Hope Is the Last Bastion: Talking with Suchitra Vijayan
Suchitra Vijayan discusses her new book, MIDNIGHT’S BORDERS.
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Posts Tagged: democracy
SquareRoot of Love: Beyond the Divide
We need some love back, especially from elected and community leaders.
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From the Editors: Election 2020
Rumpus editors share their thoughts, fears, and concerns around the impending election.
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Zones of Paradox: A Conversation with Billy-Ray Belcourt
Billy-Ray Belcourt discusses his new book, A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal
Co-editors Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal discuss their new anthology, EMPTY THE PEWS.
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Gutting the Sonnet: A Conversation with Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown discusses his third collection, THE TRADITION.
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Dispatches from the Swamp: Storm’s Coming
It was as if I could hear the whole country breathing softly, softly, together. Finally, the sleepless eye had closed.
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Libraries Are the Real Punk Rock
Maybe I was only in the eighth grade, but I was ready to stand up to anyone who tried to threaten the ideal of intellectual freedom.
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I, Me, We, and the GOP
It’s not coincidental, I think, that most of the secular and sacred saints we venerate now went charging against the grain of the Municipal We.
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Rumpus Original Poetry: “Mewl” by Sarah Lyn Rogers
Still, something tells me God’s chosen // weren’t hate-mongering gropers (or worse). Just a hunch. A woman’s / intuition.
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HORN! REVIEWS: The Man Without a Face
The ‘how’ of this story is fascinating, but the ‘what’ is too sad to think about: the methodical dismantling of Russian democracy.
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Readers Report: The Emperor’s New Clothes
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
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R.I.P.: Inauguration Day
Instead of mourning in solitude, let us sob together. Let us soak communally in our fear. Let us hyperventilate, our breasts heaving in unison.
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent and relevant content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your communities, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just […]
...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, […]
...moreWhere were you when the world broke?
Not in your echoing womb, to scream at you across your fields to wake up, not part of your denial that Earth is burning, dehydrated, suffocating on itself— I stood in a blue state while you bled the red of its people—(Our people: recall how they grew up across Holt Street, Maple Street from us, […]
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United We Stand
No one knows exactly what the next four years will bring. But we are always stronger when we protest together.
...moreThe America We Live in Now
I don’t consider myself a political person. To me, there are no “wrong” political beliefs. I believe that democracy means respecting everyone’s right to her opinion. And if I were forced to declare my own political views, I would have to reluctantly admit that, out of cynicism and self-interest, I find myself increasingly leaning towards […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Malka Older
Malka Older discusses her debut novel Infomocracy, the nature of elections, and the future of democracy.
...moreBy the People, for the People
At Guernica, Tana Wojcznick unpacks Shakespeare’s lesser-known and often-misread play, Coriolanus, to bring us s its timely political warning about populism and democracy: It’s no accident that Coriolanus is not a favorite in America, where it’s rarely included in the mini-canon of plays each generation tends to play and re-play (such as King Lear today […]
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What You Can Read at the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library
Prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay have access to 18,000 books in 18 different languages, including Arabic translations of King Lear, Anna Karenina, and Stephen King thrillers. But books deemed critical of the US government, including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Noam Chomsky’s Interventions, and various John Grisham novels, are banned. Over at The Kenyon […]
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A Case for the Wasted Vote
Voting for a third party is the way I choose to voice my dissent. It’s a vote toward realignment, a recalibration, of our political system. The dominant parties are stricken with tunnel vision; their economic promises are distracting us from other critically important issues
...moreShopping Culture Evolution
Apparently, consumerism is just a contextual framework away from being considered a symbol of democracy. And, it’s not only considered a “cornerstone of democracy,” by some people, but a “civic obligation in American society.” Giuliani was big into this idea back in 2001, following the September 11th terrorist attacks, even saying, “’Freedom to shop is […]
...moreSunday Politics
A new documentary paints Italy as “a democracy of boobs (in all senses).” How does one “explain the gay” in terms of evolution? (via The Daily Dish) “That’s not what countries think of when they go to war.” Why no one ever cleans up the environmental mess they make after sending their citizens off to […]
...moreNot the Greatest Villains Then Living in the World
The other week, The New Yorker published an excellent article by Caleb Crain about the peculiar economics and politics of life aboard a pirate ship in the 17th and 18th centuries. When the captain of an English slave ship was captured by pirates in 1719, his crew begged the pirates to spare his life, since […]
...moreNewspapers dying? Maybe it’s just the cities they mythologized
An interview on New American Media with writer Richard Rodriguez has a fascinating take on what’s happening to American newspapers. Using the famously provincial San Francisco Chronicle as an example, Rodriguez says, “I don’t think the Chronicle is dying so much as I think that San Francisco is dying.”
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