Shannon Watts was in college when the massacre at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, TX occurred. She was a young mother with small children at the time of Columbine. A slightly older mother when Virginia Tech happened. And the Gabby Giffords shooting. And Sandy Hook. And El Paso. For the L.A. Review of Books, a conversation on gun violence, “thoughts and prayers,” and Watts’s new book Fight Like a Mother, which chronicles the founding of grassroots action network Moms Demand Action. “An experience I’ve had over and over is waking up to the news of a horrific shooting tragedy in this country and then my day is done. … Similar to secondhand smoke, in this country, we have secondhand trauma from gun violence because it is so ever-present.”
Thoughts and Prayers
The Lonely Sidewalk-Man
Recommended (Hilarious) Reading: Mallory Ortberg from The Toast gives you every noir story set in Los Angeles in helpful, bulleted format.
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The Poem Heard Round the World
“It’s really strange to have the success of a poem be so directly tied to people processing grief. It’s a strange thing, because it’s a blessing and a curse.” The Rumpus interviews poet Maggie Smith about her new collection, Good Bones, her viral poem that shares its name, and her craft. From our archives: Smith’s collection was featured in our round-up of October’s Must-Read Poetry.
They call it an accident, a catastrophe. But it was a war.
n+1 publishes a chilling personal account of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, as the crisis mounts at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
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In the Mind of the Author
At The Rumpus, Suzanne Koven talks with Eve Ensler, better known as the woman who wrote The Vagina Monologues. Among other things, they talk about her new book, In the Body of the World.
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If you can have “secondhand gun trauma,” then you also have to acknowledge the “gun deficiency” trauma of licensed gun owners that were caught obeying the law in “no gun” zones when a criminal let loose.