In 2006, Gene Luen Yang became the first graphic novelist to be nominated for a National Book Award. Yang earned a nomination in the Young People’s Literature category for the graphic novel American Born Chinese. Now Yang has been nominated a second time, again in the Young People’s Literature category, for a new book, Boxers and Saints. Francoise Mouly and Mina Kaneko talk with Yang at Page-Turner. (You can also read our interview.)
Picture of Alienation
So many wobbly assumptions
Laura Miller pokes some holes in that Dartmouth study about how little classic literature appears to be influencing contemporary writers.
Tuesday New Release Day: Amis, LaValle, Auster, Fesperman, Pylväinen, Coplin
American readers can now get their hands on the latest from Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo: State of England. Also out this week: The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, Paul Auster’s memoir Winter Journal, Dan Fesperman’s spy novel The Double Game, and a pair of debuts, Hanna Pylväinen’s We Sinners and Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist.
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“Life is not personal.”
“This notion of investigation offers an alternative to confession. Its goal isn’t sympathy or forgiveness. Life is not personal. Life is evidence. It’s fodder for argument. To put the “I” to work this way invites a different intimacy—not voyeuristic communion but collaborative inquiry, author and reader facing the same questions from inside their inevitably messy lives.” Year in Reading alum Leslie Jamison writes for The Atlantic about alternatives to the confessional mode in literature.
Social Graces
Some people go by alphabet, others by subject, and still others arrange their books as they “would seat guests at a dinner party.”
I’m Tellin’ Y’all It’s Sabotage
You’ll never want to turn in a library book late again after seeing the spoof video of The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” featuring crime-fighting librarians.
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DJ Eldest Immigrant Daughter
“The first boy to kiss your mother later raped women / when the war broke out. She remembers hearing this / from your uncle, then going to your bedroom and lying down on the floor. You were at school.” The poetry of Warsan Shire, Young Poet Laureate of London, does not mess around.
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Toni Morrison on Love, Forgiveness, and Race Relations
Toni Morrison talked about writing, race relations, and journalism in a conversation with Hilton Als at the New Yorker Festival last week, and the highlights are available online. Als has also written an illuminating profile of Morrison for the magazine.