Alice Hattrick’s Redefinition of Illness
Alice Hattrick’s new book redefines how we think about the body’s relationship to pain, in the process providing us with a new way to understand what it means to be chronically ill.
Author: Miyako Pleines
W. S. Merwin’s Ancestral Memory in Victoria Chang’s The Trees Witness Everything
Almost every poem in Victoria Chang’s new collection gets its title from a W. S. Merwin poem of the same name. Both poets seem to believe in the idea that history and life are really just ongoing cycles designed to propel us forward, just as they also keep us tied to our pasts.
Women’s Rage
Claire-Louise Bennett’s new novel stirs up all the women in literature who have been sealing their anger away, letting it churn undisturbed at the center of themselves.
The Time of Girlhood in Sarah Manguso’s Very Cold People
Sarah Manguso is obsessed with time. In her latest book, she returns to the concept, illuminating the complete lack of protection for young girls from a world that’s desperate to objectify and sexualize them as soon as possible.
The Fanfiction of A Little Life
Fanfiction pummels its readers with emotion, nearly overdosing us on joy, love, sex, and sorrow until we are left feeling exposed. It’s this rawness that fanfiction readers crave, and it’s this same rawness that Hanya Yanagihara brings to the literary world with her 2015 novel.
Pop Song and the Literary Breakup Album
Larissa Pham’s new collection reads like a beautiful, literary breakup album, each essay operating as its own track. By the time you’ve turned the final pages, you want nothing more than to flip the metaphorical album over, drop the needle, and begin again.
Searching for My Grandmother in The Heart Mountain Sentinel
When my grandmother was a girl, she slept with a knife underneath her pillow. The soft brutality of this detail rushes to the forefront of my mind every time I recall her face. I’m pulled in by the image of her small body afraid but ready to fight.