From her Cundill Prize-Shortlisted Wages for Housework, Emily Callaci chronicles how feminists fought to recognize the economic value of women’s domestic labor.
“She calls it ‘Arctic femininity’ and it’s defining characteristic, so far as I can gather, is unapologetic competence. “Extreme toughness”—that word again—“and ability, and also a celebration of femininity,” Blair says.
Imagine the latter not being in conflict with the former. Imagine not just womanhood, but the refusal to hide it not being thought anathema to skill.”
Revolutionary women in science, illustrated by @rachelignotofsky
“If The Avengers is 9/11 with aliens, The Dark Knight Rises is the psychological victory of the 1 percent. This is part of what’s so compelling about the genre. We’re in a world adjacent to our own, with cultural crises reminiscent of our own, but these problems are ultimately solved by men in costumes.”
Sally Rooney on superheroes and the myth of American power.
“If there is a thematic message encoded in the ‘girl’ narratives, I think this is its key: the transition from girlhood to womanhood... Girl attunes us to what might be gained and lost in the transformation, and raises a possibility of reversion. To be called ‘just a girl’ may be diminishment, but to call yourself ‘still a girl’ can be empowerment, laying claim to the unencumbered liberties of youth.”
Robin Wasserman on the rise of the “Girl” titled books.
In honor of this weekend’s PEN World Voices Festival, we are sharing pieces from PEN America: A Journal from Writers and Readers.
- Edward Snowden on why we must protect our privacy.
- The modern and the medieval collide: Aminatta Forna on Ebola.
- Mona Eltahawy on how to fight the patriarchy.
- The raft of the Medusa: a cautionary tale from Tom Stoppard.
Email us at giveaway [@] lithub.com for your chance to win tickets!
- If Jane Eyre came out today would it be marketed as genre? | Literary Hub
- Charlotte Brontë may have started the fire, but Jean Rhys burned down the house: Bridget Read on the limits of Brontë feminism. | Literary Hub
- Searching for salvation in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. | Literary Hub
- The conclusion of Mitchell Jackson’s autobiographical documentary, The Residue Years. | Literary Hub
- In honor of National Poetry Month, ten designers animated the poetry of Tracy K. Smith, Patricia Lockwood, and others. | The Washington Post
- A 900-page manga-style biography, C.D. Wright’s final collection, and more: 17 highly anticipated summer books. | Publishers Weekly
- On John D’Agata’s and David Shields’ lofty ambitions for the lyric essay, freed from the tyranny of both make-believe and fact. | Harper’s Magazine
- A collection of new Irish writing, including work by Kevin Barry, Emma Donoghue, and Belinda McKeon. | Granta
- “If [Kwan’s] books are free of clichés, they’re also free of any sense of their characters as real, breathing, complicated people.” On Crazy Rich Asians, Pearl S. Buck, and the importance of multiple, multi-faceted narratives. | BuzzFeed Reader
- Poetry is the metronome of the Cuban soul: A Cuban poetry primer curated by Ilan Stavans. | FSG Work in Progress
- “Winterson’s work offered me a safe house in my war with my own body.” How hearing Jeanette Winterson speak at AWP saved SJ Sindu’s life. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “There’s so much in Shakespeare that I think anything is possible.” Jillian Keenan on weaving together spanking and Shakespeare. | The Toast
Also on Literary Hub: A Buddhist cult for western children: my life in a Buddhist cult with “the master” · On the literature of cyborgs, robots, and other automata · The Bronte sisters’ first appearance in print: from Deborah Lutz’s The Bronte Cabinet
- How science fiction redefines who we are and what we are becoming. | Literary Hub
- We’re just living in these floating fragmentations: On Eileen Myles and the feminists she has influenced. | T Magazine
- “My goal isn’t soft multiculturalism, but rather to convey a richer and fuller sense of what literature is, what the possibilities are, and to share the voices that often get excluded or silenced when we speak of ‘literature’ and ‘writing.’” An interview with John Keene. | Guernica
- A writer can never be on the side of killing: Syrian poet Adonis on revolution, religion, and renaissances. | NYRB
- “Language is more direct, open, unself-conscious, precise, and human. It doesn’t belong to me anymore but to the atmosphere, and this makes me happy.” Henri Cole on having his poetry projected by Jenny Holzer. | The New Yorker
- Of Gertrude Stein and the redundancy of war: On Don Mee Choi’s collection of poetry, prose, and opera, Hardly War. | BOMB Magazine
- “[Alexander Lukashenko] stated publicly that I decry the peoples of Russia and Belarus in my work… Vladimir Putin didn’t congratulate me either.” An interview with 2015 Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich. | The Guardian
- Li-Young Lee on poetic consciousness, finite minds recognizing eternal things, and how teaching is like bleeding. | Los Angles Review of Books
- More (literal) Harper Lee drama: A report from the first stage production of To Kill a Mockingbird by the nonprofit Lee created. | The New York Times
Also on Literary Hub: Interview with a bookstore: Copperfield’s Books · The first graphic novel about the war in Iraq by a veteran · The musical genius: from Justin Tussing’s Vexation Lullaby
- Siri Hustvedt, Helen Macdonald, A. L. Kennedy and others on the poems that make them cry. | Literary Hub
- On reissuing Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, ten years later. | Literary Hub
- How to prescribe poems for the sick, the dying, the grief-stricken. | Literary Hub
- Write urgently, write patiently, write: An interview with the finalists for the 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. | PEN America
- “I want to say something stronger than that: not just that cruising made me a poet, but also that cruising itself is a kind of poetry.” Garth Greenwell on the poetics of cruising. | BuzzFeed Books
- On the activism, anger, and artistry of feminist poet Adrienne Rich. | The New Republic
- Beyond the “no-one-reads-anymore hysteria, the lack of supportive careers for apprenticing writers, the MFA deathtrap:” Jessa Crispin on the crisis of book criticism. | Copper Nickel
- “Such categorization of an entire community as an insidious poison is a move we have seen before.” Teju Cole on Charlie Hebdo’s Islamophobic editorial. | Brittle Paper
- On the contributions to publishing of Blanche Knopf, the Mother of Borzoi. | The New Yorker
- “What I know of the Atlantic is red. What I know of its wetness is blood.” An essay by Divya Victor. | Harriet
- In which Susan Sarandon is interviewed by her “dream guy,” George Saunders. | Interview Magazine
Also on Literary Hub: Thomas Piketty on the financial crisis, as it happened · Books making news this week: immigrants, westerns, and war crimes · The trial: from Maggie Nelson’s newly reissued The Red Parts
In honor of International Women’s Day, we asked the all-volunteer staff at VIDA to tell us about the books that changed their lives.
- The wonderful, proto-feminist snark of Jane Austen’s juvenilia, plus an entire (short) novel by young Austen, “The beautifull Cassandra.” | Literary Hub
- “What was I going to say? That this or that writer was not Virginia Woolf but was similarly female?” Rivka Galchen on women writers and gender envy. | The New Yorker
- Choice didn’t enter at this point: Garth Greenwell on writing a 41-page paragraph and block paragraph novels. | Catapult
- “The broad spectrum of humanity, which runs from the sublime to the brutal, has for me been like a difficult homework problem ever since I was a child.” An interview with Han Kang. | The White Review
- I am never lonely and never bored: Poetry by Mary Ruefle and John Ashbery from the new issue of the Paris Review. | The Paris Review
- “Before the selfie came ‘the self’” and other insights on Jane Eyre and the formation of individuality. | The Atlantic
- “That’s kind of in a sense what the poem comes from, the idea of healing together and breathing together.” An interview with Richard Blanco, the poet who read at the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. | The Alignist
- Melville House, being Melville House, is trolling the NRA on behalf of one of its books. | Flavorwire
- “How much affection can two people inflict on each other until each starts to change?” A short story by Rosa Aiello. | Triple Canopy
Also on Literary Hub: An ode to the late St. Mark’s Bookshop and its A-list roster of regulars · A highly subjective and idiosyncratic list of 102 indispensible works of literary criticism · Do artists still find inspiration in literature? · 30 Books in 30 Days: Kate Tuttle on Sam Quinones’ Dreamland · I’m not Angry: from Kaitlyn Greenidge’s We Love You, Charlie Freeman
- Kent Russell on the diminishing returns of freelance magazine writing. | Literary Hub
- The toxic smog of the information age: “Scroogled,” a short story by Cory Doctorow. | Literary Hub
- From inside the WI Innocence Project: a reading list on our broken criminal justice system. | Literary Hub
- Impossible pages by and about Annie Dillard, “poet, essayist, novelist, humorist, naturalist, critic, theologian, collagist and full-throated singer of mystic incantations.” | The New York Times Magazine
- “we knew just what kind of time could be had” 13 poems written by Bernadette Meyer between the ages of 21 and 25. | Jacket2
- CNET will begin publishing “great short stories, with a tech twist” monthly; the first is by Michelle Richmond, who will be followed by Anthony Marra, Cristina García. and Nayomi Munaweera. | Technically Literate
- This Bridge Called My Back, Gender Trouble, and beyond: 33 feminist works of criticism, fiction, and memoir, in honor of International Women’s Day. | Verso
- It was like a dictation from a ghost: Alexander Chee on the Siren call of writing, George Sandism, and fiction’s manifestations in reality. | Asian American Writers’ Workshop
- “You can arrest only the poets/ Not the poems/ Never.” On the arrest and trial of Maung Saungkha, a Burmese poet who wrote a risqué verse involving a tattoo, the president, and his penis. | The New Yorker
- A. Igoni Barrett on responding negatively to Gregor Samsa, mixing comedy and cynicism, and finding his voice. | VICE
- “There is a palpable hunger among the young to find a way to connect with the messy goings-on around them.” Githa Hariharan, Arunava Sinha, and Anjum Hasan discuss writing and publishing in India. | Public Books
Also on Literary Hub: The Grumpy Librarian recommends you embrace the middle brow · The defiant magic of author, artist, and activist Molly Crabapple · 30 Books in 30 Days: Elizabeth Taylor on Terry Alford’s Fortune’s Fool · Feel like this: From Rob Roberge’s memoir, Liar
In our new readers’ advice column, The Grumpy Librarian, Free Library of Philadelphia rare book curator Caitlin Goodman recommends your next read based on two books you love--and one you hate. To submit books, you can email TheGrumpyLibrarian@lithub.com.
Rebecca Solnit, The Case of the Missing Perpetrator, on the site today
We conclude our countdown of the biggest literary news of 2015 with the top 5 stories of the year.