At Lit Hub, Morgan Jerkins reflects on the importance of researching and telling her family’s story, as seen in her new book, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots. “The closer I moved towards my subjects and their homelands, the more intimate the book became,” Jerkins writes. “The more I researched, the more I knew what was at stake. I knew methodological data was not enough. To detail Black living and death, I needed a gumbo of tools: journals, articles, scholarly interviews, oral history, and personal history. I didn’t ignore the omissions—I exposed them. I confessed my frustration and I spoke of the foundation for these omissions. Then I kept going because I had to.”
Morgan Jerkins on Exposing History’s Omissions
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Recommended Reading: Anne Barngrover’s poem “My Lover Vows to Follow Me Even after He Leaves Me” at Paper Darts. “If trust is to hem your promises/into my jacket lining like folded dollars during/an ice storm, then I have been trusting all my life.”
Next Up, the Auckland Teal
As part of their ongoing efforts to monopolize all kinds of waterfowl, the good folks at Penguin, headed by the editor Jonathan Bell, have dug up old covers from the company’s defunct imprint, Pelican. The Guardian set up a slideshow that lets you scroll through a selection.
Congrats Lydia!
Congratulations to Millions contributor Lydia Kiesling whose thoughtful essay “Proust’s Arabesk: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk” was named a finalist for the 3quarksdaily Arts & Literature Prize. And thanks to all the Millions readers who voted for our essays in the first round of the contest.
Anything for Money
On Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading Tumblr, check out National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender’s short story “Anything for Money.”