“It is early August. A black man is shot by a white policeman. And the effect on the community is of “a lit match in a tin of gasoline.” No, this is not Ferguson, MO.” Laila Lalami reports for NPR on rereading James Baldwin‘s Notes of a Native Son in the context of Ferguson. Pair with Teju Cole‘s essay in The New Yorker about rereading Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village.”
“A Native Son” in Ferguson
Swimming Against Conventions
“My goal isn’t soft multiculturalism, but rather to convey a richer and fuller sense of what literature is, what the possibilities are, and to share the voices that often get excluded or silenced when we speak of ‘literature’ and ‘writing.’” Guernica interviews Counternarratives author John Keene.
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A Memory, Deconstructed
In Johns Hopkins Magazine, a remembrance of the Languages of Criticism and Sciences of Man Symposium, which brought together Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, among others. About Derrida, Professor Richard Macksey (whose library you may have seen) recalls: “I’m not sure we were clear about where this guy was going.”
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An Engine, An Engine
“It is a superstitious business—childish, really—the marking, or even the noticing, of anniversaries like these. Such fastening pretends that one day can be like another, pretends that every day is not, ultimately, only its own day, the only version of itself that will ever come. But 'Daddy' is itself a poem built on a bedrock of anniversaries.” At The Paris Review Daily, Belinda McKeon marks the birthday of an oft-revered poem.
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Tres Fridas para el miércoles
Here’s some rare footage of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera hanging out with Leon Trotsky and Natalia Sedova in 1938. Here’s an awesome quote from Kahlo: “I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.” And finally, here’s a picture of Frida that’s even more awesome than both of those things.
I Ain’t Sayin’ Eustace Tilley is a Gold-Digger…
Apropos of our popular "Open Letter to Kanye West," may we recommend the "Shouts & Murmurs in this week's New Yorker? "I have more than a million [Facebook] fans," writes a certain unnamed narrator. "Do you know how many fans Books have? Twenty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-four."
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Discussing Book Design with Jamie Keenan
James Cartwright caught up with London-based book designer Jamie Keenan to discuss his work and his process. (Related: How do American book covers stack up against their counterparts from across the pond?)
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Challenging the Able-Bodied Gaze
"I hate the idea that you must write every day because I really can’t do that. Sometimes the aching bones in my body will not allow it." Electric Literature interviews three writers—Keah Brown, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Jillian Weise—about disability, publishing, and accessibility. From our archives: Wang's 2016 Year in Reading entry.