Seeking Terra Firma
To truly know a land is to become it—to embody its storms in your bones, taste its dark soil beneath your nails, know the tangled history of the people who walked before you.
Posts by tag
immigrants
213 posts
TORCH: The American Girl at the Temple
[T]o be a tourist in a foreign country is very different than being a tourist in a foreign country where you are expected to feel you have returned home.
At the Mercy of the Mob: Theodore Wheeler’s Kings of Broken Things
[J]ust as bad nonfiction can be written to tell a lie, good fiction can be written to tell the truth.
TORCH: Twitch
America: land where anything can and does happen. Doors blow open by magic when you step on a rubber mat.
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Katia D. Ulysse
Katia D. Ulysse discusses her forthcoming novel, Mouths Don't Speak, the importance of religion and music in the novel and in Haitian culture, and why Haiti will always be “home.”
The Story We Have Yet to Tell: Talking with Haroon Moghul
Haroon Moghul discusses How to Be a Muslim: An American Story, his own religious journey, and the blessings that come with being an outsider.
TORCH: Over the Borderline
I'm writing about the border through the eyes of children because the border is a problem of the imagination.
“The Book I Said I Would Never Write”: Talking with Karolina Ramqvist
Karolina Ramqvist discusses The White City, her first novel to be translated to English, and the idea of a writer's persona out in the world versus a just being a writer, writing.
TORCH: Goga
She was brave, coming to the station that day. It was still a time when people seen associating with the “traitors” could have had trouble from the KGB.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Zhiyu/Jerry
Here is the genuine article: a young, American man, who expects the things he wants to come quickly, with just a word, a smile. So be it.
In Between the In-Between: Talking with Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang discusses her story collection Sour Heart, trying to escape the past, collective versus individual responsibility for trauma, and love as imprisonment.