Reading Colum McCann to My Daughter
I think we need to listen closer for the stories that shake us up the most … and then share them and talk about them with the people we love. And the people we don’t.
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Posts Tagged: fatherhood
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #31: Pulling the Trigger on Father’s Day
June is an ambivalent month for me. As a child it meant the start of summer vacation, and weeks spent at my grandparent’s beautiful beach home in Hyannisport. This was wonderful because it meant spending time with my siblings and seven cousins, a houseful of children of all ages, and loving—even adoring—grandparents, aunts, and uncles. […]
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Day of the Dead
Octavio is tired, tired of trying to separate what he remembers so vividly from the memories he can barely make out in the fog.
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Where You Put It on the Line: A Conversation with Mychal Denzel Smith
Mychal Denzel Smith discusses his debut nonfiction book Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, how the activist space has changed in recent years, and who he is writing for.
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Falling into Fear
I knew that just as the country was reverting, so was I. Every face now seemed a potential enemy and these were feelings I had not felt in almost twenty years.
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The Rumpus Interview with Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr discusses his memoir Sirens, writing for his daughter, and why he values art that trusts its audience.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jon Day
Jon Day discusses his memoir, Cyclogeography: Journeys of a London Bicycle Courier, the bicycle as a symbol of gentrification, and the city as “a technology for living.”
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Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Jason Diamond
Jason Diamond discusses his memoir Searching for John Hughes, confronting his childhood abuse, avoiding his parents, and writing about all of it.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Rion Amilcar Scott
Rion Amilcar Scott discusses his story collection Insurrections, father relationships, hip-hop, knowing when to abandon a project, and choosing not to workshop certain stories.
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Sunday Rumpus Poetry: Three Poems by Faisal Mohyuddin
when to survive this day and the next/four years’ worth will require many/more small, nourishing acts of/self-indulgence and sweet defiance.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Real Evan
Character Evan is pretty impressive; real Evan, not so much—can it be as simple as that?
...moreTo Be or Not to Be (a Father)?
We finally had The Discussion after watching a documentary about Robert McNamara, who, like all Secretaries of State before and after, failed to see the wisdom in preparing for the fall. There were three issues: what I wanted, what she wanted, what we wanted. I offered to arm wrestle for it. Instead, we lit a […]
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Against Silencing: Why All Writers—Even White Men—Should Discuss Gender
What does it mean for men to talk about being men?
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“Throw Something Down Hard Enough, You Discover Its Laws”
Maybe my faith that the profoundest feeling we’re offered by art that really hits us deep in is a setting free, a series of screens or horizons obliterated somehow lovingly.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Admission of Guilt
Last summer, I nearly killed my son. It was an accident, but the guilt I live with belongs to those whose malicious deeds are intentional.
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The Weight of the Future, the Emptiness of the Past
I am reminded of how we know something is there, sometimes, by its absence, how dark matter is said to exist because of so much missing mass.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #67: The Franchise Restaurants of Song
Musician Owen Ashworth on his new album, Nephew in the Wild, literary influences, self-expression in songwriting, and how becoming a father has changed his work.
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The Rumpus Interview with Etgar Keret
Writer Etgar Keret talks about his new memoir The Seven Good Years, the early criticism he faced as a writer, and the surreal that is always waiting.
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OG Dad #27: Tiny Brandos
Forgive me if I’ve said it before, but now that I’m working dad duty without heroin I can see why I needed it.
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OG DAD #26: The Greedy Fox
Phobic or diligent? You be the judge. All fodder to feed into the Daddy neurosis machine.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Fall
We are always falling, all the time, under the sway of one another, in and out of love.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Transparent and the Evolving Culture of Shame
There’s a ray of nuclear longing at the center of Transparent…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #61: Songs for the Alliterative at Heart
Michael Hearst has come a long way from the guy who played plastic wind instruments on Seventh Avenue, to an admirably creative and original adulthood.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman discusses the challenges of writing a series, why his 20s were a lost decade, and his relationship with his readers.
...moreCrystal Eaters and Red Giants
Rumpus contributor Shane Jones‘s new novel, Crystal Eaters, is out this month from Two Dollar Radio. He’s been exchanging emails with Laura van den Berg about the new book, parenthood, and death, and the resulting interview is now out on the Paris Review.
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One Giant Cliché
When I became a father myself, I swore my son would never feel my absence like that—not if I could help it. I’d talk to him. I’d listen, ask questions. I’d teach him things, too, and share in the joys of his discoveries. It didn’t occur to me that what he might need would be something entirely different.
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Ukemi, The Art of Receiving
In Japanese martial arts, the uke is the ‘receiver’ of the technique, the one who attempts to attack their sparring partner, the tori. The tori defends against the attack of the uke, who usually winds up on the floor after getting flipped, swept, thrown, punched, or kicked.
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OG Dad #22: 24-Hour Potty People
But musical child toilets! The problem on the technical level is that none of the Amazon descriptions would say exactly what kind of music we’d be hearing.
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Night Moves
Parents of twins learn that there are two babies but three identities: one for each baby, and then the twin identity, an amorphous, shared mass of personality and action.
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