Author: e.v. de cleyre

A map of northern and southern Nigera from the UN.
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Language Could Kill You: Adichie, Code-Switching & the Biafran War

  Language plays a crucial role throughout Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels, but nowhere is it more decisive than in the author’s second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. Written against the backdrop of the Biafran War, two wealthy sisters return from England to a nation on the cusp of revolution and choose two different paths:…

A House in the Sky
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Since Feeling is First: Elements of Craft to Express Emotion

Emotions, feelings, desires—whatever you choose to call them—are central to writing. e.e. cummings wrote “since feeling is first / who pays any attention / to the syntax of things / will never wholly kiss you.” But how do we pay attention to syntax while retaining feeling? There are countless elements of craft to aid the…