The Myth of White Male Rage: Jared Yates Sexton’s The People Will Rise
[I]n a book that argues we are divided and stuck in our own echo chambers, Sexton’s own divide goes unexamined, his own echo chamber unchallenged.
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Posts Tagged: stereotypes
On Queer Love in the Anthropocene
Four syllables, ever so lightly punctuated by the softest consonants, announcing a tragic, apocalyptic shift in global time.
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War Narratives #8: Flashes of War by Katey Schultz
Schultz enables readers to see past their own perspectives and empathize with both the Afghan child and the American war widow.
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FUNNY WOMEN #142: How to Be a Female Boss
An important part of being a female manager is letting the world know that you can have it all.
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The Rumpus Interview with Garrard Conley
Garrard Conley, author of the new memoir Boy Erased, discusses growing up in the deep South, mothers, writing for change, and political delusions.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Kamden Hilliard
Survival is not always cute, politically responsible, mature, or sober. Survival is ramshackle, as is tolerance.
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The Case for Including More Female Scientists in Literature
If female characters are restricted to the roles of artist, dancer, waitress, or barista, their potential to generate fiction that explores existentially rich and original worlds also seems restricted. In the ongoing discussion of groups in sore need of better representation in today’s storytelling, Eileen Pollack urges writers to consider writing about female scientists in fiction. […]
...moreAre You the Woman Reader?
It’s not that the books that get someone into the “serious reader” club are all or even mostly by men these days. But the books that get you kicked out of the club are almost exclusively written by women. Hannah Engler writes for Book Riot on “women’s literature” and the still-unevolved stereotype of the Woman Reader.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
As the stump speeches and primary dates continue to roll on and thousands of Americans develop stress ulcers, Darcey Steinke delivers a humorous and terrifying vision of our dystopian future should Donald Trump win the presidential election. “The Blue Toes,” over at Catapult, features a distinctly Trump-like figure called “the Tomato” and his followers, the […]
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The Slow Fall of the Hot Heroine
If nothing else, it’s the opinion of other women that encroaches on mine. Resemblances spark my joy; differences become character flaws.
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Against Silencing: Why All Writers—Even White Men—Should Discuss Gender
What does it mean for men to talk about being men?
...moreJohn’s Pixie Dream Girls
Mary Jo Tewes Cramb discusses the perpetuation of the “manic pixie dream girl” stereotype in John Green’s novels: In Green’s novels, there is considerable tension between the potent appeal of his manic pixie characters, the excitement and fun they bring into the narrators’ lives, and the messages these characters impart about their own lives and identities. […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Jennifer Baker
The more variation we see in life, the more it becomes less about seeing one type of book by marginalized people.
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The Rumpus Interview with J. Ryan Stradal
J. Ryan Stradal talks about his debut novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest and why the rise of the American foodie has less to do with hipsters than you might think.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Bill Cosby’s Faux Legacy
Bill Cosby was never the man, the icon, the protector and illustrator of black culture, the guide, the genius we have created in our minds.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Stepfatherhood
“He was my real dad,” she says. “I just happened to have two.”
...moreToo Many Skirts and Dresses
There are a number of picture books with strong girl protagonists, however the majority of them are drawn in skirts and dresses. At the Guardian, Julia Eccleshare calls for more children’s books with “girls in trousers,” in order to campaign against this “sexual stereotyping.”
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Tamara Winfrey-Harris
The reality is that there is privilege even within social justice movements.
...moreDemystifying Stereotypes
What exactly is a “stereotype”? Over at the Ploughshares blog, Brett Beasley explains what the word really means, and where it comes from, with a little help from Oscar Wilde.
...moreUK Publishing is Racist, Too
The Writing the Future report . . . found that the “best chance of publication” for a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) writer was to write literary fiction conforming to a stereotypical view of their communities, addressing topics such as “racism, colonialism or post-colonialism as if these were the primary concerns of all BAME […]
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Here Be Dragons
For anyone from the global fringe, the flattening expectation created by a cultural stereotype is pervasive and familiar.
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The Sacred and the Profane
There is a total silence in the West on India’s culture of dissenting women in the face of severe patriarchy and authoritarianism. It doesn’t quite fit, does it, into the dichotomy carved out for Indian women by Americans and the British…
...moreAbout That Whole “Men Are Sex Fiends” Thing…
Well, this is interesting: “…for most of Western history, from ancient Greece to beginning of the nineteenth century, women were assumed to be the sex-crazed porn fiends of their day.” Alyssa Goldstein chronicles the process by which that stereotype flipped all the way around—and why both its iterations have been bad for women. One of […]
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A Disobedient Girl
A first novel about a Sri Lankan servant girl brings to life a vivid world of class differences, and restores dignity to characters who are often shoved to the sidelines.
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