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Lay back as you listen to Awaken, My Love! by Childish Gambino, and thoughts of social turmoil will disturb your rest. Amid his poetic verses are allusions to metaphorical monsters that call to mind police violence, marches, and riots.
When news of the executive order on immigration broke last week, I was looking at a photograph of Sojourner Truth. The picture had been open on my desk for days—an object of an essay I’m writing—and its content struck a particular and heartrending chord.
Borislav Pekić was born in Montenegro and spent his youth in Belgrade. At eighteen, he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor for political activity. His only reading material was a donated bible, his only paper was toilet tissue, and his only pens were the teeth of a comb.
I learned about character development not by studying it, but by understanding the nature of cartoons. I spent years sculpting superheroes and cartoon characters for DC Comics, Nickelodeon, Pixar, and others. Although the perception is changing, the art world considers cartooning of all kinds to be a distant, lesser cousin to the fine arts, painting…
For her debut collection In Full Velvet, poet Jenny Johnson’s address begins with “Thank you,” and it is radical, as if a muse might peer over the edge of her throne and say, “My, those are words I have not heard for some time.”
If Paris is a moveable feast, then let’s feast on it with more recent works of fiction and nonfiction that describe Paris as it is today, without ignoring the city’s multifaceted history.
Just two days after President Donald Trump took office, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway took a seat across from Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. For many, Conway’s comments harkened back to the dystopian vision of society presented in George Orwell’s 1984.
I am so into Ann Patchett right now. Is it hip to be into Ann Patchett? Is it edgy? No. It’s book clubby. It’s suburban mommy. My book club of suburban moms met last night and discussed Commonwealth. When we chose it, we laughed a little about what an obvious choice it was.
With several unforeseen upheavals in global politics over the last year, John Berger’s approach to art and literature as implicitly political seems more relevant than ever. Throughout his extensive oeuvre, Berger posited aesthetics as a radical vehicle for social change, and embraced the role of storytelling and criticism, of poetry and the visual arts.
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