The Interference Archive went on a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to help balance gender inequality on the site, which is overwhelmingly edited by men. Our own Sonya Chung writes on how to write across gender.
Correcting Gender Inequity
Read Yourself Civilized
In the latest issue of The Boston Review, Elaine Scarry reviews Steven Pinker’s
The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker argues that literature, by bolstering man’s empathy, has lead to huge reductions in worldwide violence, a thesis that sounds dangerously close to the absurd pop-science of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.
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Very Secret and Odd
Recommended Reading: Søren Kierkegaard and Anna Akhmatova overheard whispering on a stairwell.
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OYC to Print
Selections from Open Yale Courses are headed to print. As program director John Donatich explains, “At first glance, you might look at it skeptically and ask why would anybody pay for something that you can get for free. But on second glance you realize that it’s actually not the same thing at all.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Yuknavitch; Radtke; Baume; Joaquin; Statovci
Out this week: The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch; Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke; A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume; The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic by Nick Joaquin; and My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Sandra Cisneros Goes International
Mexican-American novelist Sandra Cisneros was awarded the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, judged by a panel that consisted of authors Alexander Chee, Edwidge Danticat, and Valeria Luiselli. Since the publication of her groundbreaking novel, The House on Mango Street, Cisneros has influenced generations of writers – as noted in our recent conversation between Ada Limón and Erika Sánchez.
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Some Wednesday Reading from Mr. Salesses
Recommended Reading: Matthew Salesses’ new story in the latest Guernica, “High Schools, or How to Be Asian American.”
A Library Themed Wedding
Know anyone getting married soon? Perhaps they’d like to integrate some books and bookshelves. (via @ShelfAwareness)