Recommended Reading: Iona Sharma writes about language as a colonized space, with its own history, politics, and tradition.
The Colonized Space of Language
Protest Con
Book Riot reports that Planned Parenthood “staged a protest of the GOP’s healthcare (or lack thereof) bill” with red-robed Handmaids. Pair with Tara Wanda Merrigan‘s review of the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood‘s classic: “While transforming Offred into a stereotypically empowered representation of a woman may make the show more appealing to some viewers, I found it disheartening.”
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Know Your Book Covers
Think you know your Arthur Conan Doyle from your Agatha Christie? This week, The Guardian quizzes you on the book covers of classic crime novels. In case you missed it, previous weeks featured science fiction and literary classics.
Do You Really Want That Literary Prize?
Researchers have determined that “winning a prestigious prize in the literary world seems to go hand-in-hand with a particularly sharp reduction in ratings of perceived quality.” So if you’re very sensitive, take some solace in the fact that you haven’t won a major award, I guess.
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#1000BlackGirlBooks
If you haven’t heard about Marley Dias, you have now. She has launched the #1000BlackGirlBooks book drive to collect one thousand books with black girls as the protagonists, which will be donated to a library in St. Mary, Jamaica. Did I mention that she’s eleven years old?
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“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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On Reviewers, and Paying Them
LA Review of Books editor in chief Tom Lutz has written about the future of book reviews and “a missing generation of journalists.”