For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In the winter of 2016, in a classroom on the ground floor of the English department where I teach, my colleagues and I gathered to hear Sofia Samatar give a job talk for a tenure-track teaching position. The classroom had once been part of a large indoor pool, specifically the shallow end, whose only … Read more
[ad_1] Kelly Link’s fiction always brings to my mind the old-timey phrase “spinning a yarn.” Although I’ve learned this idiom has nautical origins, for me, it evokes spindles, spinning wheels, and the realm of folktales. And while Link tends to reinvent her own style so that no two stories are alike, all of them can … Read more
[ad_1] An interesting, if somewhat recondite, corner of the great novelistic universe is the study of literary ancestry:where a work comes from, what it grows from, and what grows from it—be it in theme, perspective, narrative, or technique. By studying the descendants and antecedents of a given novel, one can learn much about how the … Read more
[ad_1] Editor’s Note: This book and this review were written before the insurrection against the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021 1. Two events in recent history: In April and May of 2020, a series of demonstrations took place inside and around the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. Demonstrators gathered in protest of recent … Read more
[ad_1] Susie Yang’s debut White Ivy is focused around issues of identity, belonging, and the inherent anxieties that accompany those who simultaneously seek to conform and hide. Where does an “average and nondescript” Chinese American girl belong in white America? In what form does racial prejudice make itself visible in a fractured modern world? Yang … Read more