A Heart-Centered Engagement: Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Thompson-Spires illustrate[s] the psychic traps set when myths take precedence over lived experience, when “the monstrous head deforms the face.”
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Posts Tagged: race
By Accident and On Purpose: A Conversation with Leesa Cross-Smith
Leesa Cross-Smith discusses her debut novel, Whiskey & Ribbons, what it takes to return to a story after a long time away, and how her faith influences her writing.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #125: Tyree Daye
“I think if you are really doing the work, you can’t write about America and not explore race and slavery, and that goes for any writer.”
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Everybody Is Fine: Talking with Jasmine Guillory
Jasmine Guillory discusses her debut novel, The Wedding Date, finding success, writing sex, and the revolutionary act of eating.
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Power and Consent in Brown America
The rules of a more even world might call into question those of us who knew that we deserved better but could not match this knowledge with unambiguous demands.
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I Thought You Were Different
I don’t tell him that just because I happen to be black and he happens to be dating me means that there’s no chance that he could be a racist. I am not a pass.
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The Burden of Teachable Moments
My voice begins to crack so I clear my throat. I look at each one of the girls one by one. The heat in me rises. My skin feels like the Texas pavement in July.
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My Nanny’s Nanny
I have become the nanny. I hope my nanny is getting some good writing done.
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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.
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Slush Piles in White
The sensibilities of whiteness do not want us to work, do not want us to think, do not want us to imagine outside of its bounds.
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How to Workshop N-Words
I am not willing to let go of one of the only things that truly belong to my people and me. It’s a very exclusive, very tumultuous kind of privilege.
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What Do I Do With My Fear?: A Conversation with Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstra discusses her new essay collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, fear, privilege, and the intersection of politics and everyday life.
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Loving America: Reading Carlos Bulosan with My Students
Can one love one’s country into a better version of itself? And can that love better the self?
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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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Not Your Auntie
What I need is for white people to stop calling the Honorable Representative Maxine Waters “Auntie.” For real. It needs to stop.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Gabrielle Calvocoressi discusses her new collection Rocket Fantastic, the fluid nature of gender, and the reader as collaborator with the text.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna discusses New People, inhabiting her characters without judging them, playing with the reality and surreality of identity, and pushing against traditional story arcs.
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Navigating Empathy: Camille T. Dungy’s Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History
Luckily for us, Dungy’s increase in empathy and experience coincides with her embrace of the braided essay: her thinking crashes people, places, and ideas against each other in unexpected and adventurous ways.
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A Specific Kind of Loneliness: In Conversation with Geeta Kothari
Geeta Kothari discusses her debut collection, American xenophobia, and the immigrant narrative.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Nikki Wallschlaeger
Nikki Wallschlaeger discusses her new collection Crawlspace, why she chose to work with the sonnet form, and how segregation in American never ended.
...moreThis Week in Essays
Minda Honey writes at Longreads on traveling to detox from whiteness and discovering there is nearly nowhere to escape. Good news, New Yorkers: apparently noise can be good for creativity. Susie Neilson looks at the good and the bad of noise pollution for Nautilus.
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Personal, Political, and Poetic: A Conversation with Susan Briante
Susan Briante discusses The Market Wonders, her newest collection of poetry in which she draws on market indicators like the Dow Jones Industrial Average to construct a criticism of contemporary culture.
...moreThis Week in Books: Field Theories
Welcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit in fighting for social justice. If we’re going to move our national narrative away from […]
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Damian Duffy and John Jennings
Damian Duffy and John Jennings discuss their new graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s classic novel Kindred.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: E. A. Longfellow
The way I think about my writing is similar to the way I think about my kink—both have to do with history and the ethics around appropriation.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Dawn Lundy Martin
Dawn Lundy Martin discusses her most recent collection, Life in a Box is a Pretty Life, the intersections between poetry and social justice, her wide variety of inspirations, and bathroom gender binaries.
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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.
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The Rumpus Interview with Vanessa Hua
Vanessa Hua discusses her debut collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, writing fiction in order to understand life as an American-born child of immigrants, and the importance of literary community.
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The Rumpus Interview with Esmé Weijun Wang
Esmé Weijun Wang discusses her first novel, The Border of Paradise, about a multi-generational new American family, creative expression through writing and photography, and interracial relationships.
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