading cast is revealing in that sense: Damon played a CIA-trained assassin in the <em>Bourne<\/em> trilogy; Jon Bernthal, a police officer, mobster Johnny Soprano, a mercenary for a private army; Robert Pattinson, the resourceful time-travel agent in Nolan\u2019s <em>Tenet<\/em>; and as Odysseus\u2019 son Telemachus, Tom Holland, whose first installment of <em>Spider-Man<\/em> was titled <em>Homecoming<\/em>. They are all echoes and variations of the same motif: the brave man trying to return home or build a new one while ravaging other people\u2019s land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is also very telling to look at the minorities in the film: Eumaeus, the blind and wise servant, is beautifully performed by John Leguizamo; Zendaya is the nameless, decapitated Trojan young woman who haunts Odysseus as a spectral Athena; both the disfigured Helen and Clytemnestra, killing Agamemnon to avenge the murder\/sacrifice of her daughter, are played by Lupita Nyong\u2019o; and Anne Hathaway, as Penelope, speaks for the abused and harassed woman married to a missing soldier. They all seek justice, but they do little to disrupt white masculine power relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nolan\u2019s film does not dare to speak truth to power to the fullest. In our cruel contemporary Odyssey, there is no epic, no homecoming, and no redemption. There is certainly no atonement. No one will pay. No one will be exiled. The wall will stand because it was built by those who conceived the Trojan Horses as tools to preserve an empire, not to destroy one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let us silence the muse and extract the tricksters from within the Trojan Horse of the drug war. Let us interrupt its epic tale of wonders. If the perpetrators don\u2019t offer to atone for their sins, we should make them. We are weary of wonders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The drug war has been told as an epic in which modern heroes\u2014DEA agents, brave Mexican soldiers, even if only a few\u2014have fought the barbarians, the Mexican narcos. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139812,"featured_media":258857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88917],\"author_categories\":{\"88917\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88917,\"display_name\":\"Oswaldo Zavala\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[88701],"tags":[9416],"ppma_author":[88917],"class_list":["post-258850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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His most recent book is <em>Drug Cartels Do Not Exist<\/em>.<em> Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture<\/em> (2018).<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/CT-02725_MSGR.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258972,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850\/revisions\/258972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258850"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258433,"date":"2026-09-24T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T15:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258433"},"modified":"2026-09-21T13:43:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T17:43:41","slug":"two-poems-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/two-poems-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Gap Year<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>after Frank O\u2019Hara<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Blaze drops me at the side of the road where a trail cuts through volcanic rock to the nude beach, but not before he pockets my Mountain Goats CD as a memento, a thing he does with everyone, I find out later. I stub my toe on the way down to the water because I\u2019m carrying a heavy edition of <em>Gravity\u2019s Rainbow<\/em>, nothing else, not even a purse, and I sit in the sand with a bloody foot as the Kenosha Kid asserts, questions, addresses what I did and didn\u2019t do. Late-morning, Lloyd from the dolphin school stops by and drives me to his bungalow,\u00a0where he wants to watch <em>The Secretary<\/em> with Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2014which IYKYK, but I didn\u2019t know\u2014and afterwards he shows me the swimming hole at the back of his yard and says you have to strip and dive in or the mosquitoes will eat you alive and he\u2019s stripped and in, and I\u2019m walking myself and my book up to the road to thumb a ride. A tourist in a rental van drops me at home, where Dennis is harvesting chard with Angel the cockatoo on his shoulder, Angel who turns and bites a divot from his ear just as Matty offers me an amaretto sour and invites me on a walk. I swab my toe with\u00a0 alcohol and grab my book, and Matty leads me to the grove of guavas near a stream where a god once washed her hair, and he leaves me there in the green with Tyrone Slothrup, and when guavas drop their bombs onto my head, I feel them first and recognize them later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Still Life (Fruits of the Earth, 1938)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I arrange us in the night and try to wipe away the fingerprints. Your kernels chant the violence back to me, demand their missing husk. I set them to the side, hide the plump fruit of your eyes at the bottom of a bowl. They swivel\u00a0to the light.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The melon shares a single spot of gold, withholds the rest.\u00a0<br \/>When I knock, it makes a hollow sound.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My eyes unlatch like halves of a plum, a neat split down the\u00a0middle. Your outline doubles and duets. I trace the pit to find the whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A pear cored and flipped on its back could be chayote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once I thought a bowl of sweetness could be motionless. Then sky dragged on my cigarette and exhaled, flipped perspective on its edge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The table grows an eye each time I think of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I cut myself in two to feel the wind, to bare my longing to the elements. It ripens, breathes its spores into your mouth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pan dulce, unattended, weeps red sugar. When chiles dry, I save them, change their names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once I thought a bowl of sweetness could be motionless. 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Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in <em>Beloit Poetry Journal<\/em>, <em>Gulf Coast<\/em>, <em>32 Poems<\/em>, <em>Southeast Review<\/em>, and elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/headshot-oaxaca-Elizabeth-Martinez.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258855,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258433\/revisions\/258855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258433"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258493,"date":"2026-09-24T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T14:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258493"},"modified":"2026-09-24T15:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:30:09","slug":"negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiating Contradictions on the Dance Floor: Power, Exclusion, and the Nightlife in Kyle Carrero Lopez’s “Party Line”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Party Line<\/em> by Kyle Carrero Lopez invites readers to think critically about the many kinds of parties one is beholden to throughout life. As this poetry collection depicts, political parties and pool parties have more in common than one thought possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both nostalgic and incisive, these poems use modern nightlife as a prism to illuminate devastating truths about the social politics that determine one\u2019s very personhood (and who gets on the guest list for the hottest nightclub in town).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A party promoter is more than just an affable marketer. As the narrator puts it in \u201cI\u2019m Asked a Lot What a \u2018Party Host Means,\u2019\u201d it\u2019s a sociological niche in which he becomes \u201cthe locus of power\u201d who \u201cempowers patrons to <em>stay, have \/ another.<\/em>\u201d <em><\/em>The transition between the description and a phrase one often hears in nightlife is smooth, almost flirtatious. This playful register speaks to the amiable nature of one of nightlife\u2019s many foot soldiers\u2014a carefully constructed persona that belies its real interest: capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Money\u2014who has it and how it\u2019s acquired\u2014becomes a throughline for many of the poems throughout the book. Behind every drag-queen bouncer and \u201clengthy manifestos on community care and \/ the impermissibility of all \u2018-isms\u2019 within the space,\u201d declares the same speaker, who is now off the clock and on the dancefloor in the lengthy \u201cPublic Policy\u201d poem, lies a microcosm of the capitalist economy to which partygoers subject themselves. Readers can imagine a wry smile on Carrero Lopez\u2019s face as he writes with a sharp frankness that nevertheless remains graceful throughout. He\u2019s not indignant (as so many critics of modern nightlife are labeled); instead, his poems strike a fruitful balance between sardonic and candid as they uncover the hypocrisy inherent in converting nightlife into a political project\u2014with the scruples of an investigative journalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Under a system as omnipresent as late-stage capitalism, it becomes easy to abandon hope that one could ever foster meaningful change in any direction and blame forces beyond one\u2019s control. Partying\u2014however passionately it\u2019s been politicized in the last decade\u2014breeds a complacency distinct from that of people who never thought about these things in the first place. But that\u2019s decidedly not what Carrero Lopez embodies with these poems\u2019 narrator. If anything, he\u2019s happy to implicate both the rabblerouser who narrates \u201cPublic Policy\u201d and the blithe gays who run amok in \u201cI\u2019m Asked a Lot What a \u2018Party Host\u2019 Job Means\u201d in the killing of the cash cow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In \u201cPhragmites,\u201d the same speaker has left the club and heads east toward Fire Island, a popular gay travel destination notorious for its white-male crowds and prohibitively expensive logistics. He then admits that \u201c[m]yself included, close to everyone here \/ has a body of one approximate build.\u201d Though he may not share a racial identity with most attendees, the speaker understands himself to be a cog in the machine that manufactures inclusion based on an almost fascistic taste for fitness. The singularity of the phrase \u201cone approximate\u201d echoes the uniformity previously emphasized by the description of the \u201ctall, same-faced\u201d reed plants (and attendees) often associated with this particular summer colony. These compound modifiers work harmoniously to impart the humor, humility, and mathematical precision necessary to deliver a meaningful critique of queer social life\u2019s racial-capitalist trappings. The poem itself is named after the scientific label for the slender and indistinctly beige plant that grows in crowds around Fire Island. Coy? Maybe, and I relish it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other poems address entirely distinct aspects of queerness, far from the club\u2019s jubilee, but the consistently (and delightfully) petulant tone implies that they too are narrated by the same speaker. He\u2019s a young man dutifully aware of greater forces always at work even in the most minute of interactions\u2014both outside of the nightclub and in the imperious presence of one\u2019s parents. Thus, this prism also brings familial relationships into focus and shows how these dynamics reflect larger socio-political forces that shape our ability to live up to ideals of the nuclear family. In \u201cSanctions,\u201d the reader is transported back to the speaker\u2019s childhood when he notes that he\u2019s \u201cat a party where there\u2019s a dance track on that [his] father \/ used to play in his DJ studio, [their] basement, low \/ ceiling over checkered black-and-white tile.\u201d He doesn\u2019t dwell on the past for its own sake. He is, however, deeply concerned with the censorship that blots one\u2019s memories as a queer youth, and how he learned his \u201cfirst sanctions:\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">no \u201cgirl toys\u201d don\u2019t walk like that   stand like that<br \/>talk like that  sit like that    come downstairs like that<br \/>Look at men like that like that<br \/>like that that that. His anthem, his law<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the same way that global powers like the United States exact brutal economic restrictions on the nations it deems a threat to its hegemony, so too do male caretakers deprive queer children of the self-expression that allows them to achieve full personhood as adults. Call it homophobia or self-preservation, this poem-as-metaphor clarifies how asymmetrical power works within both interpersonal bigotry and imperialism. Further along in the same poem, the speaker smugly remarks that \u201cthese old head colds, \/ pile in on tempo as I dance \/ on another man.\u201d The unmistakable wit evoked by the double entendre of \u201cold head colds\u201d is a humble but necessary reminder that the narrator is not bound by anyone\u2019s ignorant notion of manhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Subjugation (interpersonal or otherwise) is a recurring theme throughout the book. But for Carrero Lopez, to merely state that it exists isn\u2019t enough. Instead, the material conditions that allow people to jeopardize or <em>determine<\/em> the autonomy of others serve as centerpieces, offering a perspective squarely rooted in this physical world. These poems aren\u2019t against the abstract. But when the thesis is so clearly an analysis of how individual relationships to labor manifest in social and political relationships, linguistic clarity and unrelenting humor become assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To enrich the anti-capitalist framework laid out in this collection, Carrero Lopez often invokes his ancestral homeland of Cuba. Despite the richness of the island\u2019s culture, American discourse often flattens Cubans into one of two stereotypes. On one side are fair-skinned conservatives whose families flocked to Miami in the 1960s, ostensibly because the revolution came and took their sugarcane plantations. On the other are Black and brown Castro fanatics who\u2019ve ostensibly been brainwashed by Soviet-era propaganda. The American notion of Cuban people is stuck in the Bay of Pigs as it imagines them split neatly into two groups stuck in a tug of war for Cuba\u2019s political destiny. Nevertheless, it\u2019s a conflict often dwarfed by the true belligerents of the Cold War, \u201cbetween Kremlin and Pentagon,\u201d as summarized by the speaker in \u201cThe Red Telephone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cuba then becomes a symbol of the power struggle between the left and right wings of the Global North, or the \u201cMoscow-DC hotline\u201d as Carrero Lopez aptly puts it. These poems are guided by an ideology that doesn\u2019t pledge allegiance to leftist forces despite their collectivist aspirations. By going beyond optics, one learns how \u201csome sunny, skinny \/ island could lift so much, \/\/ store at least enough power \/ to spark the giants\u2019 red line.\u201d Emphasizing Cuba\u2019s size relative to the tremendous stature of the United States and Russia clarifies its role as an unwilling stage for one of the most transformative conflicts of the twenty-first century. This is the truth of Cuban society that goes unacknowledged in favor of incendiary headlines that fuel (and are fueled by) reductive political tropes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The discursive effect of these poems reveals a keen awareness of the colonial machinations that grant societies power over others. But in \u201cGay Travel, or Music Makes the People Come Together,\u201d Carrero Lopez is at his most critical as his itinerant speaker exposes the invasive tendencies common even among his left-leaning acquaintances. Actually, I <em>do<\/em> \u201cwant to know how B\u2019s trip \/ to the settler colony went.\u201d To which \u201c[h]e says: What can I say? \/ It was a lot like the settler colony \/\/ where I live.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The enjambment makes the nature of the speaker\u2019s inquiry surprising\u2014downright delightful, actually. By using a common noun instead of a proper noun (such as Havana, Cuba), the poem implicitly emphasizes the material similarities between societies around the world that were forged through settler colonialism. A nation\u2019s name and tourist districts then become fig leaves obscuring brutal histories of extraction. Even in the throes of the realization that the partiers he rubs elbows with funnel money into neo-colonial systems of travel, the speaker remains observant, further noting that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the club, B met a twunk<br \/>in a harness who would shout things like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>We\u2019re so lucky to be alive<\/em>\u2014meaning: under<br \/>the molly under the red lights<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Under the ceiling<br \/>Under the missile defense system<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This poem carefully dramatizes how capitalist reality means that pleasure and safety often come at the expense of others\u2019 well-being. It invites queer people to disentangle the comforts they get to enjoy from their roles within a racial-capitalist economy. Like other poems throughout, it engages mass complicity with a matter-of-fact tone that doesn\u2019t care to insult. Rather, it offers a material analysis that empowers readers to locate themselves within economic systems that dole out safety and danger in accordance with structures of oppression that arch across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nowhere else in this collection is capitalism\u2019s omnipotence thrown into greater relief than in \u201cEmbargo (ADDENDUM).\u201d It\u2019s a poem that corresponds with other historical moments captured throughout the book. Just as the United States induces strife in Cuba through economic embargos and the father in \u201cSanctions\u201d coaxes intrapersonal anguish within the narrator, so too does the Israeli state render life utterly inhospitable in Gaza as symbolized in \u201cSurgeon Without Anesthetic.\u201d This final addition to the narrative of manufactured strife reminds onlookers that suffering in a capitalist\u2019s world is never a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jumbled into one claustrophobic stanza, the speaker repeats essential questions: \u201cWith what syringes? \/ With what hormones?\u201d They\u2019re queries that invoke the healthcare crises that define modern life. It\u2019s no coincidence that many of these poems\u2019 interrogations relate to physical well-being\u2014a low, and therefore vital, component of the hierarchy of needs. It\u2019s by design that the very course of countless lives is determined while asking something as simple as \u201c[w]ith what gauze?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the bleakness of the material world articulated in this collection, <em>Party Line<\/em> isn\u2019t trying to dissuade its readers from living in the world just as its speaker does. In the last poem, \u201cI Saw Assata in Havana\u201d (I read it as \u201cI Saw Assata in Heaven\u201d at first), the speaker leaves the audience with the poignant symbol of a woman who dedicated her life not only to resisting the United States\u2019 carceral apparatus but also to actively risking her life fighting it. Many will finish the collection with the image of Shakur\u2019s \u201csmile \/ that filled her face and laughs that grew \/\/ in strength, upward upward\u201d and a shameless hope that one can rebel and live to tell the tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What brings joy\u2014and at what cost\u2014can be frightening questions. At least there are writers like Carrero Lopez to make one wonder why some partygoers get in for free while others have to wait down the block.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Subjugation (interpersonal or otherwise) is a recurring theme throughout the book. But for Carrero-Lopez, to merely state that it exists isn\u2019t enough. Instead, the material conditions that allow people to jeopardize or determine the autonomy of others serve as centerpieces, offering a perspective squarely rooted in this physical world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88896],\"author_categories\":{\"88896\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88896,\"display_name\":\"Alejandro Villa V\u00e1squez\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[88628],"tags":[8535],"ppma_author":[88896],"class_list":["post-258493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-criticism","tag-criticism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Negotiating Contradictions on the Dance Floor: Power, Exclusion, and the Nightlife in Kyle Carrero Lopez's "Party Line" - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Subjugation (interpersonal or otherwise) is a recurring theme throughout the book. 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He was born in Medell\u00edn, Colombia, and grew up in New York. He has bylines in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Daily Beast<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">FilmDaze<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Washington Square News<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. You can find him on X and Instagram at @b3ttylafea, or on Medium at @bettylafea, where he writes about politics and culture.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/partyline.jpeg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258493"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258957,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258493\/revisions\/258957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258493"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]