[{"id":276272,"date":"2026-09-02T05:09:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276272"},"modified":"2026-08-31T11:54:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:54:56","slug":"what-ann-patchetts-whistler-gets-right-and-wrong-about-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/what-ann-patchetts-whistler-gets-right-and-wrong-about-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"What Ann Patchett\u2019s Whistler<\/em> Gets Right and Wrong About Horses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Popular novels often stumble in telling horse stories. Authors have colts (male) growing up to become mares (female); regional riders competing in red (national) coats; horses at a lope (slow) winning speed contests. As a neuroscientist and horse trainer studying the interaction between equine and human brains, it\u2019s hard to ignore such errors. We real riders rejoice when an exception appears. Ann Patchett\u2019s new novel Whistler<\/i> is one such case.<\/p>\n

Literature\u2019s gatekeepers may be quick to point out that Whistler<\/i> is not a horse book, but the central story in Patchett\u2019s nest of embedded tales revolves around a horse. The book is named after a horse; the cover bears the image of a horse; its pages are filled with talk of equine photos, sculptures, and statuettes; and the key metaphor of the narrative is grounded in a horse story. But it\u2019s true that the book itself focuses on the power of story to defy death and inspire salvation. Along the way, it explores how good families protect, teach, and love one another.<\/p>\n

The nut within the nest of stories is the tale of a Wyoming ranch woman who leaves her home in a rainstorm. Mary rides her favorite horse Whistler\u2014who came when she whistled\u2014up into the mountains, searching for a missing horse. She falls and is unable to return home due to her injuries. Her mount, meanwhile, is frightened by lightning and runs off. Three days later, as Mary is dying from a collapsed lung, broken bones, dehydration, and hypothermia, she whistles for her horse. The horse returns and lies down next to her, allowing Mary to mount and be carried to safety.<\/p>\n

Literature\u2019s gatekeepers may be quick to point out that Whistler<\/i> is not a horse book, but the central story in Patchett\u2019s nest of embedded tales revolves around a horse.<\/p>\n

Horses are surprising animals, capable of many feats that, to most people, sound almost fantastical. It is indeed possible to teach a horse to come from a distance at the sound of a whistle, though most owners don\u2019t take the time to do so. Horses do become bonded to one person\u2014just as they can become attached to another horse. The fact that Mary loved Whistler and trained her personally, \u201cfor years and years,\u201d establishes the likelihood of a deep bond and could explain the horse\u2019s affection, putting \u201cher head on Mary\u2019s shoulder. Not anybody else\u2019s shoulder, only Mary\u2019s\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Horses have an extremely powerful sense of smell that allows them to navigate back home alone if necessary. Had there been no storm, Whistler would have followed her own body scent back to the ranch. Not only do the odors of both equine and human perspiration, body odor, and hormones linger in the air, but a horse\u2019s hooves contain scent glands that stamp her scent into the ground. All of these clues allow horses to retrace their paths.<\/p>\n

In Whistler<\/i>, though, the storm\u2019s wind would have blown away air-borne odors, and torrential rain would have soaked out ground odors. This explains why Whistler did not simply run home after Mary fell\u2014a horse\u2019s typical practice. An unmounted horse galloping into a ranch, saddle empty and reins flying, is a standard cue for horse people to seek the rider. But with no scent trail to follow, there is no indication in the book that Whistler returned home, where Mary\u2019s husband and daughter would have realized that she was in trouble.<\/p>\n

The biggest question is whether a horse would lie down to allow an injured person to get on her back. And the answer is that it\u2019s highly unlikely, but not impossible. Mary had tried for years to teach Whistler to lie down, but had never achieved that goal. Patchett makes an interesting observation here: \u201cHorses weren\u2019t interested in lying down unless something was wrong.\u201d This is a common myth, borne of the fact that horses can sleep standing up. But they don\u2019t have to. In fact, healthy horses lie down most every day to rest their legs and achieve deep stages of sleep.<\/p>\n

Did Whistler know something was wrong with Mary? Undoubtedly, she did. Horses get to know their humans quite well. They recognize our individual faces and voices, they know how each of us walks and smells, they\u2019re aware of our clothing and who we\u2019ve recently touched, of the meals we\u2019ve eaten. Horses also know and can distinguish among certain human emotions. Smelling human hormones of fear, Whistler would have known that Mary was scared. As a prey animal, she would also have noticed that a bonded affiliate wasn\u2019t moving and might be sick.<\/p>\n

Patchett describes Whistler\u2019s lying down for Mary as \u201can unheralded act of generosity.\u201d But it\u2019s highly unlikely that the horse lay down with the intent to save Mary\u2019s life\u2014most equine scientists would claim that such a complex intent is impossible given the capacities of a horse\u2019s brain. It\u2019s far more probable that Whistler imitated Mary\u2019s position\u2014her lifelong trainer and guide was lying still on the ground for a long time.<\/p>\n

Despite my quibbles, the embedded stories of Whistler<\/i>, each inside another, are memorable and compelling, drawing readers into their core.<\/p>\n

Horses are herd animals who stick together for safety. Within the herd, they form close friendships with one or two other horses. These bonded affiliates often imitate each other\u2014following each other around, eating or drinking when the other horses do, running or playing together, exploring new ground together. Two equine affiliates will often lie down next to one another, even sometimes adopting the same positions. Such rites of affiliation can be transferred to humans. Out on a distant mountain, Whistler would have sought comfort from Mary, wanting to be close to the person who had taken care of her and protected her all her life.<\/p>\n

While Patchett\u2019s depiction of equine behavior is fairly realistic, the decisions of the main character in this central tale are less so. Mary is introduced as a born-and-bred, three-generation, Rocky Mountain ranch woman who\u2019s been riding and training horses all her life. Mary and Whistler left their ranch to seek a missing horse, Nutmeg, but very few horses leave a remote mountain ranch for long; they return to their herdmates. It\u2019s unlikely that Nutmeg needed to be found, and a third-generation ranch woman would have realized that.<\/p>\n

Mary had no reason to believe Nutmeg was in danger, so she would have waited for her husband and daughter to return before setting out to search. Patchett rationalizes Mary\u2019s decision by establishing that Nutmeg was old. But an old horse would be even less likely to leave her herdmates behind.<\/p>\n

When Mary decides to climb higher into the mountains on Whistler during the increasingly severe thunderstorm, hoping to spot Nutmeg from above, Whistler, a horse Mary had known and trained all her life, would have been communicating anxiety from the first step, reminding Mary of the danger. Meanwhile, Nutmeg would have taken shelter in the low brush of thickly wooded areas to avoid the rain, becoming invisible from above.<\/p>\n

It can be difficult to read fiction about a subject you\u2019ve devoted your life to studying. Still, despite my quibbles, the embedded stories of Whistler<\/i>, each inside another, are memorable and compelling, drawing readers into their core. Only Ann Patchett could write such a pleasant, amiable novel about death, and only a horse could serve as her essential metaphor for peaceful salvation.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A Horse\u2019s World: A Neuroscientist’s Journey into the Equine Mind<\/a> by Janet L. Jones is available from Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Popular novels often stumble in telling horse stories. Authors have colts (male) growing up to become mares (female); regional riders competing in red (national) coats; horses at a lope (slow) winning speed contests. As a neuroscientist and horse trainer studying<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31836,"featured_media":276281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070],"tags":[112041,1453,1863,52657,16371,10883,112042,11640,110248],"class_list":["post-276272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","tag-a-horses-world-a-neuroscientists-journey-into-the-equine-mind","tag-animals","tag-ann-patchett","tag-hachette-book-group","tag-horse-books","tag-horses","tag-janet-l-jones","tag-little-brown-and-company","tag-whistler","story-type-animals"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19S0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/whistler-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31836"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276383,"date":"2026-09-02T05:09:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276383"},"modified":"2026-09-02T09:18:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T13:18:57","slug":"abdelrahman-elgendy-on-writing-from-inside-a-prison-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/abdelrahman-elgendy-on-writing-from-inside-a-prison-cell\/","title":{"rendered":"Abdelrahman ElGendy on Writing From Inside a Prison Cell"},"content":{"rendered":"

On his third night in detention in Cairo, crammed with sixty other prisoners into a four-by-five meter cell, Abdelrahman ElGendy heard the song for the first time. Belly full after being starved for three days, one of his cellmates began to sing \u201cSawfa Naqba Huna,\u201d or \u201cWe Will Remain Here.” ElGendy was seventeen years old, goosebumps rising on his arms, not yet grasping what \u201chere\u201d was supposed to mean.<\/span><\/p>\n

Huna<\/span><\/i><\/a>, out this week from Hogarth, traces the six years ElGendy spent as a political prisoner in Egypt after being swept up alongside his father in a crackdown following the 2013 military coup, moving from overcrowded holding cells to the country\u2019s most notorious prison complex, The Scorpion. We follow him as he forms lifelong friendships, studies to earn his engineering degree, and begins his writing journey\u2014smuggling out pages in laundry bags, pages that would eventually help to form this book.<\/span><\/p>\n

But <\/span>Huna<\/span><\/i> is not a book about resilience or hope\u2014ElGendy is almost allergic to those words. It\u2019s a book about erasure, and about how to continue to exist in a place that tries to strip you of your humanity. Its opening lines read less like memoir and more like a manifesto:<\/span><\/p>\n

I wrote on walls; I wrote on scraps. I wrote witness in cursive letters; I wrote handles on bolted doors. I wrote around, and through, the noise, and I wrote the noise. I wrote to soothe, to numb; when the frost thawed, again, I wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou engrave yourself into the very wall designed to erase you,\u201d he told me. \u201cAnd somehow that wall built for erasure becomes your vehicle for immortality, like the dates you see on those walls, tens and tens of years back.\u201d Structured around the \u2018anbara, an Egyptian oral tradition in which one inmate calls the whole cellblock to attention from the next cell door, he positions us not as superior outside readers extending empathy, but as cellmates on equal footing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Huna<\/span><\/i> arrives on shelves as ElGendy finds himself in motion again. <\/span>Forced out of the United States under the threat of potential ICE detention<\/span><\/a>, he now experiences a second displacement that the book, in some ways, anticipated. I sat down with him in the days before <\/span>Huna<\/span><\/i>\u2019s launch to talk about the \u2018anbara, the complexities of translating a book filled with phrases that only work in Arabic, and the violence of the word \u201cresilient.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Samaa Khullar: <\/b>There\u2019s a version of this book that could have existed where you spend a lot of time explaining the Arab Spring and what happened in Egypt to a Western reader\u2014the history, the acronyms, the timeline of the revolution. You didn\u2019t write that book; instead you chose to take us straight into your experience as a political prisoner. What was your decision making on how you wanted to frame this book?<\/p>\n

Abdelrahman El-Gendy:<\/b> I always knew that I didn\u2019t want this book to be \u201cthe Egypt book\u201d or \u201cthe prison book.\u201d I wanted it to be <\/span>at least<\/span><\/i> that, and I was thinking about the revolution more as an entryway into questions I was interested in, rather than the endpoint. After a certain amount of years in prison, you don\u2019t necessarily think about politics. It\u2019s more like: what is time? What is body? What is language? What is fate? You\u2019re thinking about all those existential things and trying to make sense of why this happened to you and who you are now. I tried as much as possible to think about the question of erasure. What does it mean to be erased in your body, in language, in your very sense of selfhood? And then what does being look like within conditions like these? So I started reading memoirs that grapple with erasure from very different contexts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember one of the memoirs I really liked was <\/span>You Could Make This Place Beautiful<\/span><\/i> by Maggie Smith, which is a divorce memoir\u2014very different in terms of content, but it resonated with me because she\u2019s interrogating what it means to be erased in a marriage, in your body, and in language and your sense of self. I found that more interesting than reading other prison memoirs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>I feel like that would have been my first step\u2014to seek out what other people have written about an experience I\u2019m also writing about. I\u2019m curious why you chose not to do that. Did you not want their experiences or writing styles to cloud yours, or was there a different reason?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: When you read things too identical to what you\u2019re going through, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s always generative. I didn\u2019t want to write a prison memoir in that sense. When you read work while you\u2019re writing your book, you feel inspired by certain things and how they spoke about certain experiences, and you start thinking: maybe I should also speak about that. I didn\u2019t want to replicate what someone else was doing. The more generative thing was to think about wildly different experiences in terms of content, but ones that are aligned in terms of question and inquiry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>You went to the University of Pittsburgh for your MFA. Were you there to work on this book? And what were some of those conversations like in class? Did other writers have assumptions about what this book was going to be?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: This is true of MFA in general, but definitely. There’s so much that\u2019s different when you\u2019re not American. These are very US-centric spaces. There was a funny sort of thing that happened: I\u2019m portraying my father in a specific way, and I feel like there\u2019s so much peer pressure to make your parents evil in a memoir. No one told me \u201cmake your father evil,\u201d but it just kind of felt like the questions were always: where are his flaws? I do think he\u2019s a flawed character in the book\u2014he\u2019s not perfect\u2014but he was clearly portrayed out of love. So much of the resentment in the book was actually self-directed. The guilt and all those emotions. It was this weird dynamic where I felt how I was going about portraying this experience did not necessarily align with how people expected memoir to behave in the US.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember a comment that said, \u201cMaybe if you say Cairo is three times the size of New York, it would make it more relatable.\u201d I was like, why on earth would I say that in speaking about Cairo? The US-centrism sometimes comes through in those comments, especially in MFA programs where people are sitting with the rawest, most vulnerable drafts of very personal work. And so many comments assumed familiarity with the context for everyone else. For me, it was always: tell us more, give us more context. I think that demand for constant transparency and legibility is an act of violence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>Before you\u2019re ripped away from family and friends, you describe having crushes, pushing yourself on the basketball court, begging to watch Hannah Montana<\/i>. I found myself thinking about all the ways that we strip away Arab boyhood and make young men into symbols of resistance before they have the chance to grow up or even know themselves. Why did you choose to include these little details?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: There\u2019s so much about masculinity in this book, even if it\u2019s not heavy commentary. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the most traditional thing to love <\/span>Hannah Montana<\/span><\/i> and Taylor Swift as an Arab boy in Egypt. It\u2019s not perceived as manly. In prison, which is a hyper-masculine space, there was this subtle thinking about masculinity. And in relation to me and Baba\u2014so much of that inability to express affection is characteristic of son-father relationships in Arab families and has so much to do with how both of us were taught what a man should behave like. This memoir is actually me thinking through these things on the page, trying to understand what was happening in that relationship and the ways I failed to translate certain things as an act of love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So many of these scenes were misread in workshops as me catering to an American audience. Someone would say, \u201cI love how you included <\/span>Hannah Montana<\/span><\/i> here\u2014it makes it so relatable for an American reader.\u201d I was like, that\u2019s just not the point. You underestimate how American cultural imperialism works. Everyone around the world has heard of <\/span>Hannah Montana<\/span><\/i>, and yes, it\u2019s how American hegemony functions across the world, but that does not lessen our experiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>The handling of Arabic in this book isn\u2019t uniform. Some words are transliterated, some are in Arabic script, and some concepts are carried entirely in English. It seems very intentional. Why did you choose this variance?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: I was trying to listen more and more to my gut feeling, when I felt I wanted to contextualize or transliterate something, and when that urge came from a place of fear of being misread or cast out of a certain readership. I got better and better with each round of revision at recognizing the urge that says: this word doesn\u2019t want to be translated, you\u2019re just enforcing the translation to cater to the reader. So some words I felt comfortable translating\u2014\u0642\u0644\u0628 \u062e\u0633\u0627\u064a\u0629, \u201cthe heart of a lettuce\u201d for example\u2014because I wanted to give the reader an insight into this metaphor. But I was always thinking: if I was writing this book for Egyptians or people who read English in Egypt, what would I never have to explain? What would be naturally understood? And I was thinking about what it looks like for this book to be listened in on. And that comes through in the structure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Your crushed body is not an error. It\u2019s not an oversight. It\u2019s a main function of the system.<\/p><\/span><\/p>\n

The book is structured around the \u2018anbara\u2014the prison ritual where people would stand in prison cells and call out to one another through the naddara, or the opening in the cell door. One person would say \u201c\u2018Anbar kollu yisma\u2019a\u2019!\u201d or \u201cCellblock! Everyone listen!\u201d and the whole place would stop. The ten lines of the \u2018anbara poem are the ten sections of the book, all untranslated, just in Arabic. It was important to me that they\u2019re untranslated because even if you can access the book, the whole thing is framed as something you cannot fully understand. And I put the explanation of what this poem is at the very end\u2014and even then, I don\u2019t explain what it means. So it\u2019s sort of a sleight of hand. If you finish this book and received it, you realize you have been positioned as a prisoner throughout this book, as a cellmate, and not as a superior reader coming to extend empathy to a victim.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>When did you land on Huna<\/i>, and were there other working titles?<\/p>\n

AEG:<\/strong> It was actually very late in the game. It was called \u201cWe Write On Walls,\u201d which I kind of liked but always thought of as a placeholder. Then \u201cHuna\u201d was part of the song I heard on my third night in detention, crammed with sixty other people in a tiny four-by-five meter cell. We hadn\u2019t had proper food in three days; prison food was inedible. That particular night, for the first time, they allowed our families to send food through. It was so fascinating to witness how much we softened, how the mood got lighter, even though the physical conditions didn\u2019t change at all. People started singing, and one of the songs they sang was Sawfa Naqba Huna, or \u201cWe Will Remain Here.\u201d I was really interested in what it means when we say that. The song goes: we will remain here until the pain subsides, the melody will sweeten. So what does it mean if we don\u2019t want to remain here physically? That\u2019s what I was fascinated by: what is this huna, this \u201chere,\u201d that we\u2019re choosing to inhabit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One day I woke up with this revelation: that\u2019s it. It\u2019s perfect. It\u2019s the song, it\u2019s the throughline, it\u2019s the question, it\u2019s what we\u2019re chasing. It\u2019s simple, and I always wanted the title to be in Arabic, but I didn\u2019t want it to be in Arabic just for the sake of it, I wanted it to be meaningful.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>Throughout the book, we find ourselves hoping that if the right official just heard your story, they\u2019d understand you don\u2019t belong in prison. What did it take for you to stop wanting that recognition?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: Again, your instinct in prison is thinking \u201cI don\u2019t belong in this place\u201d and I truly believe to this day that we don\u2019t belong in prisons, but what I was questioning more was the instinct to think that the judicial system\u2019s issue is only one of insufficient understanding. That if you clarify enough, if you get them to hear you out, they\u2019ll realize this is a mistake. You gaslight yourself into thinking this is possible. And I think it\u2019s just part of so many of our political awakenings: coming to the very difficult realization that systems of oppression are not failing to protect us. The judiciary is not failing to carry out justice: it\u2019s part of the machinery of oppression. It\u2019s not meant to bring about justice. It\u2019s meant to uphold the power that is oppressing you. Your crushed body is not an error. It\u2019s not an oversight. It\u2019s a main function of the system.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re not given the privilege to be political enemies\u2014we all have the barrel of the same gun pointed at us.<\/p><\/span><\/p>\n

You eventually come to accept that the only possible engagement with this machinery is one of deceit and self-preservation. And I grapple with that in the book a lot, how the language of the law\u2014not just the systems and the apparatus of the court, but the very language of law\u2014is designed to lubricate that brutality against us to make it seem not just palatable but necessary. What does it mean to re-encounter ideas of criminality, of terrorism, of all those legal categories, once that veil has been removed?<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>You argue that the state\u2019s vocabulary works because it makes people sound like plausible prisoners. My mind went to Palestine, and the idea that if you\u2019re one of the \u201cgood ones,\u201d if you make yourself palatable, if you denounce resistance and distance yourself from the wrong people, you\u2019ll be fine. When did you realize this was just an unwinnable game?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: I was thinking of Palestine so much while writing this book. It\u2019s the same thing in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood. There\u2019s been so much pressure to discuss them in the book, which I was uninterested in. I have a very difficult and hostile relationship with them, and it\u2019s in the book, but only in ways that serve the narrative. The boogeyman in Egypt is the Brotherhood. I think about this a lot in the book: what does it mean to be in political enmity with a certain people, but also need to stand against their oppression? Because they\u2019ve been brutalized by the same machinery of repression. It\u2019s a very tricky thing to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to reduce the political prisoner figure to this heroic monolith we\u2019re often accustomed to because it\u2019s politically useful.<\/p><\/span><\/p>\n

You feel that saying \u201cI\u2019m not one of them\u201d is throwing them under the bus, because you\u2019re saying, by extension, that they deserve that brutality. And this is a very interesting dynamic in prison. They force all those people who probably would never have spoken to one another outside to be in the same cells, to build certain coalitions in order to survive. The ceiling is so far below our feet. The thing we\u2019re fighting for now in Egypt is just the opportunity to hate each other freely. We\u2019re not given the privilege to be political enemies\u2014we all have the barrel of the same gun pointed at us. So we\u2019re forced into coalitions we know are not going to last.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>You don\u2019t explicitly mention prison abolition in the book\u2014that phrase I mean\u2014but I also felt you didn\u2019t have to clarify your position on the matter. Was it a conscious choice to avoid the American conversations about prison reform or abolition?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: I learned so much from American abolitionist thinkers, especially Black abolitionists, and I first encountered abolition in prison, actually, when I read Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis and started thinking about what it means to build a world in which prisons become obsolete.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though there is a lot that is universal about carceral systems, I think there is also a lot that is US-specific, particularly in how the ideas of surplus population and capital, land, and bureaucracy operate in ways that just do not work the same way in the Egyptian context, for example. The state is actually putting in so much money to maintain a system of oppression in order to maintain its iron grip on power.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think our challenge is to learn from more developed abolitionist movements and build our own theory of what an Egyptian abolitionist movement can look like. I am invested in abolishing prisons in the sense of asking: What would it take to build a world in which prisons just become a thing we do not need anymore?<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>As important as it was hearing about your comrades and loved ones in prison, it was equally important to hear about those you argued with, pitied, or even hated. You could have made it sound like you were all supporting each other, fighting towards a common enemy, but you chose to tell the truth about your anger and resentment. What was it like to put that on paper?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: I was just allergic to these concepts of resilience and resistance. You have no idea how many times that language is imposed on a book like this in terms of marketing and positioning. Everyone says: people don\u2019t want a depressing book, people want to find hope. And I\u2019m like: this is not a book about resilience. There is not one instance in this book where I speak about hope. It explicitly speaks about hopelessness. I didn\u2019t want to reduce the political prisoner figure to this heroic monolith we\u2019re often accustomed to because it\u2019s politically useful. Resilience and resistance are not bad things per se, and I do think they apply to many people in prison, but they\u2019re often used more for the sake of the speaker than the prisoner. It\u2019s to appease a certain guilt or helplessness. You need to believe they\u2019re resilient and steadfast. It\u2019s just self appeasing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prison is a place of survival and yes, the book is very keen on studying the ability to retain one\u2019s tenderness in conditions that are intentional about callusing them. But it also insists on portraying the wide spectrum of emotions and the erosion that happens to one\u2019s soul. You have to kill yourself enough in prison in order to survive it. But the trick is to kill yourself just enough to have this little bit of tenderness left. If you get too tender, you\u2019ll get crushed, and if you lose it absolutely, then prison already won.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not a book that will offer you hope in the way you\u2019re expecting it. I would like to offer something more cathartic and enduring than hope.<\/p><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes it looks very ugly. Sometimes there\u2019s a lot of hate\u2014and not just at the jailer, at one another. People do things that are not pleasant when they\u2019re trying to survive. Once you\u2019re exposed to that, you\u2019re confronted with: do you still feel the same way about these people? We don\u2019t need to love people to think they shouldn\u2019t be brutalized. It\u2019s okay to dislike or even hate people and still take a principled stance against their dehumanization.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>I think about that even when writing about Lebanon and Iran and Palestine\u2014how allies throw around \u201cresilient\u201d so quickly. What do you think people should consider before they use that word?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: They should consider: for whose sake are you saying that word? More often than not, you\u2019ll find you\u2019re saying it for your own self-appeasing purposes. It deters us from action or makes us feel better about our helplessness. Every time you\u2019re uttering that word and it\u2019s not for the sake of the prisoner, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s very helpful in terms of political organizing. I think it\u2019s a demobilizing word. We should just be very enraged and constantly agitated about what\u2019s happening to them. Anything that soothes that, or gives them more-than-human capacities\u2014that\u2019s just unhelpful to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>You write that your pain was meaningless, do you still feel that way? Ahdaf Soueif wrote to you in prison that it was not the main event of your life, only the circumstances in which you will continue to grow. Was she right?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: I have such an unsettled and agitated relationship to questions of meaning. I\u2019ve become less concerned with thinking about what ends I\u2019m aiming for. Thinking less about reaching those ends and more about the act of seeking itself. To me, this is the key thing I\u2019ve arrived at up until now. This is not a book that will offer you hope in the way you\u2019re expecting it. I would like to offer something more cathartic and enduring than hope.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was standing in that cage, handcuffed to my father, and the prosecutor called for our execution.<\/p><\/span><\/p>\n

Everything we\u2019ve been witnessing, with the genocide in Gaza and Sudan and everywhere in the world, it\u2019s just difficult to think about hope in simplistic terms. Thinking about hope in that way, it\u2019s the same thing as resilience. It\u2019s starting to feel like a betrayal, or just a way we appease ourselves that has stopped being helpful. I\u2019m trying to stop thinking about meaning and hope and success in this linear, colonial way of mastery and conquering and attaining a thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>In the middle of the book, you wrote \u201cAt least this will be a poignant scene in the memoir.\u201d How early did the process of trying to collect and remember start?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: In the beginning it didn\u2019t start as a thing to collect or remember because I didn\u2019t want to believe I was staying in this place. The first time I ever wrote anything in prison was after the first trial hearing. I was standing in that cage, handcuffed to my father, and the prosecutor called for our execution. That was just a shocking moment: the disproportionality of what was being said about us. I was 17, and there was this weird dissonance when you hear all those things and start feeling detached from the person they\u2019re being said about. I wanted to let it out. I grabbed a pen and paper I\u2019d smuggled in and started writing\u2014about my body, about what it means to have a handcuff around my hand, how my reflection looked in it. Very raw things. I released it out of prison in the laundry bag. My sister published it on Facebook and it started getting traction. And to me that was the first magical experience of knowing what it feels like for your words to be read by people you don\u2019t know who feel touched by them and share it with you. In a place cut off from everything, where some cells you just sit looking at the same people for a year, writing was a lifeline. It got to a point where if it had landed me in solitary confinement, I couldn\u2019t have given it up.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was an urge of self-preservation. I needed to survive. Writing was regaining a sense of control, not over circumstances, but at least over the naming of circumstances. I was studying engineering at the time, and I was thinking about writing in the same way I tried to decipher engineering problems: how does everything that happens to me fit together?<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually I started thinking: maybe this whole experience could be a book. When things happened I would think about what I would write when I got back to my cell. I had a fifteen-year sentence. I had no idea if I was ever going to see the light again. But the fantasy of the book made me think of everything here as a part of a project. So when I was being beaten with batons, the protagonist of the book was being beaten by batons, not me. It was a very unhealthy coping mechanism, but in prison, if it works, you keep doing it. It has ramifications up until this point: I have a book coming out and I struggle to feel that it\u2019s real. It feels like it’s still happening to the character in the book, not me. Some of this damage is just irreversible.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>Some scientists say memories are unreliable, that you\u2019re actually only remembering the last time you remembered something. Were there moments while writing where you started to question your own memory?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: It did help that I was writing so much throughout [prison]. When you write things down, you actually memorize them better. I was writing my experience in real time. That said, I have a lot of notes I cannot access, they\u2019re all in a big duffel bag hidden in Cairo, too risky to move through an airport. This is a book not only based on my memory. So many of these people have been released from prison, I actually interviewed some of them. For the hunger strike sequence, I had extensive conversations and double-checked what I remembered with people who were there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And my father was one of the biggest resources. He has this amazing memory for events and dates. He remembers every hour and date, and he insists on never looking at a calendar or keeping a journal. He considers it an insult to his memory. He was putting in so much time helping me remember things and it was a very interesting dynamic, speaking about these things again with him. It was his more comfortable mode of showing love: not discussing the emotional aspects of prison, but fact-checking it with me.<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>Getting to Baba, who is one of the pillars of the book, I kept thinking about how you wished you cared about him less, because then it wouldn\u2019t hurt so much to see him in pain. Has he read the book, and what has he said about it?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: He did, eventually. If you read the book, you know there\u2019s so much guilt because I caused the arrest of Baba. He was not a political person and had nothing to do with any of this. He was only at the protest to chaperone me, basically. Throughout prison, we struggled to communicate affection to one another. I think he just thought I hated him. I struggled to convey how I felt; it got worse, and we ended up in silence because we couldn’t speak without snapping at one another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The prisoner\u2019s biggest fear is to be forgotten. Prisoners just always have this phobia of the world moving on from them.<\/p><\/span><\/p>\n

An early reader told me: \u201cYou know what I think this book is? It\u2019s a love letter to Baba.\u201d When he read it, I could tell he was feeling so many things. When I asked him how he felt, he just nodded and said \u201cI understand some things much better now.\u201d That\u2019s it. But I knew, he poured so much time and labor fact-checking it, underlining things, giving me corrections, saying \u201cYou said 132 pardoned prisoners on that list, it was actually 200.\u201d That was how I knew he felt love. Because he was practicing his language of love, which I\u2019ve now learned to translate. He offers his labor very abundantly and unconditionally. This book felt like such a loving closure to a horrific experience we were forced to share together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>Your cellmate from the very first night, Ayman Moussa, is at the heart of the book too. That first night you both seemed to have so much hope it would all be cleared up and you\u2019d get out, but he\u2019s still there. You recently wrote that you catch yourself waiting for anniversaries, writing eulogies. When did you notice that?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: Everything I spoke about before\u2014killing yourself just enough, retaining enough softness to hold and be held, finding wonder, finding the courage to love\u2014to me, all of that is embodied in mine and Ayman\u2019s friendship in prison. I wrote this in the book, but he kept me laughing, which kept me human. I owe so much of the softness I was able to nurse outside of prison to that relationship. And this is why leaving him behind feels like such a betrayal. It was an unspoken pact between us: everyone leaves but us. For a while that was literally true because everyone was being pardoned and released, and it was just the two of us stuck there. Prison tricks you with a sense of permanency where it feels like things will be that way forever because time is so unmoving and stagnant.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, Baba and Ayman are the spines of this book. And for Ayman, it\u2019s important for people who read the book to grasp the immediacy and urgency of the story, because it\u2019s not just a story. Ayman is still behind bars for the 13th year. He\u2019s lost his entire twenties. At this moment, while we\u2019re sitting here talking, he\u2019s still rotting behind the same bars. I hate that we speak about him as though he\u2019s dead, like he\u2019s some kind of story we\u2019re trying to find the wisdom in, waxing poetic, which is what we always do when we remember someone who is right there. He\u2019s literally right across that wall from us and we\u2019re not doing anything material to get him out. He\u2019s not resilient\u2014he just wants to get the fuck out of prison. He doesn\u2019t care about any of that. He wants to be free. So I just want people to finish this book and feel as viscerally enraged as I am that he is not free and he should be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now whenever I send him a letter, I try not to offer him hope. I\u2019m just trying to offer him slivers of the life that has been stolen from him. I tell him about concerts and singers and jokes, what I\u2019m reading. He tells me what he\u2019s reading, and the new cellmates he met last month. We just try not to make prison the main event. Any attempt at providing hope feels like bullshit at this point. I don\u2019t have hope, he doesn\u2019t have hope. I\u2019m just more concerned with: how are we trying to hold and be held?<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>I was struck towards the end when you mentioned that you were 22 when you met a fellow political prisoner. You mention it in passing but as a reader I was shocked that we had already been with you for five years, that you had already lost your late teens and early twenties behind bars. And I started to wonder: did you ever think about those on the outside who must have forgotten the political prisoners? Did you feel any resentment?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: I mean there\u2019s a whole throughline in the book that speaks about forgetting all the time, but it is such a huge thing throughout prison. The prisoner\u2019s biggest fear is to be forgotten. Prisoners just always have this phobia of the world moving on from them. And even when people are speaking about political prisoners, it’s almost always the fresher ones, so people from 2013 are not talked about as much as people who got arrested last month or last week\u2014Egypt is never in shortage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

People reconcile themselves with the fact that this is a sad thing, but it\u2019s just a thing now. Like, you\u2019re in prison, we\u2019re not, and that\u2019s the way things are. We were always thinking: how in the world is everything moving forward? How is time not stopping for this? How am I in a cage with a locked door? And I\u2019ve been here for five, six, seven years. Someone like Ayman, 13 years. How is everything not pausing?<\/span><\/p>\n

It feels very different if you\u2019re a political prisoner while there\u2019s a revolution than it is now, when your incarceration serves nothing. There\u2019s nothing but the years you\u2019re losing in your life and no one cares about that. There\u2019s no monuments erected in your name. No one is even remembering you. It gets to a point where your family is tortured by the fact that this is part of their routine now. It\u2019s hard to go about life normally and encounter all those people in the world who are not waiting for the next prison visit next week like you. The idea of you being in prison is now just a thing that people don\u2019t question, they don\u2019t think about your release in the same way anymore.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We thought about it all the time, and part of my writing from prison was trying to unsettle that. I\u2019m forcing people to remember me somehow or to keep the conversation going. I don\u2019t want to be erased completely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SK: <\/b>Does your heart still soften at the thought of Cairo today, or does it make you angry?<\/p>\n

AEG<\/b>: It\u2019s more a sense of melancholy. I write about this in the book: Cairo, Al-Qahira, the vanquisher. We grow up being told Cairo vanquishes our enemies, and you assume the enemies are the bad people coming to invade. Then you grow up and learn that it\u2019s actually you, because you\u2019re the one being vanquished again and again. I\u2019m sad that I probably won\u2019t get to see it again. I\u2019m trying to accept that this is going to be the case. I do feel like the ideal relationship with Cairo for me would be a long-distance relationship\u2014go hang out for a month every year and then leave.<\/span><\/p>\n

I left the US for the same reason I can\u2019t go back to Cairo. I vowed that once I left prison, I could not be in a place where I was unable to say and write the things I wanted. In Cairo, so much has been erased\u2014the revolutionary memories we had there, which we now have to pretend didn\u2019t happen and which we cannot speak to each other about. It\u2019s a very Orwellian reality. And I just can\u2019t afford to live that way anymore.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a quote I keep returning to by Arwa Saleh, writing in 1995 about a very different moment in Egyptian history, but it feels like it was written about the January 25th revolution:<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the naivete of this dream now brings a smile\u2014maybe more to those of our generation than to anyone else\u2014but I find it far harsher, the hand dealt to the generations who never got to know such abundance. It is for this reason that I wrote of our stillborn dream, for it was not entirely a mirage, as so many of us are now tempted to call it in order to diminish our past. A kind of revenge, I suppose, against the arrogance we once harbored. It was history as well, leaving behind real fragments, and it is strange that we should squander them merely because we were defeated with such humiliating ease.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That quote is exactly how I feel about the revolution. We are always inclined to belittle what we did and how naive we were and how stupid, because we were defeated with such humiliating ease that we find it difficult to recall. So we squander everything. But I would rather have experienced this, and felt all the terrible and crushing things, than have no experience of such abundance at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

\"Huna\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming<\/a> by Abdelrahman ElGendy is available from Hogarth<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On his third night in detention in Cairo, crammed with sixty other prisoners into a four-by-five meter cell, Abdelrahman ElGendy heard the song for the first time. Belly full after being starved for three days, one of his cellmates began<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31895,"featured_media":276384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43071,43069,6,43072,43070,43103,43095],"tags":[99158,7745,1680,9157,112102,58195,11709,112111],"class_list":["post-276383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-and-advice","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-in-conversation","category-literary-criticism","category-memoir","category-politics","tag-abdelrahman-elgendy","tag-egypt","tag-exile","tag-fathers-and-sons","tag-huna","tag-political-prisoner","tag-prison-memoir","tag-samaa-khullar"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19TN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Abdelrahman-ElGendy.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31895"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276157,"date":"2026-09-02T05:08:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276157"},"modified":"2026-08-31T12:07:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:07:36","slug":"the-jerusalem-of-the-east-when-billy-graham-visited-pyongyang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-jerusalem-of-the-east-when-billy-graham-visited-pyongyang\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jerusalem of the East: When Billy Graham Visited Pyongyang"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fall of 1991, Rev. Billy Graham, the American evangelist, received an unexpected invitation from Pyongyang. \u201cIt will be a great joy to welcome you to our church,\u201d read the letter, which was sent by leaders of North Korea\u2019s state-sanctioned Protestant and Catholic churches.<\/p>\n

Rev. Graham, then seventy-three years old, had preached the Christian gospel to perhaps more people than any man in history. In addition to appearing before an estimated 215 million people in evangelistic \u201ccrusades\u201d from New York\u2019s Madison Square Garden to Moscow\u2019s Bolshoi Theatre, the minister had reached hundreds of millions more through his televised rallies, and had the ear of an unbroken succession of U.S. presidents stretching back to Harry S. Truman. As much as any one person could be said to embody twentieth-century American Christianity to the world, Rev. Graham\u2014\u201cAmerica\u2019s Pastor\u201d\u2014was it.<\/p>\n

Graham used his influence widely and was accustomed to preaching in peculiar settings. In addition to the trips he made to the Soviet Union, including several at the height of the Cold War, he regularly brought his crusades to countries behind the Iron Curtain, preaching a simple but powerful message of personal salvation: that God had sent his only begotten son for the redemption of humankind. Regardless of political ideology. Regardless of history. Regardless of war, famine, genocide, and the horrors of this most brutal of ages.<\/p>\n

Kim sought to portray himself as the true Messiah, displacing Christ as \u201cthe benevolent sun\u201d of the world.<\/p>\n

Even so, the invitation from Pyongyang was unusual. Unlike East Germany, Poland, and the other Communist bloc countries that had been swept up in revolution around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, North Korea\u2014which emerged as a satellite state of Moscow in the aftermath of Japan\u2019s defeat in World War II\u2014hadn\u2019t shown any signs of buckling. Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea, as North Korea formally calls itself, had ruled without interruption for nearly a half century. Aside from a benign growth on his neck about the size of a clenched fist, Kim had shown no obvious signs of ill health, nor had intelligence agents in the U.S. or in North Korea\u2019s rival regime in South Korea picked up any signs that Kim\u2019s rule was being seriously challenged. Indeed, while Nikita Khrushchev had systematically dismantled Joseph Stalin\u2019s cult of personality in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and while Deng Xiaoping had curbed the excesses of Mao Zedong worship in China beginning in the late 1970s, in North Korea, Kim Il Sung\u2019s power\u2014and his remarkable cult of personality\u2014seemed only to grow with time.<\/p>\n

In portraits in homes and classrooms, in daily photographs on the front page of the country\u2019s main party newspaper, on the lapel badges that citizens had pinned over their hearts, Kim\u2019s image was the very iconography of the state. Even when he wasn\u2019t visible, Kim Il Sung was omnipresent, in plaques at factories commemorating his visits, in hymns sung in praise of him by schoolchildren, in the white cloths draped over subway seats that his posterior had once graced and on which nobody could ever sit again. Foreign visitors were shocked to hear the man hailed as nothing less than a god, the Sun of Korea. North Korea\u2019s state media regularly hailed citizens who, amid earthquakes and floods, laid down their lives to protect sacral images of Kim Il Sung. \u201cCorpses were dug out of the silt. Found out in their bosom were portraits wrapped with vinyl sheets to prevent them from being spoiled by water,\u201d North Korea\u2019s official news agency recounted after floods swept one rural county.<\/p>\n

Kim Il Sung\u2019s deification was a decades-long process. In 1972, to mark Kim\u2019s sixtieth birthday, the nation erected a gleaming sixty-six-foot-tall statue of him on a hill in the capital, Pyongyang. In 1982, for Kim Il Sung\u2019s seventieth birthday, an Arch of Triumph was built roughly a mile to the north, similar to Paris\u2019s version but taller, to commemorate his fictionalized defeat of the Japanese Imperial Army. Across town, a stone obelisk\u2014similar to Washington\u2019s but, again, taller\u2014was constructed with 25,550 blocks of white granite, one for each day of Kim\u2019s seven decades of life. \u201cThe campaign to glorify him,\u201d wrote one biographer in 1988, \u201chas surpassed fanatic religious fervor. The North Korean \u2018sun of the nation\u2019 shines both day and night, and it is hard to escape his ubiquity.\u201d<\/p>\n

To ensure the people\u2019s devotion to Kim Il Sung alone, North Korea\u2014founded as a Marxist-Leninist state\u2014spent decades stamping out rival faiths, most notably Protestant Christianity, killing pastors and thousands of lay believers; the mere possession of an unauthorized Bible could mean imprisonment. North Korea\u2019s propagandists rewrote history to hold American missionaries responsible for Korea\u2019s misfortunes, while state-sponsored novels, plays, and museums portrayed them as jackals who subjected Koreans to vile human experiments and branded them with acid. Instead, Kim sought to portray himself as the true Messiah, displacing Christ as \u201cthe benevolent sun\u201d of the world. \u201cPeople of the world, if you are looking for miracles, come to Korea!\u201d the North\u2019s official party newspaper declared in a Christmas 1980 editorial. \u201cChristians, do not go to Jerusalem. Come rather to Korea. Do not believe in God. Believe in the great man!\u201d<\/p>\n

Even by the standards of the world\u2019s foremost traveling minister, the invitation that Rev. Graham received from North Korea\u2014timed just ahead of Kim Il Sung\u2019s eightieth birthday\u2014was puzzling. In Beijing, two days before boarding his flight to Pyongyang, Graham told reporters that he still didn\u2019t know why the North Koreans had invited him.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Rev. Graham pled ignorance, but he knew more than he let on about the history of one of the world\u2019s most isolated and least understood countries.<\/p>\n

Pyongyang was, in fact, a familiar place for the Graham family. In the 1930s, his wife, Ruth Bell Graham, had attended high school there, on a sprawling Presbyterian mission compound on Pyongyang\u2019s west side. There, missionary kids like Ruth from across the region\u2014her parents were missionaries to China\u2014attended school amid some of northern Korea\u2019s earliest and most prestigious Western institutions: its first missionary-run high school, college, and modern hospital, as well as a Presbyterian seminary, the world\u2019s largest. Then there were the churches, none greater than Pyongyang\u2019s Central Presbyterian Church, which was packed to the rafters each week\u2014even for Wednesday evening prayer meetings, which could draw standing-room crowds of 1,400 people. The city of Pyongyang had become so dominated by Christians, in fact, that it acquired a nickname: the \u201cJerusalem of the East.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rev. Graham pled ignorance, but he knew more than he let on about the history of one of the world\u2019s most isolated and least understood countries.<\/p>\n

By the time Rev. Graham boarded his plane in Beijing on March 31, 1992, bound for Pyongyang, the Jerusalem of the East was no more. The devastation of the Korean War, and decades of Kim Il Sung\u2019s rule, had systematically wiped out the churches and Christian schools in the northern half of Korea, driving the 300,000 Christian believers in the North into hiding\u2014or across the thirty-eighth parallel to the U.S.-backed South. That historic exodus helped turn the Republic of Korea, as South Korea is formally known, into a stronghold of the Christian faith and one of the world\u2019s biggest exporters of missionaries. Meanwhile, Pyongyang became the centerpiece of a new state that was staunchly religious in its own way, but with a set of symbols and rituals that revolved around one man: Kim Il Sung.<\/p>\n

Despite its peculiarities, it was immediately apparent to visitors like Rev. Graham that the ideology and imagery of the system Kim had erected had much in common with Christianity. When he arrived in Pyongyang, he was greeted by Rev. Kang Y\u014fng-s\u014fp, chairman of Pyongyang\u2019s state-run Chos\u014fn Christian Federation and a relative of Kang Pan-s\u014fk, Kim Il Sung\u2019s mother. \u201cI warmly welcome you to our country in the name of Jesus Christ,\u201d Rev. Kang told the American preacher, who was accompanied by a CNN news crew, his son Ned, and a small entourage of Korean-speaking Americans, including two descendants of Presbyterian missionary Eugene Bell, a Kentucky native who had first arrived in Korea in 1895. \u201cPyongyang now has both a fine Protestant church and a beautiful Catholic church, and I have heard that more places of worship are under construction or contemplated,\u201d Rev. Graham said in a toast on his first evening in the North Korean capital. \u201cThis was wonderful news to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the American evangelist visited the humble thatched hut on the outskirts of Pyongyang where Kim Il Sung was said to have been born on April 15, 1912, the pastor and his delegation could only shake their heads at the similarities with the other faith that had once dominated the city. \u201cAll they\u2019re missing are the manger and the three wise men,\u201d the preacher quipped. In a sermon delivered at one Protestant church that Kim had ordered built in the late 1980s, Graham reflected on his wife\u2019s high school years in Pyongyang and then urged the packed pews of North Korean congregants to accept God\u2019s love and forgiveness, quoting from his favorite passage, John 3:16: \u201cFor God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…\u201d \u201cSeldom have I had a more attentive audience,\u201d Rev. Graham said following the service, adding that his roughly four hundred listeners \u201ccertainly knew those hymns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visiting a newly rebuilt seminary in Pyongyang, Rev. Graham stood beneath a portrait of Kim Il Sung and urged the gathered North Koreans to communicate the Christian gospel of salvation to others. Later, while strolling around the city, Graham had a chance to chat informally with some students. A photograph taken by a member of the preacher\u2019s entourage captures the moment, complete with a slogan on the building behind the men, a supplication for Kim Il Sung\u2019s immortality: \u201cWe Reverently Pray for the Eternal Life of Our Great Leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before departing, Rev. Graham left two gifts for his hosts: a sculpture of a crane to \u201cHis Excellency\u201d Kim Il Sung, and a carving of a globe with white doves to his son Kim Jong Il, North Korea\u2019s Great Successor and Dear Leader. For the elder Kim, the American evangelist added two extra gifts: an inscribed Bible and a copy of his bestselling 1953 book, Peace with God<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Speaking to a roomful of reporters in Hong Kong on April 6, 1992, days after departing Pyongyang, Graham sounded a hopeful note. \u201cI believe it is impossible to say exactly what might have been accomplished by this trip,\u201d the evangelist said. \u201cOnly time will tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From<\/em> Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult<\/a> by Jonathan Cheng. Copyright \u00a9 2026. Available from Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. <\/em>Korean Messiah has been shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the fall of 1991, Rev. Billy Graham, the American evangelist, received an unexpected invitation from Pyongyang. \u201cIt will be a great joy to welcome you to our church,\u201d read the letter, which was sent by leaders of North Korea\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31814,"featured_media":276414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43101,43092,43360],"tags":[111978,4740,11036,7350,60417,97370,111979,60655,88237,111980,8037,16228],"class_list":["post-276157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-history","category-newsandculture","category-religion","tag-2026-cundill-history-prize","tag-alfred-a-knopf","tag-asia","tag-christianity","tag-cundill-history-prize","tag-east-asia","tag-jonathan-cheng","tag-knopf-doubleday-publishing-group","tag-korean-history","tag-korean-messiah-kim-il-sung-and-the-christian-roots-of-north-koreas-personality-cult","tag-north-korea","tag-penguin-random-house","story-type-cundill-history-prize"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Q9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/pyonyang.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31814"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":273565,"date":"2026-09-02T05:08:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=273565"},"modified":"2026-08-31T12:08:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:08:43","slug":"the-book-of-chuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-book-of-chuck\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Chuck"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Before<\/strong><\/p>\n

Evie eased onto the thin goose\u2011feather mattress and set her mouth to tell her man that it had been a good day, a good night, but Atlas whispered to her first.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan in Monroe want to buy the chair for his wife. A gift for Christmas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And the way he leaned in close, she could tell he was trying not to wake the baby girl between them. That made her feel tender toward him. Considering his mother, where he came from, she was always looking for those kind gestures from him. She would never say it aloud, but Evie knew in her heart that not all humans were meant to be parents. Her biggest fear was finding a bit of that truth in the man she loved.<\/p>\n

In another life, a life that was kind to black people, Atlas would\u2019ve been a scientist or a king or a master craftsman. He carved all sorts of creatures as gifts for their children. They had doll babies and houses and smooth wooden bears. He\u2019d even hand\u2011carved a wooden bust of Evie before the children were born. It was the only likeness of a person he\u2019d ever made and the only one of his creations Evie wouldn\u2019t allow to be sold. She considered it her most prized possession and she kept it hidden, even from him.<\/p>\n

Atlas had spent months working on the chair he now wanted to sell. He\u2019d carefully smoothed out the thick chestnut oak and made the high back look like a throne. Evie\u2019s favorite thing about it was the way he\u2019d carved the jackal\u2011headed Egyptian man and woman on the seat back. The chair was entirely wooden and therefore likely uncomfortable to sit on for extended periods, but she\u2019d hoped he\u2019d save the throne for himself. Or for her. It was something she wanted to pass on to their children. A good thing to cancel out so much bad.<\/p>\n

He had finished it on a Saturday some months ago. When he called her out to the barn and she set her eyes on it, she loved him right there on the ground. Took no thought for the children or the horse or the mule or for anything else that could\u2019ve happened upon them; he\u2019d clawed ravenously at her breasts before she tore at the rope that held up his pants. They were careless in ways they hadn\u2019t been in a long while.<\/p>\n

After they were spent, she rested her head on his chest. \u201cBeen thinking of Beulah lately. Wish I could\u2019ve give her something like this here chair,\u201d he said. Bile rose in Evie\u2019s throat and her body stiffened under his touch.<\/p>\n

Atlas\u2019s mother had been part of their life together even if they didn\u2019t speak of her often. Evie found it strange that he\u2019d picked that moment to bring her up. That moment that found him with his pants down past his hips and her dress caught up over her breasts. The air hitting her nipples, causing them to firm. The most private parts of themselves in the open and there he was thinking of Beulah. A woman with no secrets. A woman with no shame or sense enough to hide her senselessness. Evie thought of that lovemaking when he mentioned the sale of the chair and she thought of Beulah Gardner before she whispered across their daughter\u2019s head. \u201cMan know the quality that chair? That it ain\u2019t easy to come by. Hope he willing to part with at least three dollars for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atlas sighed. \u201cMore than likely, man gone give me what he want me to have. Ain\u2019t really no arguing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She smacked her lips and placed her hand on the back of the baby, who was now stirring, her tiny hand landing softly on her father\u2019s face. And then the child began to whimper, slowly waking from her sleep. \u201cNo,\u201d she whined in a raspy voice. \u201cPa, no go. Him burn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evie felt Atlas\u2019s side of the bed freeze, go stiff, as if frigid air had suddenly come along, causing his breath and all bodily functions to stop. She couldn\u2019t hear a thing except the pulsing of her own heart. The inside of her went warm and then hot, like the words had set her aflame. She brought her hand to her neck, like a reflex, and was close to clawing at herself when the flute of her breathing opened and all the outside sounds, the crickets, the cicadas, and the crows, erupted in her ear. It seemed as if the child\u2019s words stretched out for hours between them before Evie could finally inhale. And then she shushed her daughter too late and too soft.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat that baby say?\u201d Atlas asked, scooting away from the child. \u201cWhat she say?\u201d Evie could hear how disturbed he was by the rattle in his voice.<\/p>\n

And there it was. She recognized the thing in that voice\u2014the thing in him. The baby shouldn\u2019t have been making words so young. Yes, that was<\/em> disturbing. She was just a little over a year. Through the darkness, Evie watched and felt the distance he created between himself and the child. That baby <\/em>is your daughter. Our little girl, she wanted to tell him.<\/p>\n

Evie knew what they said about her husband. About what made his mother. She had watched him closely with the other children. Watched to see if he could hurt them. With Nannie, she had let her guard down. After all, he\u2019d been a good father to the other six. A doting one even. And he was learned in a way that Beulah had never been. He was almost a genius. He read to them each evening. Dreamed of schools far away from cotton fields for his children. He wasn\u2019t one for superstition and conjuring tales. Atlas was a good man. He was nothing like what made him.<\/p>\n

But as the silence hung above them, for the first time Evie felt a strangeness in him.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he settled down, allowing the tension of the moment to dissipate. He let Nannie climb onto his chest and hummed her a song until her soft whimpers turned to snores. Evie stayed awake all night, playing the child\u2019s words in her head. Pa, no go. Him burn. <\/em>And she stayed awake watching over her baby, making sure that Beulah\u2019s ghost didn\u2019t surface in their home. At some point, just before morning, it dawned on Evie that this was a different situation. Beulah had killed her child for a different reason. Her child hadn\u2019t seen Beulah\u2019s death. Beulah had touched him and seen his.<\/p>\n

In Evie\u2019s mind, it seemed fitting\u2014right\u2014the time given Atlas\u2019s mother in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. She\u2019d drowned her own baby just a few days after giving birth to him. What felt wrong to Evie was that Beulah was ever let out at all. She\u2019d served only a few years before she was released after saving the lives of two white children drowning in a pond on the prison property. After, she was ostracized by her own community and lived the rest of her life isolated in a shack in the woods. Everyone knew the story. Knew that Beulah\u2019s mind had rattled loose. Her surviving children were all raised by relatives and other different people in the community. They tried visiting her, but no one ever really knew Beulah after she murdered her child.<\/p>\n

The After<\/strong><\/p>\n

It had been three days since Evie had seen Atlas. She hadn\u2019t slept or eaten or done much outside of take care of the children. His absence wasn\u2019t normal. Atlas was a man who came home to his family every day. He didn\u2019t drink. Didn\u2019t put his hands on his wife more than he was supposed to.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d told Evie he was going to Monroe, which wasn\u2019t even an hour\u2019s walk. Maybe, she thought, he stopped by to see one of his siblings or another relative. She didn\u2019t want to think about the only place he\u2019d ever disappeared to like this, but she couldn\u2019t help it. The woman\u2019s face was etched in her memory. She\u2019d never be free\u2014they\u2019d never be free\u2014of that woman or the child Atlas made with her.<\/p>\n

On that third day, she sat on the porch shelling peas. She was numb. She\u2019d been slow to start that morning. She\u2019d had to bandage up Two\u2019s foot after he stepped on a rusted framing nail that went straight through, from sole to top. She\u2019d taken that as a bad sign, an omen even. Two was the oldest and strongest of their children. The boy moved through the crops much faster and more careful than anyone she knew, including her and Atlas. He was the leader\u2014the driver of their children on days when Atlas couldn\u2019t be in the fields. He\u2019d lead them all down the steps of the porch and set them on the path to the cotton, like some mother duckling taking her little ones to a pond. She\u2019d walked the house with sage and then pulled the bust from underneath the floorboards and sat with it for a while, placed her hands on it and prayed for Atlas\u2019s return. When one of her husband\u2019s brothers, Exie Gray, arrived out of breath, she\u2019d only been on the porch with the peas for an hour or so and had hardly filled her bucket. There was panic on Exie Gray\u2019s sandy-colored face and a slight terror in his eyes. \u201cYou got to come with me,<\/p>\n

Evie,\u201d he said. \u201cCelestine say they got Atlas.\u201d And for a moment, she sat<\/p>\n

there with a pod caught between both thumbs and index fingers. \u201cHuh?\u201d she finally uttered. \u201cWho got him? What you mean?\u201d Those words were familiar to her. They<\/em> got<\/em> him.<\/em> They<\/em> got a brother and sister of hers in 1919 and her father before that in 1910. Surely it wasn\u2019t how he was saying it. Not Atlas. Not in 1936.<\/p>\n

She stretched out her neck, like a cat looking for what cats look for, and allowed her eyes to graze the cotton field that stretched out as far as she could see. She squinted. Sometimes the children played a game where they blindfolded one and gave him a spin. When his eyes were finally freed, he was tasked with turning his head without turning his body and locating the Bolden house from wherever they were on the land. It was never an easy win. Sometimes the cornstalks were too tall. Sometimes the sun was too bright, or the moon wasn\u2019t bright enough. A smart winner would usually squint his eyes and angle his head just right to make out the grand house far off in the distance. That day was perfect for playing the game. No bright sun. No tall stalks. The big house sat clear, taunting their one\u2011room shack with its size, her children somewhere swallowed in the expansiveness of the land. She exhaled, shifting her eyes over her shoulder. Nannie had risen from where she\u2019d been sitting with the pea casings before Exie Gray\u2019s arrival and was standing behind her. The shells usually kept her occupied while her mother worked. Evie often listened as the child counted them, spoke to them in a way that she wondered about. She hadn\u2019t taught the girl to count and the other children hadn\u2019t spoken complete sentences the way Nannie did until close to their third birthdays.<\/p>\n

Evie\u2019s eyes widened when they set on the child. She snatched her up and strapped her to her back before they started down the hill, toward the edge of the property, where they set out to follow Exie Gray to Monroe on foot.<\/p>\n

It took them a little over an hour to get there. When they were close enough to hear the noise of a crowd, Exie Gray turned to her and said, \u201cLet\u2019s steer clear of the commotion, Evie. We don\u2019t want to . . .\u201d And he let his words trail off.<\/p>\n

They stood just beyond a crowd of about a hundred white men, women, and a few children. Other blacks stood near Exie Gray and Evie, just far enough to get away if the man they had wasn\u2019t enough for the hungry mob; the heads of the blacks were slightly bent toward the ground, but their eyes were on the hanging man.<\/p>\n

\u201cLord, Jesus. Give her to me,\u201d Exie Gray said, looking toward the hanged man. Then he grabbed at Nannie and freed her from her mother\u2019s back. \u201cShe don\u2019t need to see this.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hung from a post in the center of everything, not moving or screaming but badly bloodied and bruised and burning. It dawned on Evie as she looked down at the ground and then up at him that he was already dead. That she\u2019d missed that part. She stood there and watched without watching, never allowing a tear to fall from her eye. She stood there as long as she could, committing the scene to memory before turning her back to the hanged man and scanning for Exie Gray, who was holding Nannie\u2019s hand a few feet away from her. Nannie\u2019s eyes were peering in the direction that hers had just turned away from. Her little lips were moving and there were no tears in her eyes. Evie turned back to the man on the stake, rested her hand on her protruding stomach, and thought of the other children in Mr. Bolden\u2019s cotton field. She stood there as if Atlas\u2014her Atlas\u2014was telling a joke or preaching one of his sermons or making furniture out in the barn. She stood there as if watching him burn was a normal activity. A thing she did every day.<\/p>\n

The corners of her lips twitched the same way they would when she<\/p>\n

was trying to keep from laughing at a joke he\u2019d told. Never had such sweet filth touched her nostrils. The charcoal scent of his hair, the metallic, sulfuric stench of his blood, and the putridity of his organs would haunt her every time she caught the scent of roasting meat. She would always remember his flesh falling from his body in charred chunks and white people cheering while those few blacks around her swayed in sorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cAtlas. Atlas,\u201d she whispered, inhaling every part of her man.<\/p>\n

At some point, she closed her eyes and thought of the life they made together. Of the shack and how they squeezed their family into it. She thought of Mr. Bolden and how often he smiled on Atlas. How he vouched for him with other whites. Called him a \u201cgood boy.\u201d She thought of how smart her man was, how often Mr. Bolden asked him for help with his books. How Mr. Bolden often wondered out loud how Atlas had come to know so many things. She felt herself smiling as she thought about the book he often read to them at night. The Three Musketeers. <\/em>It was his favorite. So much that he\u2019d named their second\u2011born D\u2019Artagnan.<\/p>\n

They had laughed about it, as Evie thought D\u2019Artagnan a fool. She rallied for Aramis, who she believed made the best choice in the end. But when Atlas explained D\u2019Artagnan\u2019s passion, compared it to the world he wanted to build for her and the children, she embraced the name he\u2019d chosen.<\/p>\n

And she\u2019d almost forgotten Nannie was there when the child slipped her little hand into Evie\u2019s free one and said, \u201cPa. Him burn.\u201d And then the little girl started to cry, making Evie aware of her in a way that no mother wants to be aware of her child. Of what her little lips must\u2019ve been saying when she saw them moving moments earlier. Of what she had said three nights ago. She knelt in front of the child, still clutching her hand. \u201cDid you do this, child? What did you do?\u201d she asked, trying her best to cage her tongue with her teeth.<\/p>\n

She could feel tears forming. She wanted to shake the life from her child; she wanted to do what Beulah had done.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did you know?\u201d she asked weakly. \u201cWhat curse done passed through your lips?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPa. Him burn,\u201d Nannie whined again. Evie stood up, keeping her eyes on the child, who she realized was not a child at all but something else altogether. Something not of her world; something wicked and unkind. She let go of the girl\u2019s hand and never meant to touch her again.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

From <\/em>The Book of Chuck<\/a> by LaToya Watkins, published on August 18, 2026 by Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by LaToya Watkins<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Before Evie eased onto the thin goose\u2011feather mattress and set her mouth to tell her man that it had been a good day, a good night, but Atlas whispered to her first. \u201cMan in Monroe want to buy the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":275309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25508,3,43074,43076,26764],"tags":[80860,111653],"class_list":["post-273565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-fiction","category-excerpts","category-fictionandpoetry","category-from-the-novel","category-novels","tag-latoya-watkins","tag-the-book-of-chuck","story-type-daily-fiction"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19al","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9780593854549.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276090,"date":"2026-09-02T05:07:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276090"},"modified":"2026-08-31T11:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:54:13","slug":"visiting-helen-kellers-birthplace-while-deaf-what-it-means-to-navigate-accessibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/visiting-helen-kellers-birthplace-while-deaf-what-it-means-to-navigate-accessibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Helen Keller\u2019s Birthplace While Deaf: What it Means to Navigate Accessibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a sticky Saturday morning in July, I stepped out of the air-conditioned car, and the Alabama summer hit me like a wet blanket. The brick pathway at my feet passed through a small ornamental fence, crossed some scrubby grass, then ran up the steps to the Helen Keller Birthplace at Ivy Green.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is it,\u201d I said to the hearing friend who\u2019d come along with me to the quiet town of Tuscumbia, tucked beside the Tennessee River in the plateaus of northwestern Alabama. I exhaled in the muggy air.<\/p>\n

The white-paneled house was surprisingly diminutive. Green shutters swung out from lace-lined windows. Two brick chimneys bordered a shingled roof, the front portico edged by columns. Only the visitor signs out front suggested an aura of historic preservation.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d decided to take a road trip from Atlanta to see several civil rights sites in Birmingham and Montgomery. Helen Keller didn\u2019t fit with our program: she\u2019d become an archetype of vanilla-white disability. She\u2019d been friends with Alexander Graham Bell, who\u2019d used her to advance his oralist goals, and since then her mythos had over-shadowed regional histories of slavery and Jim Crow. She, and not the towering civil rights leaders from Birmingham and Montgomery, was the one who\u2019d been placed on the Alabama state quarter, alongside minuscule braille dots that felt more like tokens than real accessibility tools. Helen Keller\u2014or her manufactured image, at least\u2014tended to be shining and sweet and noncontroversial.<\/p>\n

But, my friend and I thought that summer of 2018, why not add sweet Helen, the Helen Keller we knew had been distorted by the sighted and hearing people around her, to our Alabama tour? We might learn something about the forces of cultural memory. And if nothing else, we could laugh at ourselves.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d long noticed the discrepancies between my idealism and my pragmatism\u2014between my desire for a fully accessible <\/i>world and the realities I saw all around me.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime for our photo op with the water pump!\u201d my friend joked as we locked the car and walked toward the house. I chuckled and flicked her shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re ridiculous,\u201d I said to her. Yet at the end of our morning there, we\u2019d get that photo op\u2014though not with the Pump, that talisman brimming with awe about Miracle Workers and W-A-T-E-R, but beside a perfectly ordinary green garden hose nearby. For years afterward, I\u2019d pull up the photo on my phone and shake my head, seeing my friend\u2019s arms splayed, her mouth open in exaggerated wonder.<\/p>\n

When we entered the front hallway of the house, I saw that everything, all the photos of Helen Keller and the medals she\u2019d received and the objects she\u2019d used, sat behind smooth walls of glass. Even the braille books were behind glass. As Georgina Kleege has observed in her own later-day reckoning, Keller herself would not have been able to find her way around this house, and Godspeed to any other modern-day blind or DeafBlind person who tried. The house was embossed and elegant, more like a plantation house than I had expected. The display cases felt distant and cold, as though the warmth of Helen Keller\u2019s body, of the other bodies that had worked and lived here, had been locked up inside the proverbial whited sepulcher.<\/p>\n

The Helen Keller house wasn\u2019t a space made for deaf people, either. My hearing friend had called to ask about an ASL interpreter for the tour. \u201cI bet they won\u2019t provide one,\u201d I told her cynically. \u201cTheir website doesn\u2019t say anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should!\u201d she protested.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know <\/i>they should,\u201d I said. \u201cBut they understand this house as a shrine to overcoming disability. It won\u2019t be for anyone who\u2019s disabled.\u201d And sure enough, the lady who\u2019d answered the phone had said,<\/p>\n

\u201cA what <\/i>interpreter?\u201d<\/p>\n

My friend persisted. She explained that there was something known as American Sign Language, you know, for deaf people. Like Helen Keller? The conversation went nowhere. The Helen Keller house did not seem to know how to hire an ASL interpreter, or maybe they did not want to. She gave up and ended the call.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is so absurd!\u201d she reported to me afterward. \u201cHelen Keller also used tactile ASL, didn\u2019t she?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I said, and then I paused. \u201cBut you know, signing wasn\u2019t the reason she became such an icon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people really need to be educated,\u201d my friend huffed, then muttered, \u201cThe Helen Keller <\/i>house!\u201d<\/p>\n

As we gazed at all those Helen Keller photos and braille books and medallions locked up behind glass, I noticed a small tour group congregating down the hall, near the wood-paneled staircase. A woman with a graying perm was announcing something. This group of white, hearing, sighted people gazed at the patterned wallpaper and rugs and mahogany chairs as they listened to her words, seemingly transported into some imagined past, some comfortable yet thrilling story of Helen Keller. I wondered what they expected to find there.<\/p>\n

Do you want me to try to pass along what I can? my friend asked, in ASL this time, waving in my peripheral vision. I\u2019m happy to.<\/p>\n

I said no. I didn\u2019t want to become an inadvertent tour demonstration. Look, sign language, just like at the water pump! <\/i>I suppose I was feeling perverse.<\/p>\n

If you hear anything interesting, let me know, I told my friend.<\/p>\n

An hour or so later, we smirked for our garden-hose photo and left for Birmingham. As we drove along the highway, I looked out the window at the heavy summer clouds and thought about how I wished I\u2019d been wrong about the Helen Keller house. I wished I was wrong about many things.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Why hadn\u2019t the Helen Keller house, of all places, provided access? Maybe because the house understood Helen Keller too simply: as a remarkable person worthy of rituals near old water pumps, but detached from the disability solidarity that eventually led to laws like the ADA, which have now made it possible to request accommodations at all.<\/p>\n

To me, the house felt like it still belonged to the world that had produced Helen Keller\u2019s mythos, the mythos of the state quarter and its \u201cspirit of courage.\u201d This older world is often focused on common American ideals of individualism and grit as the primary tools for attaining personal success. It is less likely to consider the social and physical barriers that are typically the real obstacles to access, perhaps since these barriers can seem less compelling to narrate. Stories based in this more complex reality of access are not always heroes\u2019 journeys, marked with clear protagonists and moments of self-realization. They require us to reimagine the communities we belong to, to consider our deep interconnectedness.<\/p>\n

By the time I visited the Helen Keller house in 2018, I knew I\u2019d be entering a place whose entire preservation revolved around one singular \u201cmiracle\u201d from the 1880s. The house did not tell this collective story of disability, which contains much wider alliances, such as the ones Keller herself forged when advocating for fair labor laws and women\u2019s suffrage, and as Black civil rights activists did in supporting the sit-in protests that eventually led to the ADA. When I stood in the front hallway at Ivy Green, I also knew that I could have fought harder to get an ASL interpreter for the tour, which could have helped make this place better for any other deaf and disabled people who came there after me.<\/p>\n

And yet. My friend and I were just paying a drive-by visit to Tuscumbia. I already had so many access-related conversations in my life, and I was growing tired of them. After the phone call my friend made on my behalf, I noticed how her anger burned much hotter than mine did. I tried to explain to her that sometimes I did not like wasting my time.<\/p>\n

I also dreamed of what it would be like to stop thinking about the trappings of access altogether. I just wanted to take my road trip with my friend, to savor the seemingly boundless freedom we shared during those years, to linger and talk and hop into the car and zip from place to place, making only the barest of plans. I wanted to live, <\/i>to step outside the usual tethers of access, the ways it could make me overthink and over-argue and overplan, arranging my existence around its everyday constraints, all when I could have been doing other things instead.<\/p>\n

Access often required time and energy, and its tensions could run deeper than whether a certain institution had an effective process for providing interpreters. When I visited the Helen Keller house, I also pondered what exactly I wanted access to, <\/i>whenever I entered an older-world place like this one. Even if the house had provided ASL interpreters, what would I have thought of what the gray-permed guide might have said on the tour, what ideas she might have had about disability? Would she have turned Keller into a singular inspiration, and me into one, too?<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d pushed harder for access, would it just have felt like retrofitting? Was the Helen Keller house, as it was, a place that wanted me <\/i>there\u2014all of me?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

A few years before my friend and I drove through Alabama, I\u2019d started to consider the many expectations I had of access\u2014as well as the many expectations access had of me.<\/p>\n

My access origin story began in the summer of 1990, when I was first diagnosed as deaf and the ADA had just been signed into law. I\u2019d unwittingly entered a new era of American history when disability accommodations were not only possible, but legally required. Growing up alongside these emerging accessibility systems shaped my entire life and worldview. It shaped my goals and priorities, the ways I presented myself to others, my budding understanding of human institutions and how to claim a place in them.<\/p>\n

Of course it did. I\u2019d grown up as part of the \u201cADA generation,\u201d a term that dates to an address given by Arne Duncan, then the US secretary of education, in the summer of 2009 to commemorate the law\u2019s passage. The ADA generation, Duncan said, encapsulated \u201ca new generation of Americans with disabilities growing up with an expectation of academic achievement, employment, and the opportunity to give back to their community.\u201d Disability activist Rebecca Cokley\u2014then a member of Duncan\u2019s staff\u2014coined the term and wrote it into the speech.<\/p>\n

Soon, the words circulated more widely. Senator Tom Harkin, known for celebrating the passage of the ADA with a speech he partly delivered in ASL so his deaf brother could understand, released a report in 2013 that proclaimed the \u201cunprecedented educational success\u201d of those who\u2019d grown up since the shift toward viewing accessibility and accommodation as essential components of a fair society. As Harkin observed, the young people of the ADA generation \u201chave high expectations of themselves and of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

My access voice is formal, respectful, calm, clear, direct. It\u2019s polite but not too stiff. Pointed but not too aggressive. Appreciative but not too chirpy. It\u2019s as well honed as any other voice I know.<\/p>\n

Among these high expectations: to have a job, to go to college; to make independent life decisions; to participate in broader public life. As a kid, I never questioned that such things were ahead of me, even if I did not always know how I was going to achieve them. What I did see was how much legwork it took to clear the paths I traveled, from the routine IEP meetings of my youth to later accommodations assessments. Nonetheless, I claimed my generational membership as a happy occurrence: I\u2019m the same age as the ADA! <\/i>To me, the ADA felt like a brazen birthright. The world wasn\u2019t always accessible, but it should be. <\/i>This was the law of the land.<\/p>\n

There were deaf people I knew who had been born pre-ADA, people from my hometown and other places I later lived, people I thought of as being so brilliant and distinguished that their right to access seemed innate and obvious, regardless of the law, or lack thereof. (As if being brilliant and distinguished have anything to do with the human rights everyone deserves.) These people told me that, before the ADA, they had attended school without interpreters. They\u2019d been denied jobs. They\u2019d acquired information however they could: scribbling notes back and forth, borrowing class materials, lipreading until their eyes screeched, asking family and friends to interpret when all else fell through. I could not fathom how they\u2019d done it.<\/p>\n

A few months after I turned twenty-five, when I first moved to Atlanta, I saw the ADA twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations at Barack Obama\u2019s White House. I watched video snippets from the ceremonial honorifics online. A medley of people gathered in the gold-curtained East Room, with their wheelchairs and their crutches and their ASL interpreters. The togetherness of the people in that room hit me hard: I saw how they\u2019d congregated to honor such different bodies and minds and ways of participating in the world. I consumed news articles and opinion pieces that reflected upon what the ADA had done.<\/p>\n

At that point, I didn\u2019t know much about the ADA\u2019s history. I didn\u2019t know about the government office sit-ins in the 1970s\u2014not even about Judy Heumann and her comrades planting their wheelchairs in front of honking Manhattan taxicabs in a defiant demand for accessible transportation. I didn\u2019t know about the Capitol Crawl in 1990, just weeks before the law\u2019s passage, when disabled people pulled themselves up the stairs of that illustrious government building to demand accessible spaces for all. I hadn\u2019t read the law\u2019s entire text for myself, its sections about employment and public facilities and telecommunications and auxiliary aids, because in my imagination the ADA always loomed larger than these individual parts. It might as well have been a national monument like the others along the Potomac River, some solid marble relic that soothed my naive modern sensibilities with the illusion that it\u2019d always been there.<\/p>\n

Some of those disability activists who were at the White House in 2015 had been present for the law\u2019s signing in 1990. This older generation had a fuller sense of the political process than I did. They saw how the ADA had enabled a richer story of disability, and they also saw how this single law wasn\u2019t the end. Surely the ADA had thrown open windows, flooding fresh air into the musty asylums that had once kept disabled people apart\u2014and still, the work of access was continually in progress. The rights one gained could also be rolled back.<\/p>\n

One thing I did know at age twenty-five was how slippery this ideal of access could be. I\u2019d learned about the institutions that were exempt from the ADA, public places of worship among them, and had discovered the often-failed concept of retrofitting. The ADA didn\u2019t always have teeth. It didn\u2019t make funds available for smaller organizations. Accessibility services were grafted onto spaces that hadn\u2019t changed much. Disabled people could be perceived as querulous and costly. Spats sometimes broke out over what \u201cfair and reasonable accommodations\u201d actually were. When I search Google for \u201cADA\u201d and \u201caccessibility,\u201d I find pages of results about standards, compliance, regulations, lawsuits. All prose and no poetry.<\/p>\n

Access wasn\u2019t always something accomplished and finished and provided. It was an ongoing conversation. Even any one person\u2019s needs and desires weren\u2019t always consistent. Disability can vary in so many ways, shifting with experience and context, with time and bodily change. And as I\u2019d learned by the time I visited the Helen Keller house, we\u2019re all bound to experience such fluctuations at some point during our lives, whether temporarily or permanently, whether we encounter them for ourselves or through the people around us.<\/p>\n

This deeply human adaptability was what the ADA had recognized. Because I\u2019d grown up alongside this law, because it loomed over my life like a landmark, I knew I had the right to be here, too. Yet my soaring generational expectations were still unfinished. I\u2019d long noticed the discrepancies between my idealism and my pragmatism\u2014between my desire for a fully accessible <\/i>world and the realities I saw all around me.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

As I met more deaf people in Atlanta and elsewhere, our conversations revealed something else to me: that access can be a form of labor.<\/p>\n

Living a life empowered by ADA-mandated accessibility services often involves bureaucracy, the various processes and requirements of modern-day institutions. It requires building relationships: with accessibility service providers, coordinators, secretaries, office managers, HR personnel, event organizers, colleagues, allies. Navigating these access systems is a valuable skill, but it can also lead to an oddly administrative existence. One in which it can be necessary to express oneself through a certain type of voice.<\/p>\n

My access voice arises in the emails I write on a regular basis, requesting interpreters and sometimes captioning and written notes for the hearing-and-speaking events I attend. Sometime long ago, I learned to express myself through this institutional language, to call upon the accommodations processes various organizations had in place, or to highlight when they didn\u2019t <\/i>have a process and needed to create one. My access voice is formal, respectful, calm, clear, direct. It\u2019s polite but not too stiff. Pointed but not too aggressive. Appreciative but not too chirpy. It\u2019s as well honed as any other voice I know.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From<\/em> Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice<\/a>\u00a0by Rachel Kolb. Copyright \u00a9 2025 by Rachel Renee Kolb. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a sticky Saturday morning in July, I stepped out of the air-conditioned car, and the Alabama summer hit me like a wet blanket. The brick pathway at my feet passed through a small ornamental fence, crossed some scrubby grass,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31791,"featured_media":276410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43287,43103,43092],"tags":[23419,62735,105248,68125,9158,2945,56926,37395,105247],"class_list":["post-276090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-health","category-memoir","category-newsandculture","tag-ableism","tag-americans-with-disabilities-act","tag-articulate-a-deaf-memoir-of-voice","tag-deafness","tag-disability","tag-ecco","tag-harpercollins-publishers","tag-helen-keller","tag-rachel-kolb","story-type-deafness"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19P4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/helen-keller-home.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31791"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276237,"date":"2026-09-02T05:06:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276237"},"modified":"2026-08-31T11:58:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:58:25","slug":"7-books-about-writerly-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/7-books-about-writerly-rivalry\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Books About Writerly Rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m fascinated by relationships between writers and always have been. They are often at turns intimate, competitive, toxic, and gratifying. Just as their own fictions bend and weave tales, so too do their own lives and rivalries. I am fortunate to have some very close writer friends, and they mean the world to me: we share drafts and notes, but also tea and company as we face the trials and vagaries of the publishing industry. And while I myself have been blessed with friendships and mentorships that have shaped my writerly life, I have also seen how writers can turn on one another when the pressure of a cut-throat industry collides with artistic and competitive temperaments: jealousy and competitiveness can sour the milk of the most benign friendship when, for example, one writer eclipses the other.<\/p>\n

My novel The Rayburn Affair<\/i><\/a> lays bare notions of friendship, rivalry, envy, authorship, and power. Set in both a university setting and the publishing industry, two places fraught with opportunities for paranoid rivalries and competition, I let my characters loose to claw their way out of the traps they set for themselves when they discovered how fine the line is between friends and rivals.<\/p>\n

Here are some of my favourite books that feature creative people and their relationships with other artists or writers:<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

R.F. Kuang, Yellowface<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0R.F. Kuang\u2019s Yellowface<\/i> is plotty, commercial fiction, demonstrating her deft ability to move between genres. In this novel, she offers a deliciously biting critique of the publishing industry, including the ways in which readers employ social media and how agents, editors, and other members of the industry address issues surrounding diversity. Jealousy and entitlement steer the actions of middling white writer June Hayward, who brazenly steals the manuscript of her much more talented friend, Chinese-American author, Athena Liu, after being the sole witness to Athena\u2019s death. June has long been deeply jealous of Athena\u2019s success, and continues her brand of entitled ownership, pretending to be racially ambiguous and calling herself Juniper Song. Haunted by someone she becomes convinced is Athena\u2019s ghost, June digs herself ever deeper, adamant that she deserves the fame that she long coveted of Athena. We see echoes of stories within the past few years of white authors making attempts to claim the backgrounds\u2014if not the stories\u2014of writers of colour in order to capitalize on what they see as the new direction of publishing, or to excuse their own appropriation within their writing after the fact. Kuang\u2019s book will ring true for anyone who pays attention not only to books, but to the world surrounding those books, and will delight in the anticipation of watching it crash down on June.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I read this wonderful book by Meg Wolitzer on a trip to New York, which allowed the setting of the novel to burst from its pages. At the start of the book, we meet a group of talented and dreamy-eyed creatives at a camp for artsy kids\u2014Spirit of the Woods\u2014in the summer of 1974. American politics bleed into the margins of their conversations, which are heady and serious, and then brash and provocative. Ethan is the unattractive but undeniably talented artist of the group who call themselves (in that self-conscious but arrogant blush of youth) The Interestings; Jonah and Cathy are the children of a famous Laurel Canyon-esque folk singer; gentle Ash is the beautiful and talented star around which, orbits many, including insecure and often-envious Jules, who steers the story in her writerly observations. Over the course of the novel, we follow all six as they shed childlike creative ideals and experience what it is to grow up chasing artistic dreams with varying degrees of success and failure.<\/p>\n

The novel explores the challenges of making a life both within and without the arts, and how that unfolds from adolescence into adulthood. The friends are witnesses to one another\u2019s success and failures and seem to have a stake and a sense of prideful ownership over one another because of their decades-long friendships. Set against the backdrop of political dishonesty and the country\u2019s abandonment of ideals, the book probes questions about how to be an artist in the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Melissa Albert, The Children<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This debut adult novel by long-time YA author Melissa Albert had me in its clutches from the first page. It reminds me of how Roald Dahl could craft a dark but adventuresome story for adults that was like a bitter candy compared to his children\u2019s books. This book is like a children\u2019s fantasy that has gone deeply, darkly wrong. A doozy of a novel about two grown children\u2014Guinevere and Ennis\u2014scarred by their seemingly romantic and artistic upbringing in a farmhouse in Vermont under the negligence of a wildly talented writer for a mother, and a hapless painter for a father. It was in that idyllic setting that their mother Edith began her writerly journey by penning soon-to-be uber-famous books, \u2018The Ninth City\u2019 series, that featured characters named after and based on her own children. But now Ennis and Guin are grown and standing in the ashes of that childhood. Where does her talent come from? Where does a muse end and something much more sinister begin? What follows is an unflinching book that digs deep into the heart of what it means to be creative and at what costs. These are themes I return to again and again in my own work\u2014notions of inspiration, ambition, and fame. This book reminds me of the way I felt reading unsettling, disturbing novels as a child. Those from which I could not turn away and stayed up way too late reading.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of my all-time favourite books is Wonder Boys<\/i>. I spent a chapter of my PhD dissertation on it, on the Bildungsroman that takes place between both young and old characters as they compete and compare and grow together. Michael Chabon applies his gorgeous prose and masterful storytelling to a seemingly easy plot about a washed-up writer and his young and talented prot\u00e9g\u00e9, making this work an inquiry into aging, originality, depression, family, and, ultimately, feeling content and settled in one\u2019s creative life. Grady Tripp is a writer and professor who has rested on the laurels of his first book for years and can\u2019t seem to seal the deal of his sophomore novel, which is nearing 2800 words. Plagued with self-doubt and feeling his best years are behind him, we follow Grady and his effortlessly talented but deeply troubled student, James Leer, as they bumble their way through several days that are as funny as they are touching, as much a caper as a story of love\u2014for story and for writers. In this novel that draws older and younger writers together, we see how each can envy but ultimately learn from each other.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

What does a writer need to create, and to live a creative life? These have long been preoccupations of mine. I\u2019m curious about what makes a life and mind ripe for writing. In this early novel of Atwood\u2019s, we follow Joan Foster, a romance writer whose efforts to escape, both in reality and fiction, are courageous and inventive. Joan has a lifetime of trauma and secrets, she is a complicated and complete woman, and after she releases a smash hit of feminist poetry, an anonymous blackmailer threatens to reveal Joan\u2019s inner life and past to the public. We witness how a writer is made and unmade by life and art in this truly heroic feminist character, who ultimately charts her own path within and without the publishing industry, readers, and those who want to see her undone. The language is, as always for Margaret Atwood, bold and poetic without losing the plot, which is even now, fresh and unique.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Martin Amis, The Information<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jealousy! Envy in its deepest, greenest, baldest manifestation. Martin Amis comes out swinging in this novel about two mid-life writers and friends: Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull, respectively successful and middling. Once full of promise, Richard\u2019s writing career has stalled. Gwyn\u2019s, however, who Richard considers to be his inferior, has jettisoned into success and is in the running for a huge literary prize. So the trap is set, and we watch as the deliciously dangerous elixir of ambition, competition and hubris provokes a bonkers plot as Richard\u2019s seemingly innocent but increasingly dangerous plans to upend Gwyn\u2019s career careen uncontrollably towards disaster. In this novel Amis is as unflappable as ever, and his dry humour and the dark undertone of the novel are exactly my taste. Much like many on this list, the author casts a side eye at age here, exploring the unease or growing panic of writers for whom the clock of their career is ticking, employing humour and biting reality in his observations of the realities of working within a fickle industry.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

My favourite Rooney novel, her debut, this book feels like a hazy unspooling of discussions with a very close friend, confidant, lover, and rival, and while we learn about them, the protagonist, a writer, learns about herself and her own limitations and ambitions. Another novel where the author explores how to cultivate the mind, body, home, and social circle in order to propagate creativity, and wonders what happens when any or all elements become fallow or diseased. What happens to the work? We meet young writers who work as collaborators, ex-lovers, and best friends: Frances (the narrator) and her bold and uninhibited friend, Bobbi. Frances and Bobbi come into the orbit of two other creatives, the essayist and photographer Melissa, and her actor husband, Nick. Frances and Nick become lovers, and Melissa and Bobbi grow close as well. We see Frances struggle with her own skills as a writer, her confidence and insecurities as a woman, especially in light of Bobbi and Melissa\u2019s respective self-assured confidence, and her position in the world in every physical sense. The writing is interior but not suffocating, it is a character novel, but it is relatable and topical. Frances feels like a child in the world of grownups, even as she is in every way an adult. I enjoyed her explorations of inspiration, of how Frances starts, stops, and builds when she is writing. Rooney expertly describes the way that writing can sometimes feel like building a house with no tools, or only those tools that you\u2019ve made yourself and are as yet unsure how they work. Frances is a young writer navigating the labyrinth of adulthood and her narration is close and touching, and to this author, entirely enchanting.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Rayburn Affair<\/a>\u00a0by Laurie Petrou is available from House of Anansi Press.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m fascinated by relationships between writers and always have been. They are often at turns intimate, competitive, toxic, and gratifying. Just as their own fictions bend and weave tales, so too do their own lives and rivalries. I am fortunate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31831,"featured_media":276247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43135],"tags":[29318,112029,112033,3655,4857,14400,28153,3084,87379,13415,107453,112030,40731,112032,46730,112031,85271],"class_list":["post-276237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","category-readinglists","tag-conversations-with-friends","tag-lady-oracle","tag-laurie-petrou","tag-margaret-atwood","tag-martin-amis","tag-meg-wolitzer","tag-melissa-albert","tag-michael-chabon","tag-r-f-kuang","tag-sally-rooney","tag-the-children","tag-the-information","tag-the-interestings","tag-the-rayburn-affair","tag-wonder-boys","tag-writing-rivals","tag-yellowface"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Rr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/writerly-rivalry.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276144,"date":"2026-09-02T05:05:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276144"},"modified":"2026-08-31T11:59:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:59:28","slug":"generosity-and-personhood-how-the-myth-of-the-three-graces-inspired-my-debut-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/generosity-and-personhood-how-the-myth-of-the-three-graces-inspired-my-debut-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Generosity and Personhood: How the Myth of the Three Graces Inspired My Debut Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I walked toward the Roman statue of the Three Graces in The Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a> last month, my eyes began to water. I clocked the familiar details in person for the first time: The contrapposto <\/i>stance of three sister goddesses, one facing away from the others. The graceful nudity of three women. A gentle marble hand on another\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n

I first heard of the subject of the statue\u2014the myth of the Three Graces\u2014more than twenty years ago. In high school Latin and art history classes, I learned that these three sister goddesses, known as \u201cThe Charities\u201d in ancient Greece and \u201cThe Graces\u201d in ancient Rome, each bestowed a distinct gift on humanity: Aglaea (radiance), Euphrosyne (joy), and Thalia (blossoming).<\/p>\n

In practice, there were a range of depictions of these goddesses in ancient Greece\u2014their number, their names, and their traits differ across sources. Benevolence and beauty were near universal attributes across their iterations and iconography, and scholars believe they may have first appeared as fertility deities. In one telling, the Graces were meteors who fell from the sky, sparked the first growth on earth, and morphed into goddesses. Homer also described the three as supporting Aphrodite, the goddess of love, after her birth. The Graces helped love bloom in the world, metaphorically and literally.<\/p>\n

I created these mortal, modern counterparts to the myth…to reflect the generosity and grace that already emanates from women around the world in their flaws and imperfections.<\/p>\n

Though they were minor figures on Mt. Olympus, cult worship of the Graces was widespread. They became a prolific visual motif in ancient Greece and Rome, visible on pottery, coins, mirrors, sarcophagi, mosaics\u2014as well as magnificent statues like the one I saw at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was discovered in 1892 buried under a Roman road.<\/p>\n

Because their likeness was undefined beyond their venerable beauty, the goddesses have served as symbols of the idealized female figure since they first appeared. Some of Western civilization\u2019s greatest artists, including Botticelli, Raphael, Rubens, Canova, Cezanne, and Picasso, have all adapted their forms according to the tastes of the time.<\/p>\n

The Three Graces are not only contained to the confines of high art and academic study. Once you\u2019re aware of these goddesses, you see them everywhere. On a recent visit to Rome, I glanced up to see them depicted in a mass-produced print hanging above the bed in my hotel room. Last month, I learned that they were the framework for a beloved Greek sitcom in the 90s, Oi Treis Harites<\/i>, about three sisters in their 40s.<\/p>\n

For decades, I\u2019ve felt pulled to these goddesses. Unlike other Olympians, who were often violent and wrathful, the Graces showed kindness and care to their fellow gods and mortals alike\u2014bestowers of grace in every context. This unequivocable goodwill became my muse. Even so, I could not help feeling as though their symbolism fell short of my own feminine ideal. Radiance and joy are essential to a happy life, but I do not imagine them as the highest virtues. In a world where women endure the impossible to bring new life into the world\u2014holding agony and beauty all at once\u2014shouldn\u2019t women be celebrated for more than just their idealized form and youth?<\/p>\n

But as I dug deeper into research on the Three Graces, I found they were not merely idealized goddesses, but a visual allegory beloved by ancient philosophers. The original Greek word \u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03c2, or charis<\/i>, which is the root of the Charities and the Graces, not only connotes beauty. It also refers to the gratitude and goodwill that unfurls when people give, accept, and return favors. As discussed by Denis Vidal in an academic article on the Three Graces<\/a>, the late scholar Jean-Pierre Vernant defined charis<\/i> as \u201cthe divine power manifest in all aspects of gift giving and reciprocity (the round of generous liberality, the cordial exchange of gifts), which, in spite of all divisions, spins a web of reciprocal obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the ancient world, the Three Graces represented the virtuous cycle of giving, accepting, and returning gifts, which the stoic philosopher Seneca described as \u201cthe chief bond of human society.\u201d Each Grace represented one aspect of this virtuous cycle, and in their totality, an ideal for society to aspire toward. Seneca explained that the visual elements of traditional Hellenistic and Roman depictions all reflect this allegory: The Graces are often shown in a circle holding hands to demonstrate the unbroken passing of gifts\u2014with joyful expressions to express the joy of giving. \u201cThey are youthful because the remembrance of \u2018benefits\u2019 should not grow old,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Each of us have our own gifts, as distinct and varied as our fingerprints. Sharing those gifts\u2014and receiving other women\u2019s gifts in kind\u2014is the closest thing I\u2019ve experienced to grace on earth.<\/p>\n

Approximately 400 years prior, Aristotle also referred to the motif of the Three Graces in Nicomachean Ethics<\/i> when he explains their ubiquitous presence in the ancient world, \u201cThis is why we set up a shrine of the Graces in a public place, to remind men to return a kindness; for that is a special characteristic of grace, since it is a duty not only to repay a service done one, but another time to take the initiative in doing a service oneself.\u201d These words became the epitaph to my debut novel and an introduction to the ethos of the story.<\/p>\n

I felt called to embark on a modern riff on the myth not only to play with the symbolism of Three Graces\u2019 virtues but also to relieve us of their dark shadow. As with many vestiges of the past, this myth is both a blessing and a curse. The word charis <\/i>refers not only to this virtuous cycle, but of the way women must give themselves to men. The female figures of the Three Graces represent the literal gift of a woman giving her virginal body to a man as property bestowed upon a new owner.<\/p>\n

In my own contemporary reimagining, I wanted to counter that legacy with nuance. I wrote about three generations of ordinary Italian-American women of Roman descent, all of whom are named after a statue of the Three Graces. This triumvirate uses their voices, their power, their compassion to embody this virtuous cycle of generosity and reciprocity without forfeiting their personhood, bodies, or resources to anyone. In fact, in this retelling, their free will and autonomy are essential elements of that virtuous cycle, rather than subjugated by it.<\/p>\n

I created these mortal, modern counterparts to the myth not to make a grand aspiration statement\u2014like the idealized statues erected across the ancient world\u2014and instead to reflect the generosity and grace that already emanates from women around the world in their flaws and imperfections.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve found in studying these sister goddesses is the truth of my own life. No woman fits into an idealized form. Each of us have our own gifts, as distinct and varied as our fingerprints. Sharing those gifts\u2014and receiving other women\u2019s gifts in kind\u2014is the closest thing I\u2019ve experienced to grace on earth.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Three Graces of Pearl Street<\/a> by Elizabeth Wellington Rollins is available from Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I walked toward the Roman statue of the Three Graces in The Metropolitan Museum of Art last month, my eyes began to water. I clocked the familiar details in person for the first time: The contrapposto stance of three<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31809,"featured_media":276149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43071,43069,6,43070],"tags":[8916,11737,47513,111970,1044,23613,5908,7514,9424,731,111969],"class_list":["post-276144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-and-advice","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","tag-ancient-rome","tag-atria-books","tag-craft-advice","tag-elizabeth-wellington-rollins","tag-feminism","tag-fiction-writing","tag-greek-mythology","tag-mythology","tag-novel-writing","tag-simon-and-schuster","tag-the-three-graces-of-pearl-street","story-type-mythology"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19PW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Sandro_Botticelli_-_Three_Graces_in_Primavera-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31809"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276446,"date":"2026-09-01T10:56:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T14:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276446"},"modified":"2026-09-01T11:09:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T15:09:28","slug":"enough-an-open-letter-from-jewish-creatives-and-thinkers-in-defense-of-mark-ruffalo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/enough-an-open-letter-from-jewish-creatives-and-thinkers-in-defense-of-mark-ruffalo\/","title":{"rendered":"Enough! An Open Letter from Jewish Creatives and Thinkers in Defense of Mark Ruffalo"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of Jewish artists, writers, creative professionals, faith leaders and thinkers\u2014including Emma Seligman, Gabor Mat\u00e9, Hannah Einbinder, Ilana Glazer, James Schamus, Larry Charles, Joel Coen, Miranda July, Molly Crabapple, Sarah Sherman, Tavi Gevinson, Todd Haynes, and Tony Kushner\u2014have signed an open letter<\/a> “in response to the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo.”<\/p>\n

Ruffalo, a longtime advocate for Palestinian rights who has been vocal in his condemnation of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank, was accused by media giant Paramount Skydance of invoking \u201cantisemitic tropes\u201d in his criticism of its $111bn merger with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD).<\/p>\n

In a statement shared on his social media channels last month, the actor had highlighted the links<\/a> between Paramount Skydance, run by CEO David Ellison, and Oracle, the technology company run by Ellison\u2019s father, Larry. Oracle has supplied software to the Israel Defense Forces for decades and Ellison Sr. is the largest donor in history to the nonprofit Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.<\/p>\n

As well as condemning the “false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious,” the open letter goes on to detail the depth of connection between the Ellisons and the Gaza genocide, and highlight a recent Washington Post<\/em> poll which found that 61% of American Jews now agree that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Below is the letter, and list of signatories, in its entirety.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough!\u201d<\/p>\n

We are Jewish artists, writers, creative professionals, faith leaders and thinkers who have, in response to the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo, a simple message to share with the world: Enough! Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact.<\/p>\n

The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery is no mere combination of two huge multinational companies. Yes, it will destroy thousands upon thousands of livelihoods. Yes, it will further consolidate the oligarchic control of our media (witness the gutting of CBS News). Yes, it will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.<\/p>\n

But it will do all this and more as part of a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting\u2014and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors. We all saw this after their Trump-brokered takeover of TikTok\u2014a takeover they openly proclaimed was in large part motivated by their desire to boost pro-Israel propaganda. Larry Ellison personally, with his astonishing $350 million in funding and pledges to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has been Blair\u2019s major backer as Blair assumes an influential role in the Trump-concocted \u201cBoard of Peace\u201d takeover of Gaza, a territory which has become an open-air laboratory for AI-driven killing and control technologies like the ones celebrated by former Oracle CEO (and current Oracle and Paramount board member) Safra Catz.<\/p>\n

The AI road to WarnerMount runs through Gaza, and Ellison has often let us know the Orwellian world he has in store for us as he consolidates control over what we watch and how we watch it, knowing that as we watch he and his corrupt cohort will always be watching us: \u201cCitizens will be on their best behavior because we\u2019re constantly recording and reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism. It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty. According to a recent Washington Post<\/em> poll, 61% of American Jews now agree that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza; and four in ten even agree that these crimes amount to genocide. Do those attacking Mark Ruffalo as an antisemite seriously believe that all these American Jews are antisemites too? Or that we don\u2019t see the connection between, on the one hand, the criminal impunities that have led the US and Israel into unending disaster and, on the other, the oligarchic powerplays of the Musks, Ellisons, Thiels and others who are working to dismantle our democracy?<\/p>\n

But the virulence and falseness of the slanders they direct towards their critics is evidence of the increasing weakness of their position, based as it is on innuendos. Today, more and more people of conscience are joining together, to loudly and univocally proclaim: The time is over for spurious charges of antisemitism to be trotted out in the defense of war, oligarchy, and, now, AI domination. That tired playbook has run its course.<\/p>\n

We stand proudly with Mark Ruffalo, and with all decent people who are bravely rising and speaking truth to power.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

To see Safra Catz at an Israeli-American Council summit discuss Oracle\u2019s \u201cscary\u201d secret weapons in Gaza: \u201cI don\u2019t want to brag, but\u2026\u201d<\/a> Oracle executives are crystal clear in their Israel stance: \u201c<\/a>Supporting Israel is in our DNA \u2014 even if it costs us clients. That\u2019s our agenda.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Catz has been very insistent that she will not tolerate employees at the companies she helps run who do not share her views: \u201c<\/a>For employees, it\u2019s clear: if you\u2019re not for America or Israel, don\u2019t work here.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

For details on Oracle\u2019s partnerships with the Israeli military and police: Oracle<\/a>. Here\u2019s Ellison on his goal of \u201cconstantly recording and reporting.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

On Ellison and Blair\u2019s partnership see Blair and the Billionaire<\/a>. Watch Blair and Ellison chat about AI global domination: \u201cAn amazing opportunity to reimagine the state\u2026\u201d<\/a> On Blair and his role in Gaza, see Blair Takes on Larger Role<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On TikTok and Israel, see Benjamin Netanyahu proclaiming the takeover as \u201cthe most important purchase happening\u201d during the war: \u201cWeapons change over time\u2026\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

On the increasingly dangerous weaponization of antisemitism as a tool to destroy free speech and other rights, and how Jews are fighting back against this weaponization, visit the Diaspora Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For recent polling on American Jews\u2019 increasingly critical views of Israel, see The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s \u201cMost Jews say Israel is committing war crimes \u2013 and 39 percent say genocide\u2026\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Signatories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aaron Costa Ganis, Actor<\/p>\n

Abbi Jacobson, Actor\/Comedian<\/p>\n

Alan Snitow, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Alex Winter, Actor\/Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Alison Klayman, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Alison Leiby, Writer\/Comedian<\/p>\n

Alissa Weiss, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Allie Gross, Writer<\/p>\n

Amos Goldberg, Holocaust Historian, Hebrew University<\/p>\n

Amy Ziering, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Anat Matar, Snr. Lecturer (Ret.), Tel Aviv University<\/p>\n

Andrea Weiss, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Andrue Kahn, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Anjuli Kronheim Katz, Advocate<\/p>\n

Anna Pollack, Director<\/p>\n

Anthony Arnove, Writer\/Producer<\/p>\n

Ariel Friedlander, Artist<\/p>\n

Ariel Wengroff, Artist<\/p>\n

Atalia Omer, Professor, University of Notre Dame<\/p>\n

Avi Shlaim, Professor (Em.), St Antony\u2019s College<\/p>\n

Ayelet Waldman, Author<\/p>\n

Barry Trachtenberg, Professor, Wake Forest University<\/p>\n

Bella Freud, Designer<\/p>\n

Ben Korman, Producer<\/p>\n

Ben Lorber, Researcher<\/p>\n

Ben Moser, Author<\/p>\n

Ben Natan, Actor\/Producer<\/p>\n

Brian A. Kates, Editor<\/p>\n

Bruce Cohen, Producer<\/p>\n

Camille L\u00e9vy Sarfati, Author\/Curator<\/p>\n

Cat Davis, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Chani Nicholas, Astrologer<\/p>\n

Charlie Goldensohn, Strategist\/Commentator<\/p>\n

Charlotte Sheedy, Literary Agent<\/p>\n

Collier Meyerson, Writer<\/p>\n

Craig Aaron, Journalist<\/p>\n

Dana Kornberg, Assoc. Professor, UC Santa Barabra<\/p>\n

Daniel Levy, Political Analyst<\/p>\n

David Borenstein, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

David Mivasair, Rabbi<\/p>\n

David Vine, Author<\/p>\n

David Wilson, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Deborah Eisenberg, Writer<\/p>\n

Deborah Kaufman. Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Deborah Shaffer, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Debra Winger, Actor<\/p>\n

Deidre Fishel, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Dr. Mark Perlmutter, Physician<\/p>\n

Einat Weizman, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Emily Kunstler, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Emma Seligman, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Erin Axelman, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Estee Chandler, Radio Host\/Producer<\/p>\n

Estelle Tarica, Professor, UC Berkeley<\/p>\n

Ethan Sacks, Writer<\/p>\n

Frances Fisher, Actor<\/p>\n

Gabor Mat\u00e9, Physician\/Author<\/p>\n

Gili Getz, Photographer<\/p>\n

Gina Gershon, Actor<\/p>\n

Ginny Suss, Producer<\/p>\n

Hana Morgenstern, Assoc. Professor, Newnham College<\/p>\n

Hannah Einbinder, Actor<\/p>\n

Henry Bean, Screenwriter<\/p>\n

Howard Rodman, Screenwriter<\/p>\n

Hunter Abrams, Photographer<\/p>\n

Idith Korman, Musician\/Composer<\/p>\n

Ilana Glazer, Actor\/Writer\/Director<\/p>\n

Ilise Cohen, Scholar<\/p>\n

Itamar Ziegler, Composer\/Musician<\/p>\n

James Renton, Professor, Edge Hill University<\/p>\n

James Schamus, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

James Wilson, Producer<\/p>\n

Jamie Zelermeyer, Producer<\/p>\n

Jane Schoenbrun, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Jason Kliot, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Jason Rosenberg, Public Health Advocate<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte, Producer<\/p>\n

Jenna Weiss-Berman, Producer<\/p>\n

Jennifer L. Pozner, Author<\/p>\n

Jeremiah Zagar, Director<\/p>\n

Jeremy Yaches, Producer<\/p>\n

Jesse Mechanic, Writer<\/p>\n

Jill Goldman, Artist<\/p>\n

Jillian Neal, Manager<\/p>\n

Jo Firestone, Comedian\/Actor<\/p>\n

Joel Beinin, Professor (Em.), Stanford University<\/p>\n

Joel Coen, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Jon Reiss, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Jonathan Feingold, Professor, Boston University School of Law<\/p>\n

Jonathan Lethem, Writer<\/p>\n

Josette Maskin, Musician<\/p>\n

Karin Loevy, Professor, NYU School of Law<\/p>\n

Kate Berlant, Actor<\/p>\n

Kathy Wazana, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Lance Kramer, Producer<\/p>\n

Larry Charles, Screenwriter\/Director<\/p>\n

Laura Kraftowitz, Writer<\/p>\n

Leora Barish, Screenwriter<\/p>\n

Libby Lenkinski, Producer<\/p>\n

Linda Holtzman, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Lindsay Beyerstein, Journalist<\/p>\n

Lior Sternfeld, Assoc. Professor, Penn State University<\/p>\n

Lisa Cholodenko, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Lonnie Kleinman, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Liz Flahive, Screenwriter<\/p>\n

Mara Hoffman, Artist<\/p>\n

Marc Weiss, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Marianne Hirsch, Professor, Columbia University<\/p>\n

Maris Kreizman, Writer<\/p>\n

Mark LeVine, Professor, UC Irvine<\/p>\n

Mati Shemoelof, Author\/Poet<\/p>\n

Matt Bernstein, Content Creator<\/p>\n

Max Zev Reynolds, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Meryl Crean, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Michael Greif, Director<\/p>\n

Michael J. Drexler, Assoc. Professor, Bucknell University<\/p>\n

Michael Skolnik, Organizer<\/p>\n

Michael Rothberg, Professor, UCLA<\/p>\n

Miranda July, Filmmaker\/Writer<\/p>\n

Mneesha Gellman, Professor, Emerson College<\/p>\n

Molly Crabapple, Author\/Artist<\/p>\n

Mordechai Liebling, Rabbi<\/p>\n

Morgan Bassichis, Writer\/Performer<\/p>\n

Morgan Spector, Actor<\/p>\n

Naomi Klein, Author\/Professor<\/p>\n

Nathan Thrall, Author<\/p>\n

Nicole Morse, Educator<\/p>\n

Nina Menkes, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Noa Avishag Schnall, Journalist<\/p>\n

Orian Zakai, Assoc. Professor, George Washington University<\/p>\n

Orli Matlow, Comedian<\/p>\n

Peter Beinart, Journalist<\/p>\n

Phyllis Bennis, Writer<\/p>\n

Rachel Leah Jones, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Raphael Greenberg, Professor (Em.), Tel Aviv University<\/p>\n

Raz Segal, Assoc. Professor, Stockton University<\/p>\n

Rebecca Vilkomerson, Author\/Analyst<\/p>\n

Rick Pearlstein, Author<\/p>\n

Rinat Abastado, Rabbinic Student<\/p>\n

Roee Rosen, Artist<\/p>\n

Romy Soleimani, Make-up Artist<\/p>\n

Rosanna Arquette, Actor\/Director<\/p>\n

Sai Koros, Student Rabbi<\/p>\n

Sandi DuBowski, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Sarah Kunstler, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Sarah Schulman, Writer<\/p>\n

Sarah Sherman, Comedian\/Actor<\/p>\n

Sarah Sophie Flicker, Artist<\/p>\n

Shira Klein, Assoc. Professor, Chapman University<\/p>\n

Sigal Primor, Artist<\/p>\n

Simone Zimmerman, Podcast Host<\/p>\n

Spencer Ackerman, Author<\/p>\n

Steve Quester, Anti-Racism Coach<\/p>\n

Steven Katz, Screenwriter<\/p>\n

Susan Margolin, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Susan S. Lanser, Professor (Em.), Brandeis University<\/p>\n

Tamir Sorek, Professor, Penn State University<\/p>\n

Tavi Gevinson, Actor\/Writer<\/p>\n

Ted Hope, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Terri Ginsberg, Asst. Teaching Professor, Rutgers University<\/p>\n

Tia Lessen, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Todd Haynes, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Tony Gerber, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Tony Kushner, Screenwriter\/Playwright<\/p>\n

Udi Aloni, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Udi Raz, Writer<\/p>\n

V (formerly Eve Ensler), Playwright\/Author<\/p>\n

Vanessa Hope, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Vanessa Nunes, Physician<\/p>\n

Wallace Shawn, Actor\/Playwright<\/p>\n

Wendy Ettinger, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Yael Bridge, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Yael Ronen, Director<\/p>\n

Yoni Golijov, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Zach Woods, Filmmaker<\/p>\n

Zachary Foster, Historian<\/p>\n

Zachary Lochman, Professor, NYU<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of Jewish artists, writers, creative professionals, faith leaders and thinkers\u2014including Emma Seligman, Gabor Mat\u00e9, Hannah Einbinder, Ilana Glazer, James Schamus, Larry Charles, Joel Coen, Miranda July, Molly Crabapple, Sarah Sherman, Tavi Gevinson, Todd Haynes, and Tony Kushner\u2014have signed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":276447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43093,11,43092,43095],"tags":[8632,9366,21867,86880,1076],"class_list":["post-276446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-and-tv","category-fullwidth-slider","category-newsandculture","category-politics","tag-gaza","tag-hollywood","tag-jewish-americans","tag-mark-ruffalo","tag-open-letter"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19UO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mark-ruffalo-oscars.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276421,"date":"2026-09-01T06:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276421"},"modified":"2026-09-01T09:20:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T13:20:58","slug":"lit-hub-daily-september-1-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hub-daily-september-1-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub Daily: September 1, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":" TODAY: In 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs is born.\u00a0 <\/span>\n