What to Read When You’ve Made It More Than Halfway through 2017
A list of Rumpus editors' favorite reads from 2017 thus far—books that have kept us sane, challenged us to work harder and think bigger, and kept us dreaming and hopeful.
Features & Reviews
9282 posts
Glimpsing the Colors of the World: Nancy Chen Long’s Light Into Bodies
As a white mother of biracial children myself, this book became for me an opportunity to glimpse, for a moment, the colors of the world, and of skin, as my children might.
Scripting New Narratives: Mandy Len Catron’s How to Fall in Love with Anyone
I can’t help but wonder what if, in detangling love stories and our relationships to them, Catron is building yet another narrative—an anti-narrative, perhaps—of love.
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Erika T. Wurth
Erika T. Wurth talks about her latest book, Buckskin Cocaine, persevering through rejection, and white writers writing Native characters.
Wisdom Is a Double-Edged Sword: Talking with Jay Baron Nicorvo
Jay Baron Nicorvo discusses his debut novel, The Standard Grand, how easy it is for civilians to forget about soldiers and veterans, and his longstanding love of animals.
Entering an Open Doorway: Marjorie Agosín’s Las Islas Blancas / The White Islands
Agosín’s poems, though quiet and seemingly simple, linger with an interior elasticity that does not break.
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #97: Peg Alford Pursell
Peg Alford Pursell discusses SHOW HER A FLOWER, A BIRD, A SHADOW, openness, brevity, lyricism, and the benefit of dwelling in our emotions.
In a Quicksand of Language: A Conversation with Krys Lee
Krys Lee discusses her debut novel, How I Became a North Korean, having empathy for people and characters, and finding the balance between real-world facts and imagination.
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Iris Dunkle
Iris Jamahl Dunkle on her new collection Interrupted Geographies, writing against the pastoral tradition, the power of persona poems, and the town of Pithole.
Not Your Typical Hero: Hostage by Guy Delisle
Against the muscular inevitability of Hollywood heroism, Hostage introduces the possibility that, in the face of the incomprehensible, we might remain ourselves.
The Myth of White Male Rage: Jared Yates Sexton’s The People Will Rise
[I]n a book that argues we are divided and stuck in our own echo chambers, Sexton’s own divide goes unexamined, his own echo chamber unchallenged.
The Possible Absence of a Future: Talking with Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham discusses her latest collection, Fast, the terrifying destruction of our planet, a happy formal accident, and how to live in times of world crisis.