Features & Reviews
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Living Outside the Narrative in Elif Batuman’s The Idiot
The Idiot dramatizes the alienation, and even heartbreak, of losing the narrative thread of your existence.
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The Dark Heart of America: On David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon
David Grann’s new book Killers of the Flower Moon explores the 1920s murders of the Osage tribe, the making of the FBI, and is a reminder of the all too recent history of betrayals that comprise America’s dark heart.
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Visiting Abandoned Places: A Conversation with Kristen Radtke
Kristen Radtke discusses her illustrated memoir Imagine Wanting Only This, working with editors on graphic narratives, and visiting abandoned places.
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What It Means to Hold and Be Held in Jennifer Givhan’s Protection Spell
The book explores ambiguities—in terms of race, in terms of motherhood, but especially in terms of the body and the subconscious.
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Immigration and Infertility: Talking with Shanthi Sekaran
Shanthi Sekaran discusses her new novel, Lucky Boy, where fraught issues like immigration and infertility—and the lives they impact—intersect.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #79: Kelcey Parker Ervick
The woman whose face appears on the Czech five-hundred koruna doesn’t appear there without consequence. During the late 19th century, politically active Božena Němcová was an innovator of Czech literature. Twenty-first century writer Kelcey Parker Ervick continues Němcová’s legacy in…
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The Myth of the Troubled Female in Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
Sometimes it’s necessary to shift one’s moral compass, and sometimes it’s necessary to destroy it.
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This Week in Books: Generation Space: A Love Story
Welcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit in…
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The Lucky Ones Are Those Who Do Not Disappear
Pachico offers is an anthropological view of small, beautifully evoked human experiences—an ethnography of survival, memory, and nostalgia.
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Concubines and Expat Husbands: Catching Up with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan discusses her new novel, Sarong Party Girls, concubine culture, and the freedom of writing fiction after a career in journalism.
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What to Read When Things Go Nuclear
Here are some books to read that will remind you that there is beauty out there, even if it’s hard-wrought.
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Lines Like Poems unto Themselves: Anthony Madrid’s Try Never
My favorite poems in this book aren’t my favorites because of what they say or do as poems, but because they have the best individual lines.