Lit Hub Daily: August 9, 2021

• “He remembers what his father told him: Make sure no one follows you.” Retracing the day in a life of an 11-year-old spy in 1939 Berlin. | Lit Hub History

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• To piece together her family’s past, LaTanya McQueen visits southern plantations, those “tourist attractions meant for the white gaze” that fail to acknowledge the Black people who built them. | Lit Hub History

• In the wake of the assassination of the Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, Jean D’Amérique addresses the current state of affairs in his country. | Lit Hub 

• “Praying itself is an act of faith. So, too, is the act of writing, and falling asleep in the same bed with someone who doesn’t seem to like you anymore.” James Tate Hill on the painful balancing act between the personal and creative. | Lit Hub

• How NBA star LeBron James become a leading advocate for educational reform (and what we can learn from his example). | Lit Hub Politics

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• Robert Meyer and Dan Koeppel recommend medical memoirs, which are really about “the best parts of humanity.” | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• 11 translated books by Asian women writers to read this #WITMonth. | Words Without Borders

• “A big part of this book was exploring the ancestral grief that’s continued over 200 years.” Brandon Hobson on his new book, loss, and Indigenous identity. | New Mexico Magazine

• Matthew Specktor talks about NYC vs. LA, childhood memories, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. | Inside Hook

• “What is essential, not just to writing but to being truly alive, is leisure time.” The late Mario Levrero, in conversation with himself. | The Believer

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• Poets Christine Shan Shan Hou and Elaine Kahn discuss confession, transgression, and being seen. | Harper’s Bazaar

• These new YA books put female athletes front and center. | Book Riot

• Rebecca Handler and Vendela Vida connect on writing about San Francisco, approaching a book’s ending, and their creative processes. | LARB

Also on Lit Hub: Arthur Herman gets at the heart of the Icelandic sagas’ perennial appeal • Fred D’Aguiar considers the meaning of liberation in the face of life-threatening disease • Read from Pedro Mairal’s newly translated novel, The Woman from Uruguay (tr. Jennifer Croft)