American, Not Blonde
I was finally going to fit in in this foreign country.
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Posts Tagged: expats
Identity Politics and the English Language: Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times
Who “owns” the English language?
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The Price of Acceptance
I knew my mother would be surprised. I didn’t know she’d be horrified.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: La Yegüita
The hit below the belt worked. A jab like that was the quickest way to protect one’s denial.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #220: Jennifer Steil
“Ultimately art is about making sense of our brief lives on earth.”
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Reality Is Absurd: Talking with Ted O’Connell
Ted O’Connell discusses his first book, K: A NOVEL.
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Abstracting Yourself: A Conversation with Robin Hemley
Robin Hemley discusses his new essay collection, BORDERLINE CITIZEN.
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Into Unbound Space: Talking with Seth Rogoff
Seth Rogoff discusses his novels FIRST, THE RAVEN: A PREFACE and THIN RISING VAPORS.
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The Mentor Series: Preti Taneja and Maureen Freely
Preti Taneja interviews her mentor, Maureen Freely.
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Violence and Tenderness: The Explosive Expert’s Wife by Shara Lessley
Lessley’s poems remind us: “Because to cry’s / a sign, to cry is proof, / there’s life.”
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I Am a Camera: Talking with Ali Fitzgerald
Ali Fitzgerald discusses her new graphic memoir, DRAWN TO BERLIN.
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Here’s Your Beginning: A Conversation with Lynn Freed
Lynn Freed discussions her recent essay collection, The Romance of Elsewhere, the importance of a good first sentence, and the risks involved in writing irony.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Maybe There’s This Dragon?
Maybe I’ve been here too long. Maybe I’ve finally accepted that the apartment is somehow aspirational. Maybe there’s this dragon.
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A Meer-Kin in Paris
Her face lit up, and I checked to make sure the man’s scowl had returned. It wasn’t enough for me that heaven should exist for the wife; her husband had to end up in hell.
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The Rumpus Interview with Erik Kennedy
Poet Erik Kennedy discusses literary community and his formative years as a young writer in New Jersey, and shares two new prose poems.
...moreParis and All That Jazz
While Fitzgerald’s haunts have certainly evolved over the years, and some have disappeared altogether, visitors to Paris can still relive the old-fashioned glamor of Fitzgerald’s Paris. It requires imagination, champagne, and a touch of despair. In an article for Travel + Leisure, Jess McHugh writes about the Paris of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and how visitors […]
...moreNavigating French
Over at The Millions, Hannah Gersen interviews Lauren Collins about her memoir, When in French; learning a foreign language; and writing about herself. As Collins recalls: I wanted to describe the terrain of French, the kind of landscape and its physical features and its hills and valleys. I was thinking of it that way. To […]
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Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from Danielle Trussoni’s The Fortress
Danielle Trussoni’s new novel, The Fortress: A Love Story, is out today from Dey Street, an imprint of William Morrow Publishers.
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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 Rumpus Interview with Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian on her new book The Cosmopolites, the citizenship market, nearly getting deported in the Comoros, and learning to show up and wait.
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Do You Eat Pork?: Identity Politics in the Borderlands
The ethnic conflict wears me down. I am tired of being put in boxes, tired of explaining why I don’t fit. I sleep less and less.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Jill Alexander Essbaum
Celebrated poet Jill Alexander Essbaum talks about her best-selling novel Hausfrau, a dark, sex-drenched tale about sadness and the consequences of turning away when consciousness calls.
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The Rumpus Interview with Greg Baxter
Novelist Greg Baxter talks about living abroad as an American, writing his new book, Munich Airport, and why he doesn’t buy the defeatist clichés that people use to define our world and time.
...moreNell Zink, International Woman of Mystery
Nell Zink’s debut novel, The Wallcreeper, offers a dark coming-of-age story of a married woman not all that dissimilar from Zink herself. Zink has lived a global lifestyle, picking up and moving to various cities on a whim. Matthew Jakubowski spoke with Zink over at the Paris Review: I was a very excitable waitress, but […]
...moreLooking at America from Far Away
Since I arrived, two years ago, I’ve grown more interested in works about American expats, especially those in which the characters are not quite comfortable in their settings. I wanted to see what this literature said about the ways in which expat life in Europe evolved over the course of American history. I also wanted […]
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