“Many of the most powerful characters in our best-loved stories are orphaned, adopted, fostered, or found. At the same time, many of the most powerless citizens in our society are orphaned, adopted, or fostered children, and the marginalized adults that so many become. Why have so few of us even noticed this centuries-old disparity?” On literature’s most celebrated protagonists, from Oliver Twist to Anne of Green Gables.
Lone Struggle
Julian Assange Opens for M.I.A.
Now this is one of the strangest things to happen at a concert in a while: M.I.A. kicked off her tour to promote her new album Matangi by getting Julian Assange to open for her at Terminal 5. The Wikileaks founder spoke to the audience via Skype.
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You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next
If you’re looking for some great poetry, check out these classic poems that will change your life, from Robert Frost’s “This Man Stops By Woods On a Snowy Eve… You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!” to Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool… and You Can Be Too After These 5 Easy Tricks.” Pair with this Millions piece on poetry for people who hate poetry.
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Seminar-Worthy Stocking Stuffers
In a piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Sarah Mesle reviews Mallory Ortberg‘s Texts from Jane Eyre, which “is not only a major work of bathroom humor reading, but also a significant contribution to feminist literary criticism. It is difficult to imagine another book that would both be a perfect stocking stuffer and an exemplary text for a seminar in literary studies.”
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The Language of the Present
“For me, language was a kind of initiation into multiple realities. For if one language could be certain of a table’s gender and another couldn’t be bothered, then what was true of the world was intimately tied, not to some platonic ideal, but to our way of expressing it.” Ana Menéndez on being a multilingual writer in the twenty-first century.
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Kofi Awoonor Memorial Reading
Iowa City, which is one of six UNESCO Cities of Literature, will honor renowned Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor with a memorial reading this Monday, October 14. Awoonor was among those killed in the attack on Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The reading, which will be hosted by Awoonor’s nephew, Kwame Dawes, will take place on the University of Iowa campus, but it will also be open to anybody with an internet connection. People are invited to tune in to the event’s streaming webcast, and also to submit questions for Dawes online to the @UIIWP Twitter account by utilizing the #Awoonor hashtag.
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Turing Geoff Dyer’s Frown Upside Down
“The Dyer visage in repose, its default setting, is that of a man whose jam has regularly been stolen from his doughnut.” Despite how he is prone to frowning, Geoff Dyer believes a smile can make the world a better place.