The Statue
The mother, too, is a monument. I am haunted by mine.
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Posts Tagged: communism
Keeping Yiddish Alive: A Conversation with Josh Lambert
Josh Lambert discusses the anthology HOW YIDDISH CHANGED AMERICA AND HOW AMERICA CHANGED YIDDISH.
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Writing Resistance: A Conversation with J. Kasper Kramer
J. Kasper Kramer discusses her debut novel, THE STORY THAT CANNOT BE TOLD.
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Rice Cake Love
I’ll always wish for one last dim sum, one more time to hear the words “I love you, too.”
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Some Poetry about Socialism”
My stomach fluttered. My cheeks flushed. They never said no.
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Olzhas Suleimenov and the Power of Antinuclear Activism
Suleimenov the nomad, the climber of high walls of adventure.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Blue Tears”
On certain nights, if I’m lucky, wisps of the shore begin to glow blue, an unearthly electric color, like someone in the sea has a flashlight and is shining it upward.
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Writing History
I was pretty sure I could produce a manuscript superior to anything [this editor had] ever published before by letting my cat walk over my keyboard a few times.
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The Night Is Itself a Novel: Talking with Lidija Dimkovska
Lidija Dimkovska discusses A Spare Life, living through the break-up of Yugoslavia, her writing style, and where she now feels most at home.
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Fidel Castro: The Playboy Comandante
The comandante produced ideological fantasies on a mass scale within the context of the Cold War which led to an exotic, sexy, and happy vision of Cuba.
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President of Smut
Our country has always been ruled by and for the privileged, but never has this glaring injustice in the system been made so shamelessly clear.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 15): “Southern History”
We can’t hide from our history and we can’t pass it on to future generations.
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Readers Report: The New Patriot
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “The New Patriot.”
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, a short story collection written by an author in North Korea and smuggled across its borders is reaching readers in North America. The Accusation is the first known story collection written by an author still living inside the totalitarian state to have escaped its iron curtain, and it is now being published across […]
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Vocabulary Lessons in Bucharest
I felt unhinged in my moments of isolation, and frustrated in my muteness.
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The Real Fidel
In a flash nearly 200,000 Cuban refugees understood that we’d lost our homeland and had better get used to life en la Yuma. We packed for six weeks, and we stayed for six decades.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 7): “Facing It”
There should be no forgetting, much less forgiveness, of what happened during the Vietnam War.
...moreCrybaby College Students and Their Bogus Trophies
I’m a small blue dot living in a blood-red corner of a red state, so I’ve grown accustomed to hearing right wing talking points. I don’t like them, but they surface as regularly in my southwest Florida town as white egrets on the highway and dolphins in the Gulf. Talking points at the grocery store, […]
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“I Will Climb, Too”
I assume he’s going to drop us off, wish us luck, and speed away. But instead Little Wei slams on his brakes, turns off the ignition, and says, “I will climb, too.”
...moreThis Week In Indie Bookstores
A New Paltz, New York bookstore with an anti-Trump sign is fighting a ban against it. An Egyptian bookstore has a “scream room” where customers can scream as loudly as they like. With the Gilmore Girls revival only a month a way, there’s a hypothesis that Jess might own a Stars Hollow Bookstore. Christian bookstore chain […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Monica Sok
Monica Sok discusses her award-winning poetry chapbook Year Zero, her interest in Southeast Asian history, and living in isolation.
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FUNNY WOMEN #141: How to Write about Eastern Europe
Use words like “nostalgia,” “paranoia,” and “amnesia” liberally.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week at Recommended Reading, PEN America offers an excerpt from Brazilian author Noemi Jaffe’s novel Írisz: as orquídeas, which is remarkable for many reasons, one of them being that this is so far the only opportunity to read part of the Portuguese-language novel in English translation. Jaffe’s narrator, Írisz, has fled to Brazil from Hungary […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Terese Svoboda
Poet Terese Svoboda talks about her biography of the socialist-anarchist firebrand and modernist poet Lola Ridge, Anything That Burns You, and remembers a time when the political was printed in newspapers.
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The Rumpus Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his debut novel, The Sympathizer, new ways of looking at the Vietnam War, and how to blend important ideas with entertainment.
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The New York Comics and Picture-Story Symposium: Ten Great Cartoonists You’ve Never Heard Of
The New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium is a weekly forum for discussing the tradition and future of text/image work. Open to the public, it meets Tuesday nights 7-9 p.m. EST in New York City.
...moreFBI Targeted Black Authors
Authors who worried the FBI might have been monitoring them were absolutely right, especially for Harlem Renaissance era authors. For more than half a century, the FBI kept tabs on black authors, tracking their movements and writing pages of reports critiquing their writing, reports the Guardian. Targets of the investigation included writers like Richard Wright, in part […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Tomi Ungerer
Writer and illustrator Tomi Ungerer discusses his exile in Ireland, being a target of censorship, and his work’s recent resurgence of popularity in the US.
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Searching for Santería
Isnael felt spirits. That was how he first realized he had a calling, and that it was Santería.
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