They’re No Soldiers: Ryan McIlvain’s The Radicals
The Radicals is the coming-of-age novel at its darkest: all the lessons are learned too late, if at all.
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Posts Tagged: coming of age
Uncovering Buried Roots: Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater
There are two ways to read Freshwater: there is the knowing and the unknowing.
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Young People Are Our Hope: Talking with Lilliam Rivera
Lilliam Rivera discusses her debut novel, The Education of Margot Sanchez, world-building, and her desire to see bookshelves filled with stories by people of color.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #114: Chelsea Martin
“I think time is really undervalued by people who come from money because they just have the time.”
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Call and Response: A Conversation with Hannah Tinti
Hannah Tinti discusses how The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley came into being, the formation of its characters, and how twelve scars and the celestial heavens help give this book structure and heft.
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Writing the Truth: A Conversation with David Hicks
David Hicks discusses his debut novel, White Plains, how much truth resides in a work of fiction, and becoming a full-time fiction writer.
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Ten Minutes of Motherhood: A Conversation with Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy on The Rules Do Not Apply, the illusion of control, and language’s inability to express grief.
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Where You Put It on the Line: A Conversation with Mychal Denzel Smith
Mychal Denzel Smith discusses his debut nonfiction book Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, how the activist space has changed in recent years, and who he is writing for.
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The Rumpus Interview with Saleem Haddad
Saleem Haddad discusses his debut novel Guapa, the Orlando shootings, the importance of queer spaces, and Arab literature.
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The Rumpus Interview with Stephanie Danler
Stephanie Danler discusses her debut novel, Sweetbitter, writing sensually, and the power of an authentic voice.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz discusses the challenge of writing about family members, her greatest joy as a writer, and her literary role models.
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The Rumpus Interview with Annie DeWitt
Annie DeWitt discusses her debut novel, White Nights in Split Town City, the 90s, and the brutality of nature.
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The Rumpus Interview with Ranbir Singh Sidhu
Ranbir Singh Sidhu discusses his new novel, Deep Singh Blue, growing up in rural California, and the privileged, problematic world of publishing.
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At one point in the conversation, Watts said: “I always imagined those soldiers using paintball guns, that the war was just a large-scale version of what we played as kids.” I confessed that the same thought had occurred to me. Chris McCormick has an excerpt from his novel Desert Boys over at The Offing: a coming-of-age story […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Vanessa Blakeslee
I don’t want to waste readers’ time with a several hundred-page novel that’s not relevant to the wicked problems we’re facing today.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Laurie Jean Cannady
The author of the new memoir Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul talks about growing up impoverished, abused, and in love with words.
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The Rumpus Interview with Neil Smith
Author Neil Smith discusses his latest book, Boo, the suffering inherent in being thirteen years old, and how friendship can help pull us through traumatic events in our lives.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jay Rubin
Author and translator Jay Rubin talks about his new novel, The Sun Gods, translating Haruki Murakami into English, and the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: There Will Be Blood
It is 1980, I am twelve years old, and there is so much blood.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Elevator Ride
I was proud of living on unlucky 13 when some buildings on Park Avenue didn’t even have a 13. My luck changed when the new elevator man, Keith, arrived.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Shameless
I’ve always been somewhat prone to obsession, but my years of intense Britney fandom were the first time that I felt that strongly about an individual person.
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The Full Moon
We started small, a quick flash in the locker room or on the basketball court after school, any time we wore pants with elastic waistbands. But soon the asses were everywhere.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Transparent and the Evolving Culture of Shame
There’s a ray of nuclear longing at the center of Transparent…
...moreSipping Dandelion Wine
Henry Stewart waxes nostalgic on Ray Bradbury for Electric Literature—he points at coming of age, the lessons we learn, and how the whole of life can be found in The Martian Chronicles.
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His Helmet Off, Raising It High
This was the most important moment of my life. I know it because after Number One died I started to realize I could kill myself too.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Stars Hollow, Revisited
They always find their way back to one another again.
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The Rumpus Interview with Thomas H. McNeely
Thomas H. McNeely discusses coming of age in the 1970s, Houston’s complicated racial history, and his new novel Ghost Horse.
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The Rumpus Saturday Essay: Stain
It’s hard to remember why I was silent. Maybe, like some of the women only now reporting they were raped by Bill Cosby decades ago, I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed.
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The Last City I Loved: Austin
I was new to Austin and to adulthood, and if adulthood meant dressing up in pencil skirts and suffering, well, I’d pretend that was as glamorous as it looked in old movies. I didn’t care. I loved it. I’d kiss it like the girl in the song kissed ice and dirt.
...moreThe Latest Diary of Adrian Mole, Coming of (Middle) Age
Adrian Mole, protagonist of the coming-of-age novels The Adrian Mole Diaries, faces adult problems in Sue Townsend’s latest book, the 10th in the series. “Having had his first incarnation aged 13 ¾, when spots, poetry and his parents’ behavior were among his chief concerns, he is now 45 and addressing the challenges of declining incomes and […]
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