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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obama
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This 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…
Crybaby 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…
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Walk On
As writers, we must write it out. Tear off the veils and air the rotting fruits.
The 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…
Weekly Geekery
Goethe, book reviews, and why you shouldn’t use TripAdvisor. The brother-figures of bear conservation. Barack Obama talks brain-bots and “chasing the unicorn.” Meet your future neighbors: oysters. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow…
Leaving Aleppo: Crossing Syria’s Most Dangerous Checkpoints
After four years of ceaseless bombing and brutality, the security of life itself has been reduced in Aleppo to horror, terror, and scarcity of basic human resources.
The President’s Summer in Letters
Check out President Obama’s reading list for summer on the Vineyard, by Sarah Begley in TIME. Books mentioned include the memoirs H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, and William…
The Rumpus Interview with Ben H. Winters
Ben H. Winters discusses his new novel Underground Airlines about an America where the Civil War never took place, writing speculative fiction, and modern racism.
American Ambiguity
My racial awareness, perhaps even my awareness of myself as a person, self-consciousness, is a three-pronged paradox of shame, pride, and indifference.
President Obama, Literary Critic
At the New York Review of Books, Edward Mendelson shares with us part of a letter written by a young man who would eventually become President Obama, a small piece of…