For WBEZ Chicago, Sandra Cisneros discusses winning the Fuller Award, an honor given to the city’s greatest living writers. Her most celebrated novel, The House on Mango Street, takes place in Chicago, and she reflects on the book’s enduring legacy. “I think that I was able to reach non-readers as well as book lovers because it’s a small, slender book,” Cisneros says. “It doesn’t intimidate non-readers and it’s written in a language that’s very simple. So even if you grew up in Taipei, Oslo or Chicago, people recognize something of themselves in that story. It becomes a universal story and that’s what I wanted. I never say it’s Chicago in the book. I wanted the reader from Tokyo or Tripoli to read it and say, ‘Oh, I know these people. That’s my street too.'”
Sandra Cisneros on Reaching Non-Readers with Her Books
Trading Camp Fires for Factions
First there was The Hunger Games summer camp, and now there will be a Divergent theme camp in Naperville, Illinois. Camp Divergent will feature activities based on the five factions, such as brain teasers on Erudite day and planting vegetables on Amity day. Don’t worry; no one will be ziplining off of a skyscraper for Dauntless.
Belladonna* and Kundiman Celebrate Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
If you’re in New York this weekend, join Belladonna* and Kundiman for a celebration of what would have been the 60th birthday of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (a full life cycle event in the Chinese/Korean lunar calendar). Nine poets, including Cathy Park Hong, Myung Mi Kim, Sina Queyras, and Anne Waldman, will perform a staged reading from Dictee, Cha’s best known work. There will be birthday cake, projected images, scholarly contextualization, and other surprises. Saturday March 5, at the Bowery Poetry Club, 2pm.
Trouble in Paradise?
Surprise: the HuffPo/AOL link-up is proving to be messy.
Moonshoot
“Much has been made of the seemingly prophetic nature of Verne’s lunar stories: elements such as the distance and time to reach the moon, and even the launch and landing sites for the mission fall very closely to what actually happened during NASA’s Apollo program.” On the prophetic and historical power of Jules Verne‘s science fiction novels, including the works that later inspired the space program.
The So-Called Elite
n+1 provides a fascinating study of today’s divisive concept of cultural elitism: “Today, though, it’s the bearers of culture rather than the wielders of power who are taxed with elitism. If the term is applied to powerful people, this is strictly for cultural reasons, as the different reputations of the identically powerful Obama and Bush attest. No one would think to call a foul-mouthed four-star general an elitist, even though he commands an army, any more than the term would cover a private equity titan who hires Rod Stewart to serenade his 60th birthday party.”
Witt on Einhorn
In Emily Witt’s last piece (she got a book deal) for the New York Observer, she profiles Amy Einhorn and her self-named imprint. (via)