TORCH: An Alien, Ineligible for Participation
That a bumbling demagogue would be able to take this institutional racism and weaponize it is, then, not really a surprise. The seeds for this hate were planted a long time ago.
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Posts Tagged: airports
TORCH: Growing Season
I ask Hussein if he’s proud of the work he’s doing. He says that he is. We stop talking. For a moment, the market feels like peace.
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We Brown Women
Our bodies will not be your banners. We are not yours to use and abuse, we are not yours to dupe. We see through your words, and we see your violence.
...moreThis Week in Essays
Through her work with Doctors Without Borders, Caitlin L. Chandler offers us a glimpse of what life is like on the Syrian border for Guernica. For Real Life magazine, Christopher Schaberg examines the symbolism of airports as “fraught borderlands” perfect for a protest. Here at The Rumpus, Katharine Coldiron takes our minds for a spin around the concepts of […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Mila Jaroniec
Mila Jaroniec talks about her debut novel Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover,” writing autofiction, the surprising similarity between selling sex toys and selling books, and the impact of having a baby on editing.
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Sunday Rumpus Poetry: Five Poems by Jan-Henry Gray
Dry-mouthed, standing shoulder to shoulder, / They watch the carousel spit out black bags / And mumble “not mine” over and over.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Bob and Dave
The threat of perfunctory conversation looms. Raza reaches for his headphones, but it is too late. The man is already talking to him.
...moreTransportation Sobriety Assistance
Writing for The Awl, Kristi Coulter gives sound advice on how to avoid airport bars: Once you’ve left the multiplex, you can swing by the Puppy Zone, or curl up in a big armchair, or — for fearful flyers — have a drop-in hypnotherapy session. By then, it should be time to pop onto your plane, stretch out, and […]
...morePoems for Airports
In his relatable poem in Hunger Mountain, “Observations at the Security Checkpoint,” Joel Brouwer gently explores traveling life under our TSA overlords: Now our gestures grow both more hurried and more delicate, we stand on one foot to remove a boot, take off our hats and jackets, as if for sex or prayer, exposing ourselves […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Chicago bookstores are worried about the arrival of a physical Amazon store. One bookstore is using clickbait tactics on social media to trick people into reading more books. Some people actually like airport bookstores. A rural Virginia bookstore has become wildly successful.
...moreOn Writing “Chick Lit”
At the New York Times, Jennifer Weiner writes about her experience with the gendered devaluation of popular fiction: Somewhere between my birth and my novel’s publication, I’d gotten the message that there were books that mattered and books that did not; writers whom an Ivy League institution would be proud to claim, and those who […]
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Ames Hawkins
Is it really that human capacity is limited? Or are we limited by what it is we believe we are able, and allow ourselves—are willing—to see?
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Aspects of Travel
I refuse to be resolvable. I wait. I wait for confusion to become a resting place for resolution to become a moving organism, an evolution foretold by my body.
...moreTSA Employee Reveals Airport Security Secrets
…one of the officers in our class asked him to tell us, off the record, what he really thought about the machines. “They’re shit,” he said, shrugging. He said we wouldn’t be able to distinguish plastic explosives from body fat and that guns were practically invisible if they were turned sideways in a pocket. Rumpus […]
...morePlayer One
The latest novel from Douglas Coupland critiques contemporary culture, but lacks fresh perspectives.
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