Features & Reviews
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The Many Faces of Arab Culture: Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Narratives like this one complicate and humanize America’s simplistic view of Arab cultures, toppling the flimsy idea that Arab people are intractably Other.
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Gabrielle Bell
Gabrielle Bell discusses her forthcoming graphic memoir, Everything Is Flammable, what it was like to mine her own life for subject matter, and how anxiety affects her work.
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tamiko Nimura
Tamiko Nimura talks about the influence of history, memory, and silence on her work; creating a private MFA for herself; and writing a generational memoir.
Worlds Full of Demons: Chavisa Woods’s Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country
We must ask ourselves: who stands in the shadows of our national persona, both historically and in the nation’s literature? Woods raises the question, and her work points toward an answer.
Allowing a Female to Own Her Genius: Talking with Alana Massey
Alana Massey discusses her debut collection, All the Lives I Want, the best piece of writing advice she's ever received, and acknowledging the work that women do.
What to Read When the World Is Unreliable
Instead of sorting through all the crazy news stories this weekend, we suggest taking a break with some unreliable narrators in a few far more worthwhile novels.
A Very Great Scoundrel: The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins Volume III: Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks
In hindsight, it’s sometimes difficult not to read more than a bit of sadomasochism into Hopkins’s inner passions and the ways in which he resisted them.
A Language in Constant Rebellion: Talking with Aura Xilonen
Aura Xilonen discusses her novel, Gringo Champion, the realities of immigration, translating texts, and her love of cinema.
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #84: Susan DeFreitas
Picture this: a curbside juggler with a rose between his teeth. That’s the opening image of Susan DeFreitas’s powerful debut novel, Hot Season. Vivid (and sometimes strange) images strike again…
Haunted by Child Refugees: Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends
These aren’t ghosts; these are children who have braved a perilous journey to escape the violent nightmares back home.
All Writing Is Political: A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
Mohsin Hamid discusses his new novel, Exit West, hope in fiction as a form of resistance, the necessity of learning to accept social change, and how much America and Pakistan have come to resemble each other.