This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...morePosts Tagged: daniel pena
Voting Across the Pages
The political becoming local and, in effect, personal, is what I think we saw playing out all across Columbia last week. If Ocosingo War Diary teaches us anything, it’s that what might seem like an obvious choice—ending a war of 52 years—from the global perspective actually might be quite a bit more complicated when the […]
...moreWhat’s in a Name?
But as writers, what are we supposed to do if we have a super common name? Do we get a pen name? Do we find an SEO expert? Do we just kind of ignore the issue and hope our names will float to the top of the Google search results someday, somehow? Over at the […]
...moreAfrofuturist Worries
Underwriting the words on that page are the counterposing sentiments I see in many writers I know, especially writers of color: At one pole there’s, I just want to be okay; I want my family/community to be okay. At the other pole there’s, If I only reach the mountaintop I’ll be respected, valid, wealthy, etc. […]
...moreReshaping Humanities in the Middle East
Though every time I hear it, I can’t help but cringe a little. It reeks of insularity. Have you read what’s coming out of the Arab world right now? I thought when I heard that question again this year. That’s mostly what’s on my mind these days. Are you seeing what these writers are doing […]
...moreThe Empathy of Latin America
I can’t say I was surprised by the level of empathy my barber expressed for the victims of the Paris attacks, though I was intrigued by the empathy of a man whose daily life is so intertwined with the drug wars in Mexico, a war that has (by conservative estimates) claimed over 165,000 lives and […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Francisco Goldman
Francisco Goldman talks about the Narvarte Murders, Ayotzinapa, and the stories he feels most responsible for telling now.
...moreBuilding a World with All Kinds of Violence
A good story resides in a world all its own, and I wanted to have the reader understand quickly what this world was like, a world where some people like Toño “La Perra” Becerra have a hard on for violence and some others, like “The Judge” Vallejo…go about inflicting violence like a sacred, god given […]
...moreMaking the Latino Renaissance More Radical
This is the difference between U.S. Latina/o letters and Latina/o Letters from Latin America: In the United States, writing is a business. In Latin America, writing is life and death. At the Ploughshares blog, Daniel Peña argues that Latina/o fiction in the US needs to be more “impolite.”
...moreArt is What We Buy
Literature and commercial publishing have a diversity problem. People of color and women are both in short supply. Rumpus contributor Daniel Peña, writing at Plougshares, offers a market-based explanation: But I wonder how much these problems stem not from MFA whiteness, or the MFA system, or even publishing at large, but from the very narratives […]
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