The Queer Syllabus: Chavela by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
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Posts Tagged: Mexico City
The Text Is My Body: A Conversation with Gabrielle Civil
Performance artist and poet Gabrielle Civil discusses her book, Swallow the Fish, how technology has shaped reactions to female nudity, and the importance of risking change.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
A weekly roundup of indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...moreThis Week in Essays
Jordan Ritter Conn tells a devastating story about a group of people connected around the Pulse nightclub shooting for The Ringer. [Note: gun violence, descriptions of the attack.] Could gondolas be the next frontier for public transportation? Duncan Geere’s informative piece explores the possibilities at How We Get To Next.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
An eight-time Jeopardy! winner is turning the cash into his dream: a bookstore. City Lights in San Francisco is offering up a special section featuring resistance literature. Bookstores in Washington, DC supported the Women’s March and hosted events through inauguration weekend.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Never Let Me Go
“You can’t hold on to the past,” Elif once told me. “You don’t know how. You don’t know what to keep, what to throw away. So you keep it all. And you can’t do that. No one can.”
...moreMexico City’s Budding Writing Scene
Writing in Mexico City is like holding a conversation when you’re under the takeoff and landing path of the city’s airplanes: you have to shut up sometimes, to let the noise take over everything, to let the sky split in two before picking up where you left off. As Americans, we tend to forget there […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Valeria Luiselli
Valeria Luiselli talks about her new novel, The Story of My Teeth, working with a translator to publish her books in English, and how writing in weekly installments changed her process.
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The Rumpus Interview with Francisco Goldman
Francisco Goldman talks about the Narvarte Murders, Ayotzinapa, and the stories he feels most responsible for telling now.
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The Saturday Rumpus Review: Güeros
It’s a literal confrontation of his metaphorical fear, a visual take on Rilke’s words: to view Güeros is to see a “thing poem” on the screen, to witness something like “The Panther” materialize.
...moreExploring a Megalibrary
At Atlas Obscura’s Places index, a contributor shares photos and the history of Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconcelos, a “megalibrary” that combines five separate (and disparately designed) library-sized collections within one building.
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The Rumpus Interview with Antonio Ruiz-Camacho
Author Antonio Ruiz-Camacho speaks about his new collection, Barefoot Dogs, breakthrough stories, the writing process, and why translating his book for readers in Mexico feels like a homecoming.
...moreHasta la Madre
At the New Yorker, Francisco Goldman tackles the malaise shadowing his favorite city in the world: Mexico City feels different these days. Its usual vibrancy has been muted, and not only because of the missing students of Ayotzinapa. Paéz tells me that when he walked the city streets on the night of September 16th, which is Mexican […]
...moreThe BRT: Trackless Light Rail
The New York Times this morning had an interesting story — the third in a series about stopgap measures that could limit global warming — about Bus Rapid Transit lines. BRT lines are wide, sealed-off lanes dedicated to large buses, but like subway trains, the vehicles only stop at stations with faregates. Where they have […]
...moreMexico City’s “Bukowski”
Just one last quote here from First Stop in the New World, and then I promise to stop exhorting you to read the book. This passage concerns an author I hadn’t heard of, Guillermo Fadanelli, “whose novels and stories have been described by critics here as dirty realism. (He tends to respond to that designation […]
...moreSanta Muerte, aka La Flaca
Since death is a hot topic at the Rumpus lately, let me share some more quotes from David Lida’s fantastic book about Mexico City, these about Mexico’s newest saint: Saint Death, affectionately known as La Flaca (The Skinny Lady).
...moreTwo-for-One at the Pyramid of the Sun
David Lida’s book about Mexico City, First Stop in the New World, contains a really impressive chapter which traces the history of daily commerce in the capital from the vast Aztec market of Tlatelolco and the tianguis — temporary open-air markets where Mexicans have done their shopping for clothing and household goods for centuries — […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Carlos Cuarón
During an assembly-line interview process last week, I sat with writer and director Carlos Cuarón to talk about his new film, Rudo y Cursi. We met up at a self-described rock-and-roll hotel suite in downtown San Francisco. With his rat’s tail haircut and unwillingness to smile on demand, he reminded me of the kid I […]
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