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High and Common "Magick" in Past and Present Narratives (08/22)
Of all the commanding aspects of All of Us Villains, the concept of 'magick' arguably stands as the story's most significant. The residents of Ilvernath treat its existence much as they would electricity and running water, and in many ways are just as reliant on its practical applications as we in the real world are on our smartphones. An...
Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon (08/22)
Located on the Mediterranean Sea, tiny Lebanon has the highest per capita population of Syrian refugees in the world, hosting an estimated 1.5 million who have fled from its war-torn neighbor. To put this in perspective, Lebanon is about half the size of Massachusetts with a population of just under eight million as of 2019. It has long ...
The Seven Sisters: How to Build an Old Girls' Network (08/22)
In Karin Tanabe's novel A Woman of Intelligence, some characters attend all-women's colleges. The narrator Katharina graduated from Vassar and another lead, Ava, graduated from Mount Holyoke. Katharina's occasional babysitter, Sarah Beach, studies at Barnard. These colleges and four other historically women's colleges — Bryn Mawr, ...
Eshu: The Yoruba God of Mischief (08/22)
Eshu (also spelled Esu, and also known as Elegba) is a powerful deity in the Ifa religion of the Yoruba people of Western Africa. He is an orisha, a figure that can be a representation of human or divine characteristics or concepts, as well as aspects of nature, such as rivers. A primordial orisha, Eshu represents mischief. However, he is...
Q&A with Jackie Polzin (08/22)
Jackie Polzin talks about her debut novel, Brood, and how her own experience caring for chickens contributed to it.
First of all, why chickens?
When I was 30, my partner and I got chickens. They were my first pets since childhood. I compensated by giving them a lot of attention, and that attention inspired the book. I knew I could ...
The Life Changing Reality of Bionic Limbs (08/22)
The protagonist of Nnedi Okorafor's novel Noor has undergone a number of procedures and augmentations to reduce her physical discomfort and improve her standard of living. Born with missing and deformed limbs, and injured years later in a car accident, being fitted with sophisticated bionic limbs grants her the strength — both ...
The Swastika Before and After Nazism (08/22)
Ru Freeman uses the swastika symbol outside of its prevailing cultural narrative in the landscape of
Sleeping Alone's 'The Wake,' a story about a cult leader who believes he is an incarnation of Christ. He spends his last days in a modest New York City apartment with an ordinary family, in a room called 'the Swastika Room.' Freeman ...
Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark (08/22)
The novelist Toni Morrison (1931-2019), author of The Bluest Eye, Beloved and many other famous works, is often considered one of the greatest and most influential American writers. However, as Elaine Castillo draws attention to in How to Read Now, Morrison is known mostly for her novels and less for what is arguably one of the most ...
Young Adult Fantasy Novels Featuring Black Girls (08/22)
An exciting addition to young adult fantasy, Liselle Sambury's Blood Like Magic is a thrilling story of a Black teenage girl discovering her magical powers in a genre that has been disproportionately filled with white main characters for a long time. There are now plenty of fantastic young adult books out there where Black girls are no ...
The Bolla in Albanian Folklore (08/22)
Pajtim Statovci's novel Bolla takes its name from a creature in Albanian folklore. The narrative is interspersed with a reimagined version of this feared monster's origins, with thematic parallels to his characters' lives that enhance the emotional impact of their story while commenting on the importance of storytelling as a means of ...
The Spirituality and Symbolism of Buddhist Art (08/22)
In today's world, art therapy has become an increasingly popular option. According to the American Art Therapy Association (AATA), this experiential treatment 'is used to improve cognitive and sensorimotor functions, foster self-esteem and self-awareness, cultivate emotional resilience, promote insight, enhance social skills, reduce and ...
Nomadic Housing: Somalia and Beyond (08/22)
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that in 2020 there were more than
82 million people displaced from their homes due to human rights issues such as violence and persecution worldwide. And, for as long as humans have existed, people have lived as nomads in various parts of the world, including Somalia, as detailed in Shugri Said ...
The Psychic Industry in the United States (08/22)
In Nan Fischer's novel Some of It Was Real, psychic-medium entertainer Sylvie Young comes under the scrutiny of Thomas Holmes, a reporter determined to expose her as a 'grief vampire' who takes advantage of people mourning loved ones. Whether or not you believe their claims of clairvoyance and communication with the dead are real or ...
The Oregon Trail Video Game (08/22)
Before they became video game developers, the main characters in Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow were kids growing up in the 1980s, and like countless other Generation X kids, one of the first video games they fell in love with was The Oregon Trail. Many people of this age group probably remember hunting for deer ...
The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 (08/22)
In
Lightning Strike, William Kent Krueger includes an author's note about the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 (also known as Public Law 959 or the Adult Vocational Training Program), which features as a tragic backdrop to the overall story. According to Krueger, the program was 'the brainchild of a group of men appointed by President Harry ...
Franz Kafka and "The Hunter Gracchus" (08/22)
In Joy Williams'
Harrow, two characters discuss Franz Kafka's '
The Hunter Gracchus,' a short story written in 1917 and published posthumously in 1931, along with a document that was marked as a fragment, which appears to be an addendum to the story.
Franz Kafka was born into a well-to-do Jewish family on July 3, 1883 in Prague. He had ...
The Science of Forgiveness (07/22)
Could you forgive the person who murdered your beloved son?
Weeks after Debra Trice was convicted of the first-degree murder of Raymond Jones she received a letter. It was from Margaret Jones, Raymond's mother. Mrs. Jones wrote, '[Y]ou have my forgiveness. So, when you feel you cannot make it, look up and talk to God, Jehovah is his ...
Rare Earth Metals and Global Politics (07/22)
In The Brilliant Abyss, Helen Scales draws attention to growing international interest in rare earth mining. Rare earths look set to overtake fossil fuels as the most valued energy resource on the planet, as they are key to producing green technology. What will this profound shift mean for oil- and gas-producing countries?
In the 20th ...
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (07/22)
On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, having been convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.
The Rosenbergs met in the Young Communist League in 1936 and married in 1939. Julius worked for the U.S. Army Signal Corps as an engineer, and though Ethel (né...
Misogynistic Themes in Murder Ballads (07/22)
In The Killing Hills, which takes place in Kentucky, misogyny manifests in attitudes toward key female characters, notably the town sheriff. Additionally, the act of femicide is a central theme and a reminder of cultural aspects of female subjugation, including the murder ballad, a song format that is notably popular as a sub-genre of ...
Jaipur, Rajasthan (India's "Pink City") (07/22)
Alka Joshi's novel The Secret Keeper of Jaipur takes place in the city of Jaipur, the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan and home to over three million people.
Founded in 1727 by Maharaja Jai Singh II, Jaipur is said to be the first completely planned city in India. The Maharaja became aware that his current capital, Amber (now ...
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) (07/22)
The narrator of Rivka Galchen's novel Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is Katharina Kepler, mother of noted astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler was born in 1571 in Weil der Stadt, Württemberg, a German territory within the Holy Roman Empire. His father, whom Kepler pronounced 'an immoral, rough and quarrelsome soldier,' was a ...
The Canadian Shield (07/22)
In the acknowledgments at the end of her book, A Town Called Solace, author Mary Lawson writes, 'The town of Solace exists only in my imagination, but the setting is very real: the vast and beautiful area of lakes and rocks and forests known as the Canadian Shield, in Northern Ontario.'
A continental shield is a large expanse of land ...
Penobscot Indian Island Reservation (07/22)
Night of the Living Rez takes place on the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation in Maine, home of the Penobscot Nation tribe of Native Americans, also known as the Panawahpskek Nation. Panawahpskek is the name for the Penobscot in Abenaki, the language used by these and other Indigenous Algonquin peoples in Maine and Quebec. The island ...
Lewy Body Dementia (07/22)
In Matt Godman's novel,
Carolina Moonset, one of the main characters has Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), a degenerative condition similar to Alzheimer's disease.
According to the
National Institute of Health, 'Lewy body dementia (LBD) is a disease associated with abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein in the brain. These ...
San Francisco's Zen Hospice (07/22)
In an essay from Serious Face titled 'A House at the End of the World,' Jon Mooallem writes about Zen Hospice, a palliative care facility opened in San Francisco in 1986 by members of the local Zen Buddhist community who were heartsick seeing unhoused people dying on the streets. They had the idea to open a hospice that would offer them ...
Moonlight Schools (06/22)
At one point in Kim Michele Richardson's novel The Book Woman's Daughter, protagonist Honey Lovett discovers that a family friend attended a Moonlight School. The Moonlight Schools were the brainchild of Cora Wilson Stewart (1875-1958), an elementary school teacher and school superintendent in Rowan County, Kentucky. Born in the community...
The Legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft (06/22)
Although the word 'feminist' did not enter popular political discourse until over a century after her death, the published works of Mary Wollstonecraft show her to be one of the world's pioneering feminist writers. As Love and Fury explores in some detail, the events of Wollstonecraft's life were crucial in cementing her ideologies and ...
The Significance of Black Hair in the United States (06/22)
In her debut thriller, The Other Black Girl, Zakiya Dalila Harris includes but does not explain certain concepts linked to Black life. This may be an intentional choice to move past the expectation that racialized and other marginalized authors should clarify concepts and issues that aren't commonplace in mainstream white society for ...
Belle da Costa Greene (06/22)
Belle da Costa Greene was an American librarian who ran the private library belonging to banker John Pierpont Morgan (better known as J.P. Morgan) and later to his son. During her time working for the Morgans, Greene acquired many rare books, manuscripts and other items for her employers, ultimately contributing to what is now an
...
Sweatshops in Asia (06/22)
In Joan Silber's Secrets of Happiness, Ethan's father, Gil, has a lucrative career in the women's clothing industry, frequently jetting off to parts of Asia to oversee the outsourcing of production. Elsewhere in the book, a character named Bud takes a job with an organization in Cambodia campaigning to improve working conditions in ...
Cambodians in Stockton, California (06/22)
Several stories in Anthony Veasna So's short story collection
Afterparties take place in Stockton, California, the author's hometown. Stockton is home to the fifth largest population of ethnically Cambodian people in the United States as of 2019, according to the
Pew Research Center. A 2018 study by
U.S. News and World Report found ...
The Importance of "Tech Company" Status (06/22)
In Big Vape, Jamie Ducharme describes an existential crisis at the heart of Juul; while its founders (and many of its employees) saw the business as a tech start-up, to the Food and Drug Administration (and much of the public) it looked like a manufacturer of tobacco products. This distinction is not a mere matter of brand identity —...
The Republic of Chad (06/22)
Much of Ken Follett's novel Never is set in present-day Chad, a landlocked nation located in north-central Africa. Officially known as The Republic of Chad, at 496,000 square miles, the country is the fifth largest on the continent.
Chad has a long and complex history; it's one of the areas scientists believe may have been the cradle ...
Literary Dublin (06/22)
The backdrop of Sally Rooney's
Beautiful World, Where Are You is the city of Dublin and its environs. Rooney herself lives in this
UNESCO City of Literature, a metropolis that boasts a flourishing literary scene and an impressive inventory of influential authors, poets and playwrights. The streets of the vibrant capital are infused ...
Classical Music and the Cultural Revolution (06/22)
In
Swimming Back to Trout River, Dawn and Momo are united by their love of music during the turbulent years of the
Cultural Revolution, particularly Western classical music. There is a special significance attached to a bust of Beethoven within the novel. Beethoven was seen as a revolutionary symbol throughout 20th century China, since ...
Gentrification and Historic Racism in Portland (06/22)
In Willy Vlautin's novel, The Night Always Comes, a family in Portland, Oregan find themselves struggling to afford the cost of living in their neighborhood because of gentrification.
Gentrification is the process in which wealthy individuals and businesses converge on a previously working-class or low-income neighborhood. (The word ...
Reading About Dictionaries and Lost Words (06/22)
Pip Williams was prompted to write The Dictionary of Lost Words, a novel including historical detail about words omitted from the Oxford English Dictionary, by reading Simon Winchester's 1998 book The Professor and the Madman and wondering where women were in the story of the dictionary. Below is some background on Winchester's book as ...
The Nutcracker (06/22)
Megan Abbott's The Turnout, a novel about two twin sisters who are dancers, begins at the start of The Nutcracker season. Apart from being a universally beloved show with deep roots in American ballet, The Nutcracker is also the Durant School of Dance's main moneymaker: 'Every year, their fall enrollment increased twenty percent because ...
Peanut Farming in the United States (06/22)
The central character in Nathan Harris's The Sweetness of Water decides to grow peanuts on his land in Reconstruction-era Georgia.
Although peanuts are often considered nuts, as the name would suggest, they're actually legumes like beans or peas. Legumes, according to the Peanut Institute, are defined by their edible seeds enclosed in...
Cultural Recognition of the Tulsa Race Massacre (06/22)
In
The Ground Breaking, Scott Ellsworth notes that for many Americans, the first exposure they received to the events of 1921 in Tulsa came from a dramatic portrayal on an episode of the HBO series
Watchmen that aired October 20, 2019. The show received credit for spurring a renewed interest in the Tulsa Race Massacre in the lead up to ...
A Brief History of Cloning (06/22)
One of author Sarah Gailey's greatest skills on display in
The Echo Wife is that of making the science depicted look and feel real. The cloning in the novel seems plausible. But how far have humans actually come in the field of cloning? Where did it begin and where are we now?
First, we should establish what cloning is. As
Dr. Helen ...
Grief Memoirs (06/22)
Carol Smith's
Crossing the River recounts the death of her young son, Christopher, in combination with stories of other people who have experienced loss. In an interview with
Hippocampus Magazine, Smith recalls memoirs about grief that have been influential for her. Below are some of the books she mentions, along with other significant ...
Huey P. Newton (06/22)
In Meron Hadero's A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, the main character of 'Mekonnen aka Mack aka Huey Freakin' Newton' takes his titular nickname from Huey P. Newton, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers were a group of revolutionaries focused on Black liberation in the 1960s-70s. Hadero's character...
Deep Space Travel Technologies (05/22)
From the first description of its maiden launch in the year 2072, the fictional Lazarus is more than just a spaceship in Riley Redgate's Alone Out Here. It is a cryogenic ark filled with extensive samples of Earth's faunal DNA, and an integrated archive for preserving a cross-section of humanity's archaeological treasures. Moreover, the ...
W.E.B. Du Bois (05/22)
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (aka W.E.B. Du Bois) was a noted author, historian, activist and sociologist as well as a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (
NAACP). His philosophies play an important role throughout Honorée Fannone Jeffers' novel
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois; each ...
Door Locks Throughout History (05/22)
In Ashley Weaver's novel A Peculiar Combination, the heroine is a safe-cracker who breaks into houses by picking door locks. Locks that operate with keys, including those typically used on doors, haven't changed all that much within the past century and a half. In fact, personal door locks in use today are of the same basic design ...
The Bielski Partisans (05/22)
In
The Forest of Vanishing Stars, persecuted Jews in Eastern Europe take shelter in the Naliboki Forest, located west of Minsk in contemporary Belarus. The area, then known as Byelorussia, was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 at the same time as Germany invaded Poland as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that established a non-...
