Lit Hub Daily: August 17, 2020

• Must every nation have its own Sylvia Plath? Rhian Sassen on the inescapability of Plath for writers the world over. | Lit Hub
• Darin Strauss on finding catharsis—and inspiration—in the story of a family betrayal. | Lit Hub Craft
• “[I]n order for life to have the final word, we express our total support for the civil society movement that will continue to fight for a new Lebanon.” A letter from Arab artists and intellectuals, in support of an enlightened Lebanon · From Beirut, Farah Aridi writes about the rage that follows grief. | Lit Hub Politics
• Why do most movies suck? Ted Hope, film executive, contemplates mediocrity. | Lit Hub Film
• Ellyn Lem explores the shifting power dynamics in the literature of eldercare, from King Lear to Days of Awe. | Lit Hub
• “I live in low-income housing. My PhD diploma hangs from the walls of my low-income house. I write novels in that house.” Gabino Iglesias on being a low-income writer. | Storgy
• Samantha Irby on a little-discussed peril of modern marriage: mismatched philosophies on condiment storage. | Food and Wine
• “We’ve already survived an apocalypse.” How Indigenous writers are changing sci-fi. | New York Times
• One of the world’s oldest Buddhist manuscripts—the Gandhara Scroll—is now available online. | Open Culture
• Maya Angelou, Julia Alvarez, Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and other writers make USA Today’s list of the most influential women of the century. | USA Today
• “Brecht excelled at giving expression to the cunning and human skill of the impoverished and exiled, to those who are often forced to observe events as they roll over them.” On Bertolt Brecht’s Refugee Conversations, a book for our times. | Jacobin
• A new, extensive database has brought more than 1,000 years of cookbooks online, and anyone can contribute to it. | Atlas Obscura

Also on Lit Hub: The flourishing of Black literary arts, old and new • Catherine Cho on reconstructing the self through memoir, after psychosis • Read an excerpt from Tomás González’s novel Difficult Light, trans. by Andrea Rosenberg.