The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #195: Curdella Forbes
“I wanted the thing to feel as ordinary as bread.”
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Posts Tagged: race
The Gates of American Belonging: Devi S. Laskar’s The Atlas of Reds and Blues
It begins with a gunshot.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Sardines
The house, for the first time this weekend, is quiet.
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Telling a Good Story: A Conversation with Lisa Lenzo
Lisa Lenzo discusses her new story collection, UNBLINKING.
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A Complicated, Shifting Subjectivity: Talking with Franny Choi
Franny Choi discusses her second collection, SOFT SCIENCE.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Dark Girls”
When I was born I came out looking just like them.
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Undertones
One moment white, the next Latina, the next neither.
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Redefining Manhood: A Conversation with James Hornor
James Hornor discusses his new novel, VICTORIA FALLS.
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My Dream about Loving White
My blackness, like my gender, was a sin.
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From One World to the Next: Talking with Julie Lythcott-Haims
Julie Lythcott-Haims discusses HOW TO RAISE AN ADULT and REAL AMERICAN.
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If You Let Me Tell You a Story
Stories need concrete details to help you understand, don’t they?
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Black Panther and Strong Women
I saw myself on the big screen—the strong black woman that I am, and the stronger black woman I aspire to become.
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Like Juggling Knives: Talking with Rumaan Alam
Rumaan Alam discusses his new novel, That Kind of Mother, the limits of the employer-employee relationship, and the grossness of heterosexual sex.
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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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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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