Posts by author
Bryan Washington
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The Irony of It
Over at The Believer, Riayn Fergins chats with Cornel West: Anytime you have a deep commitment to loving your neighbor, you hate injustice. When you love folks, you can’t stand the fact they’re being treated unfairly… It’s not sadomasochistic. You’re…
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Dearly Beloved
Down at Studio 360, Hilton Als talks to Toni Morrison about writing, habit, and age. It’s not the first interview she’s given this year, but it’s certainly one of her memorable ones.
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Shooting the West Bank
Teju Cole spent his summer in Palestine, just before the latest wave of hardship. Viewing the country through his camera lens proved more affecting than not: Photography cannot capture this sorrow, but it can perhaps relay back the facts on…
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Double Deja Vu
Here’s a mouthful: Catherine Lacey has written a story, about a woman named Catherine Lacey, who’s writing a story about Etgar Keret, who’s just written a story about a man named after himself. Her piece, and its inevitable outcome, are over…
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Hallelujah
Listing our literary patrons of sex-ed, Leonard Cohen doesn’t immediately come to mind. And yet: Cohen, who turns eighty on Sunday, is exceptionally good at drawing out those moments of sexual crystallization. It’s a skill that, along with his gravelly…
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Reading Others in America
When it comes to our literary dialogue, Kiese Laymon stands unaffected: The problem with our national lit isn’t just that it’s often written from the same voice; it’s written often to the same listeners. But if you changed the listeners,…
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Works to Watch Out For
If Alison Bechdel’s Genius grant weren’t reason enough to celebrate, she’s got another graphic memoir due in 2017. As the New York Times puts it: “The Secret to Superhuman Strength” is Ms. Bechdel’s third graphic memoir and chronicles her decades…
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The Blues Can Make You Dance
When it comes to comedy, Ted Alexandro champions thoughtfulness: Comedians are thinkers. The best ones are akin to philosophers, in my opinion. Not that that’s the goal, but sometimes these funny insights can also be deeply profound. I think the…
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Laugh Track
Inconceivably, unexplainably, and, inevitably, thankfully, Bill Cosby’s on tour again. But even off-stage, he’s been there all his life: In 1976, Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts, after writing a dissertation about whether teachers found…
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Honest to a Fault
You probably knew that Lena Dunham wrote a memoir (if you didn’t, she has), but she’d love to remind you why she’s qualified. Meghan Daum elaborates for the New York Times Magazine: To suggest that Dunham is too young, too privileged, too entitled,…
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Stretching the Truth
At the Atlantic, Jenny Nordberg looks at what it’s like for Afghani girls, posing as boys, to put food on the table: It is simple math—if she is caught, no one eats. And every day she fears discovery. All that Niima…
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Sinking, Steadily
Over at Buzzfeed, Leigh Stein paints a portrait of two lovers before the fall: Jason and I met in 2007, at an audition for a tragedy. I was 22 and wanted the role of Medea. He was 18 and didn’t…