Taking Back Control: A Conversation with Joseph Osmundson
Joseph Osmundson discusses his memoir, Inside/Out, intimacy, trauma, and the sometimes violence of desire.
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Posts Tagged: Racism
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Shara Lessley
Shara Lessley discusses her new collection, The Explosive Expert’s Wife, the task of humanizing those we might dismiss as monsters, and writing toward hope.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Renee Simms
Renee Simms discusses her debut collection, Meet Behind Mars, leaving law to become a writer, and writing through major life changes.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado discusses Her Body and Other Parties, riffing off the work of others, and how writing is like solving a math problem.
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Strong Island’s Horizon
Whose lives are visible? Whose pain is just? Whose grief is vocal? Such inquiry is not rhetorical.
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The Experience Takes Its Shape from You: Talking with Naima Coster
Naima Coster discusses her debut novel, Halsey Street, getting pushback on her use of Spanish, and the importance of equity and inclusion in higher education.
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Take the Words “Judeo-Christian” Out of Your Damn Mouth
“Everything about the term is predicated on bad faith. It needs to die.”
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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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SquareRoot of Love, Politics, and Power
If we really believe that love is important and necessary then where is it, especially when it comes to world politics and power?
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Which Flame Is Mine?: A Conversation with Rajiv Mohabir
Rajiv Mohabir discusses his second collection, The Cowherd’s Son, his work as a translator, and resisting erasure in a racist America.
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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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An Arduous Reality: Testify by Simone John
Simone John’s first full-length collection of poems, Testify, is a remarkable exercise in documentary poetics.
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The Meaning of Truth: A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise by Sandra Allen
The way the book is organized reflects Allen’s experience: the ability to meet a book with skepticism and find much to be admired.
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Playing God: A Conversation with Daniel Olivas
Daniel Olivas discusses his recent short story collection, The King of Lighting Fixtures, writing humor, and the role of religion in his work.
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Setting aside Time for Magic: Talking with Myriam Gurba
Myriam Gurba discusses her new memoir, MEAN, her writing process, and why she has hope for patriarchy’s dissolution.
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We Have to Trust Our Punch: A Conversation with Kevin Young
Kevin Young discusses Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, America’s relationship to hoaxes, and what we can learn from that relationship.
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No Pressure: Bieber, Blackness, the Cult of Perfection
Bieber is like a prism that reflects back whatever you want to see.
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ENOUGH: On Sharing
A Rumpus series of work by women and non-binary people that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
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Dispatches from the Swamp: The Babble in the Bubble
To the extent that America—that great big word that makes us all so anxious—exists at all, it exists as a vast and noisy sheet of bubble wrap.
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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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ENOUGH: The Conversation Is Just Beginning
A new Rumpus series of essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women and non-binary people that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
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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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Cowboy or Terrorist? Harney County and the Trump Presidency
One person’s freedom to do anything they want can mean the absolute negation of another’s freedom.
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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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Chewing Rocks: A Conversation with David Biespiel
David Biespiel discusses his new book, The Education of a Young Poet, being comfortable in uncertainty, and extending moments in writing.
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Both Outsider and Participant: Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi
In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain.
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STRIPPERDADDY
My thoughts hovered above the scene pondering the reasons why and time felt like the waves of a puddle lapping against cracked asphalt.
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