Recommended Reading: This important essay from Gayle Branedis at The Rumpus on our cultural obsession with women’s thighs.
Thunder Thighs
“He says, ‘their hearts should be burned.’”
Jeff Sharlet traveled to Russia because he “wanted to see what ordinary LGBT life was like in a nation whose leaders have decided that ‘homosexualism’ is a threat to its ‘sexual sovereignty.’” What he found was unsettling and terrifying, but the courage of the LGBT community members he interviewed is also incredibly inspiring. Set aside time to read this one. It’s essential.
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Writerly Advice
We’ve covered the Atlantic series By Heart a number of times before. In the latest edition, Angela Flournoy makes a case for writing about what you don’t know. Pair with Toni Jordan’s Millions essay on “the ideas behind fiction.”
The Good Kind of Bad
In a Simpsons episode from the late nineties, Lisa Simpson, concerned that her mental skills may be deteriorating, manages to finagle her way onto a local TV news broadcast, where she urges the residents of Springfield to read two books: To Kill a Mockingbird and Harriet the Spy. At first glance, the two novels might not seem to have that much in common, but as Anna Holmes argues in a blog post for The New Yorker, the books share “ideas about the complexity, sophistication, and occasional wickedness of young girls’ imaginations.” (You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Malcolm Gladwell and To Kill a Mockingbird.)
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Nancy Drew and the Not-So-Secret Ghostwriters
For CrimeReads, Radha Vatsal takes a look at Carolyn Keene's many identities and how, in the end, it doesn't matter who wrote the Nancy Drew books.
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Out There
Some writers find their voices by heading off to Europe. Others (like Thoreau in Walden) head off to the woods instead. At The Rumpus, David Biespiel writes about the year he moved to Vermont, and what it meant to see himself as “leaning into” his youth. Pair with our own Anne K. Yoder on Ken Kesey and the Oregon coast.