A Community of the People: Tommy Orange’s There There
THERE THERE does not settle, it unsettles.
...more
Posts Tagged: gentrification
Ready to See Magic Everywhere: Talking with Rachel Lyon
Rachel Lyon discusses her debut novel, Self-Portrait with Boy, artistic communities, the quotidian nature of the supernatural, and hyper-gentrification.
...more
The Experience Takes Its Shape from You: Talking with Naima Coster
Naima Coster discusses her debut novel, Halsey Street, getting pushback on her use of Spanish, and the importance of equity and inclusion in higher education.
...more
Young People Are Our Hope: Talking with Lilliam Rivera
Lilliam Rivera discusses her debut novel, The Education of Margot Sanchez, world-building, and her desire to see bookshelves filled with stories by people of color.
...more
Gentrification Looks Like Us: Making Rent in Bed-Stuy by Brandon Harris
Harris thoughtfully examines what happens when privilege and lack of privilege are forced to coexist in the same neighborhood—and, occasionally, in the same apartment.
...more
Empathy Is Cheap: A Conversation with Brandon Harris
Brandon Harris discusses his memoir Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, gentrification in New York City and Brooklyn, the homogenization of American cities by corporate America, and whiteness of film culture.
...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #29: Poetry Is an Affliction
On Thursday night, May 25, an amazing event will take place outside a BART train station in the Mission District of San Francisco, as it has every Thursday night for the past fourteen years. If you were to pass by, you might not even notice what is taking place. The corner of 16th Street and Mission […]
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Adrian Matejka
Adrian Matejka discusses his new collection Map to the Stars, writing about poverty in contemporary poetry, and how racism maintains its place in our society.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau discusses her essay, “Know Your Rights!” from the collection, The Fire This Time, what she loves about motherhood, and why it’s time for White America to get uncomfortable.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson discusses her latest novel Another Brooklyn, the little deaths of lost friendships, and her work with children across the country as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Just announced today: beloved Brooklyn bookstore BookCourt is closing after 35 years in business. Independent booksellers were the focus of a panel at the Miami Book Fair—discussion focused on how big business was surprised that small business strategies could be useful in selling books. Kyoto, Japan is home to a bookstore hostel with eighteen bunks built into […]
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Twenty-Three Pieces of the Sunset Bowl
[A]ll over town, pits in the ground stayed pits in the ground. Those cavities were my consolation. For the moment, we were all in the hole.
...moreSound & Vision: Ebru Yildiz
Brooklyn-based photographer Ebru Yildiz talks with Allyson McCabe about shooting concert photos, moving to New York from Turkey, and discovering the city’s music scene.
...moreSave Langston Hughes’s Harlem Home
Award-winning author Renée Watson is fighting to save the house that Langston Hughes lived in through much of the 1950s and 60s, until his death in 1967, Heather Long reports for CNN. Watson launched an Indiegogo campaign to rescue the brownstone and preserve its literary history—donate here today to make sure we don’t lose this important piece of American […]
...more
The Commune
Our house, we believed, was a microcosm of that country. Every month, we’d gather at the kitchen table for our house meeting, where we, like politicians, unveiled our big plans for change.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Asali Solomon
Asali Solomon discusses her debut novel, Disgruntled, narrative structure, the mythology of memory and place, and returning to Philadelphia after years away.
...moreA City’s Responsibility to Its Creative Spaces
Following the closure of Dance Tunnel, the latest in a slew of venues widely thought important to London’s club scene, a question seems to be emerging: exactly whose responsibility is it to support these venues and prevent high rents from driving out iconic spaces? Should their existence be left to the dedicated patronage of fans, or […]
...more
The Conversation: Jayson Smith and A. H. Jerriod Avant
My responsibility is to not be negligent and cause unnecessary harm. To a listener or reader. My allegiance is only to truth.
...more
The Conversation: Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib and Paul Tran
The sitting down to write, convincing myself that my voice matters, even though there are so many telling me that it doesn’t.
...moreGentrifying Atlanta
There are assuredly very complex reasons for why and how this phenomenon of gentrification plays out in Atlanta and in general. But one has to wonder what it means for the vibrancy of Black culture which resides in these cities and in Atlanta. Where does it go? Where will it go? Nneka M. Okona writes […]
...more
La Boheme Portlandia
As for gentrification, like in every desirable part of the country, economics decide the contest, and wealth wins every time.
...moreHistory for the Layman
Electric Literature’s Dan Sheehan interviews Eagles Prize finalist DW Gibson, whose recent book The Edge Becomes Center explores the gentrification of New York City neighborhoods through the oral histories of those who experienced it firsthand: I wanted to find a way to make the subject meaningful and alive for the layman… Oral history makes that possible because […]
...moreA Library of Misfit Books
The Reanimation Library is a a 25,000-volume library in Gowanus, Brooklyn that houses odd, obscure, and other misfit books. The library began as a private collection that ten years ago opened to the public. Now, like most literary venues in New York City, the library might be displaced. The art gallery the library rented space […]
...moreNY or LA? Try Neither
At Hyperallergic, Claire Voon breaks down a report from New York’s Center for an Urban Future. The report’s findings include evidence that New York City has outpaced Los Angeles for sheer number of workers in the creative sector, while higher rents and lower grants and wages make it increasingly difficult for workers in that sector […]
...moreThe Gentrified City by the Bay
Now, I was wondering if you could help me get something to eat. You wouldn’t be just handing me money to do whatever with — I know that’s a concern for some people. You could go with me to a store — wherever you want. And I wouldn’t ask you to do it all for […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Daniel José Older
Author Daniel José Older talks about his new novel, Shadowshaper, noir influence in urban fantasy, gentrification, white privilege and the publishing industry, and why we need diverse books, now more than ever.
...moreBookstores and Gentrification
Last week, the New York Times wrote about the end of Manhattan’s bookstore culture as the shops follow the city’s literary scene into the outer boroughs. Now Dustin Kurtz over at MobyLives raises the possibility that bookstores are responsible for the gentrification of their new neighborhoods, asking three bookstore owners in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods to […]
...more
Notes from Freedom County
I am trying to make sense of myself as much as the place. It is so easy to conflate ‘where I was from’ with ‘who I was there.’
...moreHow the Tech Industry Could Fix Gentrification
We’ve previously written a bit about gentrification, particularly in San Francisco and usually from the perspective of the people being pushed out of their neighborhoods. TechCrunch writer Kim-Mai Cutler has a different perspective, one from inside the tech industry. And although she has no problem with the infamous Google buses, she does take issue with the way tech culture has “changed from one of […]
...more
A Stabbing in Finsbury Park
What I’m interested in is: How do you write what you weren’t allowed to know about what you know? How do you write what nobody wants to know about what you know?
...more