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Addiction and family, religion and science, being Ghanaian in Alabama: these are some of the issues that Yaa Gyasi’a second novel Transcendent Kingdom confronts. Written from the perspective of Gifty, now a talented biomedical researcher at a prestigious US university, this is the story of the loss of a charismatic brother to opioid addiction, and the complex aftermath of this trauma for those he leaves behind.
more...“On Earth we’re briefly gorgeous” is a dramatic coming-of-age story interlaced with family trauma, and a letter to the mother of the now-adult narrator. This highly poetic book conveys a nuanced and exceedingly ambivalent understanding of violence.
more...In her recently published essay volume World of Wonders, Aimee Nezhukumatathil frames moments in her life that have shaped her, with anecdotes about animals and plants. In this way, she conveys how wondrous and impressive flora and fauna can be, and how much they have to teach.
more...The Afrofuturist movement strives for a space for independence and self-determination for Black people and rejects European universalism. Yet writers on the African continent have also expressed how this label doesn’t speak to and for what they are doing…
more...Last Friday evening I tuned in to livestream the ilb’s reading with Nana Kwame Adjey-Brenyah of Friday Black, a collection of short stories that explores issues of race and social justice in dystopian near-future settings.
more...The story begins with the return of one half of a pair of twins to her small hometown in Louisiana. The Vignes girls, as identical in appearance as they are opposite in character, begin inseparable and end worlds apart. Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half tells the strange story of their lives, and those of their daughters.
more...Written in the style of a memoir, Broome’s book charts the complex histories of her own family as well as that of her hometown, New Orleans.
more...On the 8th of July 2020, Jennifer Neal joined us on zoom and gave us some insights into her work. She is an Australian-American writer, artist and occasional stand-up comedian who currently lives in Berlin. She has published short stories and a wide array of journalistic articles and essays, and has recently finished a novel. Jennifer talked to us about writing nature and environment, and shared some thoughts on speculative fiction.
more...What makes Freshwater exceptional and so valuable as a literary intervention is the way it turns Western epistemologies of mental health on their head.
more...Valeria Luiselli teaches at Columbia University in New York, and works as a journalist in Mexico and the USA. She published her excellent novel Lost Children Archive in 2019. From the very first pages, I fell in love with the book: with Luiselli’s gentle narrative voice, and with the family’s soundscape, whom my reading allowed […]
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