Who invented ska music? John Jeremiah Sullivan traces the history of the genre in his latest essay for The Oxford American. “The more the claims for Rosco Gordon’s supremacy as a ska progenitor seem not out of proportion, and the less crazy it feels to say that, in a sense, ska was born in Tennessee.” Pair with: Sullivan’s essay on Bunny Wailer, who makes a cameo in his ska essay.
Sullivan on Ska
A Seminal Work
Over at The Literary Hub, real-life writer Anthony Marra has conducted a hilarious interview with Dana Schwartz, the creative mind behind everyone’s favorite–if uncomfortably familiar–Twitter account, @GuyInYourMFA. Here’s the New York Times review of Marra’s latest novel, The Tsar of Love and Techno.
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Thoughts and Prayers
For the L.A. Review of Books, a conversation on gun violence, "thoughts and prayers," and Shannon Watts’s new book Fight Like a Mother, which chronicles the founding of grassroots action network Moms Demand Action.
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Island Life
Bygone Bureau editor Jonathan Gourlay spent eleven years living on the microscopic island of Pohnpei, and fortunately for us he kept his wits about him long enough to churn out a “funny, haunting travel memoir” entitled Nowhere Slow. You can check out an excerpt from the eBook over here.
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Speak Up
This graphic account of the uncomfortable on-stage conversation between Roxane Gay and Erica Jong at this year’s Decatur Book Festival comes from MariNaomi over at Electric Literature. Here are a few essays from The Millions that also deal with race, fatherhood, and fiction.
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The Curious History of a Curious Account
Our own Michael Bourne takes a look at Thomas King’s Inconvenient Indian, which struggled to find a publisher in the United States despite flying off the shelves in Canada. “The curious publication history of [the book],” Bourne writes, “serves as a window into the wide differences in the way mainstream Americans and Canadians view the Native peoples in their midst.”
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