black lives matter
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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 Man with the Biggest Mouth
“The guys with the biggest mouths are always the most fragile.” –Donald Trump, at a rally in New Orleans, March 4th 2016 Leaving the airplane hangar, thousands of Trump 2016 signs sandwiched under the arms of red, white, and blue…
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The Noise Came From Here
With the recent addition of the album MartyrLoserKing, artist and activist Saul Williams’s versatile body of work shows no signs of slowing its growth. In an interview with The Fader, he talks about technology, #BlackLivesMatter, and his writing process: [E]ven…
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Police Boycott Beyoncé’s Formation Tour
In a bid to epically miss the point, select police unions are protesting Beyoncé’s “Formation” video and Super Bowl performance due to the artist’s use of imagery comments on police brutality. The Tampa Police Benevolent Association has issued a statement encouraging all union members…
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The Big Idea: John Freeman
John Freeman, Executive Editor at Lit Hub, talks with Suzanne Koven about his new print-only literary magazine Freeman’s, the difference between between criticism and editing, and his fear of flying.
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Places to Call Home
Rather than being shot at, my new fear would be of seeing the officers unleash violence upon a helpless body, having to watch within the confines of my approximated uniform, padded with a bullet proof vest, which would incontrovertibly claim…
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The Rumpus Interview with Meline Toumani
Meline Toumani discusses her debut, There Was and There Was Not, the rewards and risks of writing a political memoir, and what it means to approach a divided past and future.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Jennifer Baker
The more variation we see in life, the more it becomes less about seeing one type of book by marginalized people.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Josie Pickens
Josie Pickens talks about building relationships through blogging, changing the narrative around black women in America, and eradicating silence through storytelling.
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An Anthem for Black Lives Matter
Kendrick Lamar has paired with Dr. Dre to make what may be the #BlackLivesMatter anthem we’ve all been waiting for. On Compton, Dre’s controversial soundtrack to the upcoming N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, the track “Genocide” says in its chorus:…
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Claudia Rankine and #BlackLivesMatter
The American imagination has never been able to fully recover from its white-supremacist beginnings. Consequently, our laws and attitudes have been straining against the devaluation of the black body. Despite good intentions, the associations of blackness with inarticulate, bestial criminality…