literature

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/6/2020
  

  Roald Dahl’s Family Apologizes for His Anti-Semitism

  The late author's family has issued an apology for the impact of Roald Dahl's public antisemitic comments, suggesting that for good and ill Dahl's life shows the need to be aware of the power of words. 

• 
• SOURCE: War on The Rocks
  11/30/2020
  

  Musing on Gender Integration in the Military with Simone de Beauvoir

  by Bill Bray

  For those engaged in the military gender integration debate today, de Beauvoir’s writing offers an additional reminder — those arguing against more integration may be no less intelligent and sincere than those championing change. But they still may be wrong.

• 
• 11/22/2020
  

  A Surprise Encounter with Zora Neale Hurston

  by Fred Zilian

  The genius of Zora Neale Hurston has fascinated recent scholars, but one reader found traces of her legacy in an unexpected place. 

• 
• 11/22/2020
  

  Take a Lesson from the Persistence of the Founder of Modern Thanksgiving

  by William Lambers

  Sarah Josepha Hale pushed Abraham Lincoln to declare a national Thanksgiving holiday as a day to seek healing and unity. Fighting to end hunger is a way to recommit to the spirit of the holiday.

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  11/17/2020
  

  A Bold Anthology Shows How R-I-G-H-T and W-R-I-T-E Come Together in Black Poetry

  The incoming director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture has published an anthology of Black American poetry that speaks to the ways that the arts and poets in particular have articulated and spread the cause of liberation. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/27/2020
  

  Shifting the Focus From Sylvia Plath’s Tragic Death to Her Brilliant Life

  Heather Clark's new biography of the poet returns focus to her life and work rather than her afterlife.

• 
• 10/25/2020
  

  Reading Pope Francis's "Fratelli Tutti" through Carl Sandburg

  by Walter G. Moss

  The latest encyclical by Pope Francis, calling for recognition of the unity of humanity, echoes the egalitarian humanism of the poet and writer Carl Sandburg.

• 
• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  10/22/2020
  

  Sending Trump to Hell

  by Ariel Dorfman

  How would the earthly transgressions of Donald Trump fit into the schema of eternal punishment Dante described? 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/19/2020
  

  How Saidiya Hartman Retells the History of Black Life

  The literary scholar Saidiya Hartman's studies of the aftermath of slavery and the African diaspora point to the limits of archival records for understanding historical Black experience. Some historians question whether her methods fill archival gaps too creatively.

• 
• SOURCE: Paris Review
  10/5/2020
  

  Memory Haunts: John Edgar Wideman's Fictionalized Account of the 1985 MOVE Bombing

  by Imani Perry

  Wideman's account of events leading to the bombing of MOVE by Philadelphia police "is not just a map of the city but of the nation and our collective condition."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/6/2020
  

  John Steinbeck, Bard of the American Worker (Review)

  Hailing him as a “major figure in American literature,” Souder further claims Steinbeck has “given the world several books that would last forever.”

• 
• SOURCE: BBC
  9/25/2020
  

  Rimbaud and Verlaine: France Agonises over Digging up Gay Poets

  While advocates see reinterrment at the National Mausoleum as a recognition of gay contributors to French literary history, some opponents suggest the iconoclastic poets would have rejected any such honor. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/11/2020
  

  Stories of Then That Still Hold Up Now

  Margaret Atwood, Héctor Tobar, Thomas Mallon and Brenda Wineapple on older political novels they admire that have a lot to say about the world today.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/15/2020
  

  Talks Underway to Move Ashes of writer Dorothy Parker out of Baltimore

  What would the oft-quoted Parker say about yet another resting place? One can almost hear her. What fresh hell is this?

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  7/14/2020
  

  When Plague Is Not a Metaphor

  by Hunter Gardner

  It's not always a blessing when current events make a researcher's specialty suddenly and urgently relevant. 

• 
• 6/28/2020
  

  “A Very Different Story”: Marian Sims and Reconstruction

  by David B. Parker

  Marian Sims's 1942 historical novel Beyond Surrender was not nearly as popular as Gone with the Wind. But it reminds us today of a history that might have been--both during Reconstruction and in the popular portrayal of the period.

• 
• 6/30/2020
  

  Pawns of History: The Poetics of Russian Revolutionary Politics

  by Tim Brinkhof

  The repression of political dissent in Czarist Russia led many future revolutionaries to literature as a gateway to political thought; their poetic idealism may have made them both effective and dangerous.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/18/2020
  

  The Black Women Who Launched the Original Anti-Racist Reading List

  by Ashley Dennis

  Black women librarians have been important leaders in promoting books and publishing standards that encourage readers to recognize human dignity and reject racist stereotypes in children's literature.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  6/15/2020
  

  How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?

  She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  5/3/2020
  

  The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint?

  by Rebecca Onion

  According to scholar Elizabeth Outka, the tragedy haunts modernist literature between the lines.