Growing up in California, our own Michael Bourne didn’t have a full sense of his own privilege until 1981, when a chance encounter with a group of teenagers dressed up as skeletons woke him up to the realities of segregation in America. In a long essay for Orange Coast Review, he goes over the meaning of that incident, complete with meditations on Marin County, his abandoned early novel and his family’s history in Danville, Virginia. Pair with: Michael’s piece for The Millions on Tess Taylor’s The Forage House.
Fences
I Leave You My Daffodils
What was it like to grow up with Wordsworth or Coleridge as your dad? Hint: it was weird. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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Anything for Money
On Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading Tumblr, check out National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender’s short story “Anything for Money.”
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Congratulations You Failed
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Paris to the power of 4
Rosecrans Baldwin’s Paris I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down is set in Paris, France. But there are also 25 Parises in the USA. For “Our French Connection,” a series of features for The Morning News, Baldwin hit up four towns called Paris in America and asked locals to opine on the French way of life. You can buy the whole four part series as an epub for $3.
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