How Langston Hughes Inspired #TweetYourThobe
Langston, I am finally at the table, eating with everyone.
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Posts Tagged: culture
Smoke Screen
I am an oracle who, while dispensing answers to all those who seek them, cannot predict my own future.
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Multitudes: The Practice of Forgetting
I want to say it must matter. Because history is erased from our veins when we allow ourselves to forget where we came from.
...moreThe Brisbane Effect
For The New Republic, Suki Kim writes of Lionel Shriver’s remarks in Brisbane, “I had been invited to the Brisbane Writers Festival as a writer, but now I was here, foremost, as an Asian” and how the controversy shifted the theme of the festival from “connection and belonging” to “being a minority in Lionel Shriver’s […]
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A Japanese Heart
If you follow the script, people will judge you as having a genuine Japanese heart.
...moreEmbracing Brutalism
Brutalist architecture—those hulking, concrete buildings from the mid-1950s to mid-1970s—is making a quiet comeback in popularity. A new book by Christopher Beanland, Concrete Concept explores why: And the sheer variety of these “brutalist beasts,” in cities from Birmingham to Madrid to Montreal, is extraordinary. There are palaces and embassies and government buildings, railway signal boxes […]
...moreIt’s Literally Fine
At the Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance defends teenagers’ ever-maligned contributions to the lexicon, citing a recent student that examines the extent to which teens influence linguistic change: And the thing about linguistic changes is they can’t exactly be stopped in any sort of deliberate way…Even old-school grammar geeks are warming up to “they” as an acceptable […]
...morePublishing in an Age of Immediacy
As the value of an individual book is devalued, so is the self. We are made to feel that it’s only through constant communication with a community that we have any collective power. How has the immediacy of the Internet changed how we absorb information? What has this done to the manner and number of […]
...moreBuilding the Idea of Home
At JSTOR Daily, Livia Gershon offers a brief history of the concept of “home.” Gershon traces the changes not only in the emerging role of the home as a private retreat, but also the people who could define a household and its dynamic through the ages.
...moreWriters Respond to Art
A new exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum mixes visual art with writing: “Storylines” is about the resurgence of narrative in the visual arts, but it is also about how writers still love to write about the things artists make. In a moment of inspiration, the exhibition’s curators got thirty novelists and poets, from John Ashbery […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Cultural Constellations of Agee and Smith
But who said a chronology had to be straightforward?
...moreThe End of Literature
The digital age threatens works of serious literary merit, warns British novelist Will Self: Back when I began publishing novels, not only did the reviews in the quality press mean something – in terms of sales, yes, but also as a genuine assay of literary worth – but as a writer, you knew that there […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Mandy Stadtmiller
Mandy Stadtmiller, writer, comedian, and the deputy editor of xoJane, talks about promoting positivity in women’s journalism, why no one gets hired because of résumés anymore, and the importance of maintaining a writing and editorial staff with differing opinions.
...moreWhy We Love Jackie O
The tapes of Jackie O’s interview with Arthur Schlesinger, four months after her husband’s assassination were not supposed to be released until fifty years after her death. Her daughter Caroline Kennedy ended up releasing them early (the result of an ABC deal) and released them in a book, co-authored with the historian Michael Beschloss. Why […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Martin Atkins
The first time I call Martin Atkins in Chicago, I get his voicemail. The second time, Martin answers, but he’s just arriving home from his office,
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