Lit Hub Daily: August 26, 2021

TODAY: In 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson meets Thomas Carlyle, beginning 38 years of (bromantic) correspondence.  

• “If real estate is a self-portrait and a class portrait, it is also a body arranging its limbs to seduce.” Deborah Levy on finding a house of one’s own. | Lit Hub

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• Possibility made real: Tina M. Campt takes a close look at the historic all-Black towns of Oklahoma. | Lit Hub Photography

• “I believe in acting shamelessly but I also believe in apologizing afterward.” Wayne Koestenbaum’s advice for the graduating class of Bennington College (and the rest of us). | Lit Hub

• Jaye Viner recommends books about women leaving the confines of strict religious communities. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “‘Write when the baby writes,’ I mutter to myself every day, a play on the worst advice ever.” Ellen O’Connell on reading Doireann Ní Ghríofa and finding literary spaces as a new mother. | Lit Hub Parenting

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• Geo Maher considers what abolition truly looks like: not just a dismantling but also a radical reconstruction. | Lit Hub Politics

• Ron Charles on The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois, Ryu Spaeth on W. G. Sebald, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• Caroline Blackwood was much more than a muse, writes Virginia Feito: she was one of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived. | CrimeReads

• WATCH: Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett in conversation with Joshua Henkin. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

• “Why do such singular stories of abuse capture the American imagination of Islam at large?” Audrey Clare Farley considers the impact of Western bestsellers about the suffering of Muslim women. | The New Republic

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• Emily Gould considers how things have changed since Jonathan Lethem, Franzen, and Safran Foer first appeared on the literary scene. | Vanity Fair

• Mychal Denzel Smith on the everlasting impact of Aaliyah. | Harper’s Bazaar

• A look at the “growing national movement of abolitionist library workers who want law enforcement out of libraries.” | In These Times

• Cheryl Strayed and Alison Bechdel discuss quests both physical and spiritual, literary transcendentalists, and the gendered history of exercise. | The Believer

• Patricia Thang digs into the narrative structure of kishōtenketsu along with contemporary authors that have followed it. | Book Riot

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• “For me, something exists more once I write it down.” Alexandra Kleeman talks about the relationship between writing practice and reflection. | The Creative Independent

Also on Lit Hub: An excerpt from Fridi Nesti’s adaption of George Orwell’s 1984 • Jan Grue navigates the social politics of visibility • Read a story from Jo Lloyd’s debut collection, Something Wonderful 

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