Posts by author
Lauren O’Neal
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E-Reader App Roundup
Sure you love old-fashioned books, but sometimes they’re too bulky to carry on the bus, or you don’t want to devote valuable bookshelf real estate to something you’re not sure you’ll like. For those times, there are e-readers—or, when your…
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When Banning a Book Is Good
Novelist Dennis Miller was participating in a panel discussion about censorship at Mansfield University’s campus library, when he joked that his book should be banned: “It has sex, violence, and adult language.” Library director Scott DiMarco’s response? Done and done.…
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W. Kamau Bell and Nato Green Tonight in the Mission
Rumpus pal W. Kamau Bell got all fancy and moved to New York to host his hilarious TV show Totally Biased. But we haven’t forgotten his San Francisco roots, and neither has he—he’ll be performing tonight at The Chapel on Valencia…
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That Rolling Stone Article
Although it has stirred up controversy with its cover photo, the Rolling Stone article about alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is honest and interesting and frustrating and perplexing. How did a kid who seemed so sweet and laid-back to his friends…
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“The Czar and the Poet”
When the people followed the Communists at the beginning of the twentieth century, they gave up Christ, but they found it impossible, as the revolutionary poets exhorted them, “to throw Pushkin overboard the steamboat of modernity.” Prominent Russian writer Mikhail…
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Stories About Women in Prison
Orange Is the New Black, the new Netflix series based on the memoir of Rumpus interviewee Piper Kerman, has piqued viewers’ interest in the stories of women in prison. Whose stories get told, and how do we interpret them? A…
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Why Baseball Movies Usually Strike Out
From Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” to Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, there’s something about baseball stories that captures our imaginations. Have baseball movies done the same? Maybe, but with much less artistic integrity, argues Kevin Courrier in a…
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Introducing Lit Tease, A Preview/Fundraiser for Lit Crawl
Still hyped up from Beast Crawl and counting down the days until San Francisco’s Lit Crawl in October? Then you’ll want a ticket to Lit Tease, LitQuake’s preview/fundraiser event for the highlight of their annual festival, happening tonight. Tickets are…
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“bell hooks’ Feminism Is My Feminism”
In the latest installment of an Autostraddle feature described as “a biweekly devotional to whoever the fuck I’m into,” Carmen Rios throws a little love party for bell hooks. Inspired by an eerily prescient hooks quote about “the white male home…
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Dear Sugar, You Are Now Being Played by Reese Witherspoon
Here’s an informative little roundup of book news from the New Yorker‘s book-news blog. Highlights include a 300-year-old cookbook, a “‘new type of fragmentation’ in contemporary literature,” and oh yeah—Reese Witherspoon is officially going to play our very own Cheryl Strayed…
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For-Profit Schools from the Students’ Perspective
Talk about good timing: on the same day we posted Stephen S. Mills’s essay about working for a for-profit school, Racialicious reposted an essay looking at the issue from the other side. In it, Tressie McMillan Cottom writes about the students…
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“A Sex Work Testament from Someone Outside the Movement”
Emotions tend to run high around controversial confessional writer Marie Calloway’s blunt descriptions of sex, but few have discussed her exploration of sex work. Enter sex-worker blog Tits & Sass, where two editors had a conversation about the feelings of recognition…