Barack Obama
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The Big Idea: Bill McKibben
Journalist and environmental activist Bill McKibben discusses whether our environmental crisis can be improved under our new political administration, climate change denial, and manifestations of resistance.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 11): “Skinhead”
Using dramatic monologue, Smith unmasks the skinhead’s anger to fend off threats to his way of life.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Tell Me Something Good
I need to feel that I can be a woman and be black in this present cultural climate.
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Readers Report: The Emperor’s New Clothes
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
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Binary States of America: A Letter to Obama
In the end, although I wanted you to be more like Charles Bronson or Malcolm or Luke Cage, I am very proud to have witnessed your historic presidency—the successes, and even the disappointments.
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Cook the Books
Cook’s portraits are usually accompanied by texts distilled from interviews she conducts with her subjects (afterward, she says, because she prefers the shoot itself to remain as meditative as possible). This provides her, and her audience, with a verbal layer…
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Choosing Stories: On Partisanship, the Media, & American Ideology in 2016
What kind of change do I want, and what does fighting for it look like, today?
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Letters to Laura from a McDonald’s in Brooklyn
Tonight my loneliness is infinite and I could eat dinner or dance with my limbs wild because there is no gravity keeping me grounded.
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The Rumpus Interview with Ben H. Winters
Ben H. Winters discusses his new novel Underground Airlines about an America where the Civil War never took place, writing speculative fiction, and modern racism.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Angela Flournoy
My ambition is personal. I don’t think I need to succeed so that the race can succeed.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Bill Cosby’s Faux Legacy
Bill Cosby was never the man, the icon, the protector and illustrator of black culture, the guide, the genius we have created in our minds.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Midnight in the Century
…today’s poetry apologists for the Iraq war just keep repeating their intelligence error odes. Wouldn’t it be better, however, if they would address the horror of the failed effort in Iraq?