Lit Hub Daily: April 21, 2021

• “So much has been stripped from the Black Southern poet’s lived experience, and yet out of that came a new acrostic.” Khalisa Rae on what it means to write in the “Southern tradition.” | Lit Hub Poetry

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• Martha Cooley considers cats (and cat deaths) in literature, as she prepares to say goodbye to her cat, Zora. | Lit Hub

• “When I decided to write about the disturbing, stressed-out mothers you sometimes find in books written by Victorian women, you could say that I came by the topic honestly.” Kyra Wilder on motherhood and madness. | Lit Hub

• Mazie K. Hirono on holding the line against loss of identity for Native Hawaiians, as the first Asian American woman in the US Senate. | Lit Hub

• After growing up as one herself, Lynn Berger has some thoughts on raising a second child. | Lit Hub

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• Maryanne O’Hara reflects on turning to nonfiction after the death of her daughter, when “writing the personal suddenly felt like the only kind of writing that mattered.” | Lit Hub Craft

• Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr. recenter California’s history around the Huchiun Ohlone people of the East Bay. | Lit Hub History

• “He writes with impassioned control, out of a maniacal serenity”: Thomas Pynchon’s 1988 review of Love in the Time of Cholera. | Book Marks

• “To really possess the reader, sometimes you have to be possessed to the point of losing control.” Adrienne Raphel considers the friendship of Louise Fitzhugh and James Merrill, and their mutual graphomania. | Public Books

• Food as eulogy: Michelle Zauner discusses her new memoir, her late mother, and the Korean food they both loved. | Rolling Stone

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• “We’ve all learned that everybody’s performing all the time and that the self is a fiction.” Lauren Oyler considers taking risks and writing in the first person. | The Creative Independent

• There’s no shortage of writing about Patricia Highsmith’s fascinating, complicated life—but what was she really like? | T Magazine

• “Which writer reminds us of other writers is influenced by the delicate balance (and imbalance) of ancient and modern power structures.” On the politics of comp titles in translated literature. | Words Without Borders

• Bringing the celebrated writer Kaoru Takamura into English translation was a long, complex “labor of love” for publisher Soho Press. | Los Angeles Times

• New books give a look into the history, challenges, and landscape of Mount Everest. | Outside Magazine

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Also on Lit Hub: Rereading The Phantom Tollbooth during pandemic doldrums • Madeleine Watts talks about coming of age amidst climate catastrophe • Read from Eleanor Morse’s latest novel, Margreete’s Harbor