Igifu – Scholastique Mukasonga
As her characters find themselves unable to articulate what has transpired, her stories verbalize the horror of genocide in ways drastically abstract, beautifully and imaginatively rendered.
The Theory of Flight – Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
When we want to base our shared reality with each other on facts, we also must allow, acknowledge, and cherish the existence of magic.
For Balzac and readers like me as well, nothing pulls you in like a printing press (identified by brand name) and an ink-distributing roller. In a small shop. In the provinces, no less.
Sligo Drawings – Bart Lodewijks
I’m reminded of the breaching experiments we read about in sociology class. Stand in an elevator w/ your back to the door & record how people react, etc.
That Time of Year – Marie Ndiaye
NDiaye’s tale is also a vivid portrait of ennui: the seductiveness and corrosiveness of boredom, the draining experience of being trapped in a single space, isolated from the routines and relationships of your life.
Russell suggests that this is what writers can do for others and themselves: sing with absence while respecting absence.
Libraries amid Protest: Books, Organizing, and Global Activism – Sherrin Frances
What is original about Libraries amid Protest is Frances’ decision to foreground the library not as a distraction from the “real work” of the occupation but as a key component of its politics.
That Hair – Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
Narrator Mila’s story — or stories — of her hair, the different phases of treatments, evolving senses of attachment, dissociation, indifference, and reinvigoration concerning her hair, are naturally diminutive allegories for a larger postcolonial existential journey.
My Private Lennon – Sibbie O’Sullivan
The Beatles in some way offered themselves to be viewed, to be ogled and admired, to be lusted after. To frame it even in this way, however, is to give so much precedence to the object.
Texts like Lucia invite us to reconsider Lucia as not simply an ruined and silenced woman, interesting only by virtue of being the daughter of James Joyce, but an artist who could have had an outlet, could have given herself and left us with more.