As a child, Xiaolu Guo hunted birds and toads to survive. Now, as a writer in Britain, she’s written a memoir about her difficult childhood, which you can read more about in this review in The New Statesman. Sample quote: “Perhaps it is no coincidence that the reason that Guo gives for deciding to write in English is to be free of Chinese government censorship, a process that she describes as the wearing down of a rock’s sharp edges to a smooth pebble.”
Sticks and Stones
Your Kahlo and My Kahlo
If you live in London, and you like the idea of a play in which “two women [try] to put on a one-woman play about Frida Kahlo in whom neither of them is really interested,” you should stop by the Bridge House Theatre, which is playing Chris Larner’s The Frida Kahlo of Penge West until November 23rd. At the LRB blog, Rosemary Hill provides a brief review.
Tuesday New Release Day: Elkin; Febos; Cottom; Butler; Mehta; Buchanan; O’Connell
Out this week: Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin; Abandon Me by Melissa Febos; Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom; Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; No Other World by Rahul Mehta; Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan; and To Be a Machine by our own Mark O’Connell (who we interviewed recently). For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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What Does a Poet Know?
“Since his release, in 2005, he has graduated from the University of Maryland and Warren Wilson College’s low-residency M.F.A. program, been a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard, received an N.A.A.C.P. Image Award, got married, and had two sons. ‘I’ve added some fancy stars … so now I’m like Felon Plus.’” Take a look at this fascinating New Yorker profile of Reginald Dwayne Betts: poet, memoirist, ex-convict-cum-lawyer, and family man.
LeBron James, Cleveland and the Personal Essay
“No one in his or her right mind would read James’s essay in order to vouch for or against its literary quality, but I am here to do just that.” Ryan Lejarde parses LeBron James‘s “I’m Coming Home” for The Rumpus and comes to myriad conclusions about sports, literature, and what it means to love Cleveland.
Not Just the Mind’s Eye
A new Tumblr, The Composites, takes descriptions of characters from novels and feeds them through police composite sketch software to produce images of their “faces.” Creepy and cool. (via kottke)
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