Best of the Week: November 7 – 11, 2016

TODAY: In 1958, Brendan Behan‘s autobiographical Borstal Boy is banned in Ireland by the Censorship of Publications Board. 

• “Believe the autocrat. He means what he says.” Masha Gessen provides 6 rules for survival under autocracy. | NYRB
• “The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.” David Remnick on the election. | The New Yorker
• “I have watched every Presidential election on television since I was a child, but I have never felt the degree of terror my loved ones and I feel now.” On watching the election undocumented. | n+1
• “They’ve seen anger in the world, and it makes sense to them, and now it seems right to see it on the page.” Rereading James Baldwin in the Obama years. | Guernica
• A reading list to help understand “the political, economic, regional and social shifts that drove one of the most stunning political upsets in the nation’s history.” | The New York Times
• PEN has released a report entitled Writing on the Wall, “the most comprehensive account to date of the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers in late 2015.” | PEN America
• “But listen, love, because I need to remind you of something and I need you to remember it extra well over the next four years: This is our street.” Mira Jacob, Nicole Chung, and Manuel Gonzales on parenting under President Trump. | BuzzFeed Reader
• “One moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.” A short story by Mohsin Hamid. | The New Yorker
• “The republic is built on a destruction of language. A kind of obliteration of language that will enable and excuse violence against bodies. My job is to interrogate and agitate that as often as I can.” A profile of Solmaz Sharif. | Newsweek
• Historical amnesia and civil resistance: On This is an Uprising and how political change actually occurs. | The New Inquiry
• Bushwick is its own character, and this book is one of its biographies: An interview with Jacqueline Woodson. | Poets & Writers
• Mary Beard on citizenship and self-implosion in ancient Rome (and not on the American election). | Los Angeles Review of Books
• A story for each of our presidents from Amelia Gray, Rion Amilcar Scott, and 42 other writers. | Melville House Books
• “I’m not a big believer in the romantic idea that art can heal. What it does do is bring things to the surface, and then I go see my psychiatrist.” An interview with Rabih Alameddine. | Electric Literature
• “Reporters’ eagerness first to ridicule Trump and his supporters, then dismiss them, and finally to actively lobby and argue for their defeat have led us to a moment when the entire journalistic enterprise needs to be rethought and rebuilt.” On the failure of reporting in this year’s election. | Columbia Journalism Review

And on Literary Hub:

• America’s literary voices react to President Donald Trump · The words and works of one of our great poets, Leonard Cohen · The literary is political: On poetry, resistance, and the shift from sadness to resolve · On the violent language of the refugee crisis · Patti Smith on poetry vs. lyrics, and how to write a song · Mira Jacob and Emily Raboteau talk raising children of color in Trump’s America · Aminatta Forna visits the Museum of Broken Relationships· A 90-year-old John Berger is not surprised by President Trump · Teju Cole looks beyond politics to find a little beauty in the world · Talking in New Orleans in the age of Trump

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