Lit Hub Daily: August 24, 2022

• “Why take a cast of a dead person’s face when so many people cannot bear to look at the dead body at all?” Hayley Campbell considers the many lives of death masks throughout history. | Lit Hub History

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• Locked in the attic (again): Gwendolyn Kiste on the gothic horror of a post-Roe America. | Lit Hub Politics

• “Where power seeks to obstruct and exploit language, Robin D. G. Kelley creates room for the unlanguagable.” Aja Monet on Kelley and the ongoing struggle for Black liberation. | Lit Hub Politics

• From air quality sensors to facial recognition, John Lorinc looks at the benefits and pitfalls of “smart cities.” | Lit Hub Tech

• Jeff Abbott on resurrecting a beloved character. | CrimeReads

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• Somali poet Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame—better known as Hadraawi—has died at 79. | The Guardian

• Lincoln Michel examines the claim that “scandalous” books of years past would never be published today. | Counter Craft

• “I read the book as a critique of machismo. Machismo is self-romanticizing, after all, whereas everything about Tripticks reads like a subversion or parody of self-romance.” Danielle Dutton on Ann Quin’s Tripticks. | The New Yorker

• A group in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, is trying to pre-emptively ban hundreds of books from its library. | NBC News

• Naseem Jamnia lists five science fiction and fantasy books that take place in queernormative worlds. | Tor.com

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• A Texas school district may require parental permission to check out library books. | Houston Chronicle

Also on Lit Hub: Where are all the black boxers in fiction? • Why writers should work in used bookstores • Read from Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel, Babysitter