Welcome to the new Ploughshares website! For answers to commonly asked questions, read here.
By focusing on women in a kitchen, Welty seems to shrug the mantles that keep her marginalized—regional and gendered—subverting expectations for canonical American literature as public or inhabited by important men.
The New York Times was not impressed with Bright Lights, Big City when it first appeared in 1984. “A clever, breezy–and in the end, facile documentary,” was what they said.
Several years back, I read a book that was unlike nearly any other I’d read before in one striking way: nothing particularly bad happened in it. The protagonist experienced minor internal struggles and dilemmas, but basically, everything came up roses. This felt like a major departure from Great Literature as I knew it…
What kinds of stories will emerge that focus on rural or city settings during a Trump presidency? Will the typical themes continue to be cemented or will variations become the norm?
Only in a Japanese RPG can a boy band save the world from the empire and its demonic biotechnological army. In Final Fantasy XV, four male friends use the empire’s language of violence to decolonize the kingdom of darkness. Somewhere, Fanon’s ghost is drinking sake and smoking Peace cigarettes.
Being a lover of food and memoirs, I have a dream of living in a foreign country, especially in Europe, for a year and writing about its food customs.
It seems a pretty commonplace thing to say that great art results from heartbreak. There are countless examples in painting, music, and literature. Sometimes it’s a series of hardships that inspired an artist. Sometimes a direct line can be drawn back to a single event that brought about a sudden surge in artistic activity.
For those of us who have found ourselves marginalized and rejected at some point in our lives because of who we are, books can offer a refuge from which we may attain some understanding of ourselves and the world.
When I was a child growing up Catholic, the Feast of the Epiphany struck me as an afterthought. December was all about the thrilling run-up of Advent, characterized by candle lighting and singing at mass and by lists for Santa and chocolate-filled calendars at home. Finally there was the tremendous climax of Christmas.
No products in the cart.