Panic Mode: The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld
Cyclical patterns of journalism notwithstanding, Gladstone sees this moment as uniquely concerning.
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Posts Tagged: obama
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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Rumpus Exclusive: “Sacred Stories”
All anyone really wants is to be seen and heard, and yet we avoid seeing and hearing others every day.
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Trauma as Inheritance: Adam P. Frankel’s The Survivors
The survivor is left to ponder whom he has become.
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Split Chins, Open Coats
My whistle was useless. Using it felt like an insult.
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I Dated Bad Men Till a Bad Man Became President
Their dishonesty and danger was easier to look past then. The world had not yet shifted. But then it did, and I woke up.
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To Look for America: A Road Trip, a Soundtrack
One thing I was taught about travel—because my father is a black man born in Alabama in 1950—was that there are safe places for black people to go and places that aren’t as safe.
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The Woman Behind the Curtain Pulling the Levers: Talking with Zinzi Clemmons
Zinzi Clemmons on What We Lose, representations of blackness, and life’s influences on writing.
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Ready for Change: Discussing Sexual Assault with SafeBAE
The co-founders of SafeBAE discuss the challenges and victories of teaching students about rape culture, consent, and anti-bullying.
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TORCH: An Alien, Ineligible for Participation
That a bumbling demagogue would be able to take this institutional racism and weaponize it is, then, not really a surprise. The seeds for this hate were planted a long time ago.
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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.
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Your Patriotism Isn’t Love, It’s Blindness
Love of country, some argue. With their boots firmly planted in my chest as I struggle to protest. No, that is not love, but blindness.
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There Is Simply No Time for This: Whose Streets? and Civil Rights Cinema
It is unlikely I will see the US justice system evolve toward an egalitarian ideal in my lifetime. But Whose Streets? does offer a clearly visible North Star.
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Staying Syncretic: A Conversation with Kool A.D.
Kool A.D. discusses his debut novel, OK, the war on drugs, systemic destruction of left-leaning movements by the government, and the inability to escape American capitalism.
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The Election and the Ash Borer
Does it matter what words a sign says when a symbol says so much more? A white X. A carved swastika. Things get torn down from less.
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your community, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of […]
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your community, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of […]
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The Dark Heart of America: On David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon
David Grann’s new book Killers of the Flower Moon explores the 1920s murders of the Osage tribe, the making of the FBI, and is a reminder of the all too recent history of betrayals that comprise America’s dark heart.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Tell Me Something Good
I need to feel that I can be a woman and be black in this present cultural climate.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 9): “The City Limits”
[A] nation’s poetry degenerates if it does not embody the language of what is mysterious…
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Ideal Lover
I don’t mind being left with a bruise if it reminds me that someone imagined something for me, that art can be part of the experience.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Clarence Major
Clarence Major discusses his new collection Chicago Heat and Other Stories, the artist’s role in politics, Donald Trump and race relations, and Paris in the good old days.
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Readers Report: The Emperor’s New Clothes
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
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Binary States of America: A Letter to Obama
In the end, although I wanted you to be more like Charles Bronson or Malcolm or Luke Cage, I am very proud to have witnessed your historic presidency—the successes, and even the disappointments.
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The Rumpus Review of Rogue One
So, what would populist ideology even look like in Star Wars?
...moreThis Week in Essays
At Lit Hub, Jonathan Reiber, a former speechwriter for the Obama administration, weighs our souls and our words during this political transition. Chivas Sandage writes for The Rumpus about helping the men in our lives to fully understand the constant state of vigilance women live in. On Medium, Abbie VanSickle takes a thoughtful, personal look at the […]
...moreCrybaby College Students and Their Bogus Trophies
I’m a small blue dot living in a blood-red corner of a red state, so I’ve grown accustomed to hearing right wing talking points. I don’t like them, but they surface as regularly in my southwest Florida town as white egrets on the highway and dolphins in the Gulf. Talking points at the grocery store, […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Walk On
As writers, we must write it out. Tear off the veils and air the rotting fruits.
...moreThe America We Live in Now
I don’t consider myself a political person. To me, there are no “wrong” political beliefs. I believe that democracy means respecting everyone’s right to her opinion. And if I were forced to declare my own political views, I would have to reluctantly admit that, out of cynicism and self-interest, I find myself increasingly leaning towards […]
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