The 1619 Project (Edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein) opens with an epigraph from Langston Hughes, his poem “American Heartbreak 1619”: I am the American heartbreak-- The rock on which freedom Stumped its toe-- The great mistake That Jamestown made Long ago He’s such
The more that I read now about the climate emergency, the more references I find within my other reading. Here, in Deirdre McNamer’s Aviary (2021), an unexpectedly lyrical rumination: “She prayed for the groaning, hectically gorgeous, steaming world, which seemed, more and more often, to lurch and shudder on
Last year, I was inspired by a local artist’s desk calendar to explore a series of cities in my reading. This year I’ve been exploring migration and lives in motion: often involuntary, frequently devastating, sometimes inspiring. This sense of between-ness reminds me of this passage in a 2021 debut
The more time I’ve spent reading about slavery this year, the more often I’ve discovered references to it in unexpected places. (Looking to catch up? Here are all the links to the previous posts this year.) For instance, in Fred D’Aguiar’s memoir Year of Plagues (2021): “When I think
A couple of people chose to read Hag-Seed for MARM this year, which reminded me of this discussion (which you can view, alongside) from the 2018 Stratford Festival Forum: In Conversation With Margaret Atwood—“The award-winning Canadian author, essayist, poet and activist returns to the Forum for a candid conversation
