Author Angie Cruz started the Instagram account, Dominicanas NYC, when she couldn’t find photos of 1960s Dominican working-class women while researching her novel Dominicana. Cruz spoke to the Cut about this community-driven project that shares photos and stories of Dominican women from across the country. “I’m interested in writing about the working class, which is often under-documented,” she says. “What’s documented is what we see in the papers, about politicians, or people who have power, or crime. My family was in NYC in the ’70s, but for Dominicana, I was interested in writing about 1965. That was the year the U.S. occupied D.R. It was the year Malcolm X was shot across from the building I grew up in [in Washington Heights.] I wanted to bring all these historical moments together and show how, even if they’re different stories and movements, they’re all interconnected.”
Angie Cruz’s Working Women
The Poetry of Yeezus
Dubliners Day
In 2004, much of the literary world celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Bloomsday, aka the setting of James Joyce’s Ulysses. This year, we’re celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Dubliners, which our own Mark O’Connell once described as “a collection which writers of the short story form seem basically resigned to never surpassing.” At The Paris Review Daily, Skippy Dies author Paul Murray writes about his history with the book. You could also try to pass our eccentric James Joyce quiz.
The Miami Book Fair International sets its lineup
The Miami Book Fair International has released its full, 300-strong lineup for the 2012 festivities. It should surprise nobody that Tom Wolfe is one of the headliners, but the full, alphabetized list of the other attending authors can be read here.
“Swamp Fuschia”
Scandal at the Oxford English Dictionary! Robert Burchfield’s efforts in the 70s and 80s to delete words from the dictionary based on their foreign origins have been uncovered.
Poems to Be Whispered
“Here’s / the deal: if you die / then I will be able to / drink again & no / one alive will even / blame me.” Year in Reading alumnus Nick Flynn has three new poems over at BuzzFeed READER. Pair with this Millions profile of Flynn.
No Fanfiction, Please
For those of you who were not on Twitter yesterday, the novelist Elizabeth McCracken tweeted a series of tips for applying to MFA fiction programs. Among other bits of good advice, she says it’s generally best to apply with a solid short story rather than a novel chapter.