Truth through Fiction: Talking with Nicole Dennis-Benn
Nicole Dennis-Benn discusses her second novel, PATSY.
...more
Posts Tagged: church
My Dream about Loving White
My blackness, like my gender, was a sin.
...more
Straddling the Divide: Meghan O’Gieblyn’s Interior States
The entire collection is suffused by an aching awareness of absence and an obsession with the indelible markings of the past.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Terrance Hayes
“They are poems before sonnets.”
...more
Country, Black Ass, Queer Perspective: Talking with Michael Arceneaux
Michael Arceneaux discusses his new memoir, I CAN’T DATE JESUS.
...more
Look at How the Bullets Have Missed
I praise everyone I can still touch, their warmth a violent protest against the cold weapons of death.
...more
Guns or No Guns: Mental Health Crisis in Schools
I do the best I can to reach out to those I see isolated or disturbed, but I have to also be careful I don’t make myself a target.
...more
How The Keepers Reframes Confession as a Feminist Act
Critics have noted how The Keepers is similar to other prestige documentaries but with a significant difference—its focus on the victims and their stories.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Daddy Issues
What I’m saying is I was a fucking wreck and it’s not my dad’s fault.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Rosalie Moffett
Rosalie Moffett discusses her new collection June in Eden, writing humor in poetry, using contemporary references, and trying to understand the world.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Jerald Walker
Jerald Walker discusses his memoir, The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult, the story of his childhood in The Worldwide Church of God, and how the act of writing delivered him from bitterness.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: We Be Bleeding
It will be red like your neighbor’s convertible. And like that convertible, there will be a spreading open, an exposure of vulnerable flesh.
...more
Sound over Water
We tell the stories to fit the narrative we need. But within each story we must maintain the grain of truth that will provide the urgency.
...moreAn Open Letter to My Brother, A Trump Supporter
Dear John, I, like so many other Americans, spent the past weeks worrying, crying, and searching for the people around me that I loved so they could be beacons when I felt most battered. I did not seek you out, did not call or text you, did not respond to your victory message because I […]
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Opening the Hump
The trick is to pinpoint the time of the cycle, not to try to solve the mystery in the undertow. And to understand that everything needs time; you have to position yourself, warm up.
...more
Boy of My Youth
In my desperate attempts to keep my secret I learned to shut everyone out, to become as closed as a fist.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: There Are No Good Muslims
I say I am Catholic because it is easier than telling the truth.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Garrard Conley
Garrard Conley, author of the new memoir Boy Erased, discusses growing up in the deep South, mothers, writing for change, and political delusions.
...more
Safety Rope
No touching unless he touches you. No touching where people can see. No touching unless dared to touch. Brad makes the rules, but never says them aloud.
...more
Podcatcher #1: Oh No, Ross and Carrie!
In the first installment of our new column all about podcasts, we talk with Ross Blocher and Carrie Poppy of Oh No, Ross and Carrie!.
...moreDan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
(Dan Weiss is out on tour with his band The Yellow Dress. He’ll be back on August 3rd.) The murder she never committed. Our parents’ patriotism. The Father, Son and Holy Surfboard. DNA science is not absolute. The synecdoche falls down first.
...moreHolding Evangelicals Accountable
Growing up in a slew of Evangelical churches, I saw this system of governance deployed to handle anything from adultery to domestic violence to pedophilia. And in each instance, this system has failed to stop abusers or protect victims. At Buzzfeed, Rumpus contributor Lyz Lenz writes about her experience in Evangelical churches and how these […]
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Fat Girl’s Benediction
Why couldn’t I accept my body for what it wanted to be? It’s what I harped on the rest of the world to do.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Frederick Barthelme
Frederick Barthelme talks about his new novel, There Must Be Some Mistake, life after teaching, and why food from the Olive Garden is “execrable in the best possible way.”
...more
PK
My dad smells like myrrh. My younger sister Madeline and I hide beneath his robes while he shakes parishioners’ hands at the back of the church. We think we’re hidden, but people can see our shiny Mary Janes. And of course, there’s the giggling. Through the heavy cream-colored cloth we can hear dad say, “Thank […]
...more
Player One
The latest novel from Douglas Coupland critiques contemporary culture, but lacks fresh perspectives.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Uwem Akpan
“After the phone call, I walked more than a mile to church to thank God. But on getting there, I couldn’t sit or kneel or pray, out of excitement.”
...more