What Is Short Story Month and Why Is It in May? Carolina Ciucci digs into the origin and history of Short Story Month, with some reading suggestions and links to information about the short story as a literary form. Categories: Literary History, Writing As the Supreme Court Weighs Roe vs. Wade, These Novels Offer Perspective […]
How Literature Depicts the Chinese Cultural Revolution Here’s an engaging article that illustrates one of the major themes of Life Stories in Literature: how dominant—and dominating—societies control the historical narrative and attempt to erase the voices of individuals and marginalized groups. Dee Das writes: When we talk about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, we mostly zoom
These are books school systems don’t want you to read, and why Now that “the United States is facing an unprecedented wave of schoolbook banning,” it’s almost impossible to keep up with the latest news on this movement. Here’s an update from The Washington Post. Categories: Censorship, Libraries Barcelona honours Gabriel García Márquez with new
Home and Away: Horror & Gothic Fiction 2022 Among this season’s horror releases, twinned themes emerge. On one side, the oppressive atmosphere of a childhood home and the secrets it holds; on the other, the ambiguity of liminal spaces and the unease of isolation. PW spoke with editors about the fear of the unknown, whether
“we read because it’s exciting. Metaphorically speaking, books are always taking us to the big city, opening our eyes to the world’s plenitude and diversity. By contrast, those who ban or censor them want to keep us down on the farm, restricting our experience to some safe or approved orthodoxy.” — Michael Dirda
Quotation: Why We Read Read More »
A Literary Guide to Understanding Ukraine, Past and Present Ukrainians have long-prepared for this moment. Their rich land has been invaded many times before and their people have suffered innumerable losses for generations. The Ukrainian language and culture has nearly been eradicated at multiple points in their long history, and they’ve been fighting an active
Poll Shows Majority Oppose Banning Books About History, Race “According to a recent CBS News/YouGov poll, a large majority of Americans don’t think books that discuss race, criticize America’s history of slavery, or share different political views should be banned from school libraries or classrooms.” Categories: Censorship Feminist Phantasms: Recent Haunted House Novels by Women
How Contemporary Literary Fiction Is Reclaiming the Insanity Arc and Humanizing Women Dee Das starts her essay with this premise: A hundred or so years ago, women were silenced into submission by psychiatry under the label of ‘insane’, every time they posed a threat to the models of domesticity. Any woman who didn’t conform to
Why does experiencing ‘flow’ feel so good? A communication scientist explains I’ve written here about flow before (here and here). In this article Richard Huskey, an assistant professor of communication and cognitive science at the University of California, Davis, discusses how the concept of flow figures into his resolutions for 2022. He has been studying flow
Here’s an abbreviated version of Literary Links for the holiday weekend. The Joy of Writing by Hand Writer Nicholas Russell says, “During quarantine, drowning in screen time and desperate for any reminder that I had a physical form, I took up writing by hand once again. This time, it was less about keeping up correspondences
