Lit Hub Daily: February 25, 2021

• “The protagonist could be our lost brother or uncle. Disaster is familiar, even eloquent.” Joy Harjo on the extraordinary storytelling of James Welch’s Winter in the Blood. | Lit Hub
• Introducing The Longest Year: 2020+, photo essays from the year that won’t end: up first, Elissa Schappell reflects on Rachel Cobb’s NYC dreamscape of protests and PPE. | Lit Hub
• William J. Bernstein offers a brief history of Rapture novels, and how they fit in to decades of moral panic and fearmongering. | Lit Hub Religion
• “YA seems determined to represent HIV/AIDS as a historical issue that is largely detached from young people themselves.” Derritt Mason on the underrepresentation of HIV+ characters. | Lit Hub
• James Canton communes with an 800-year-old oak tree, and thinks of the “ghost worlds” left behind each time an ancient tree is felled. | Lit Hub Nature
• “To exterminate human beings with chemicals, as though they were fleas or cockroaches—this, to the young doctor, was a different order of savagery.” Joby Warrick on the search for answers after a poison-gas attack in Saraqeb. | Lit Hub
• The verdict on Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Sympathizer sequel, a biography of Tom Stoppard, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Jeff VanderMeer talks noir, suspense, and his new eco-thriller with Meg Gardiner. | CrimeReads
• Paul McCartney’s two-volume, 900-plus page “self-portrait in 154 songs” will be released in November. | The Guardian
• A new internet archive of free digital books on the culinary history of West Africa. | Atlas Obscura
• “The system is untenable, and mothers cannot continue to live this way.” On the rise of the (literal) monster mom in fiction. | Electric Literature
• How Thinking, Fast and Slow became the go-to book for MLB teams. | New York Times
• Reading this year’s NBCC Award finalists: Stephanie Burt on Amaud Jamaul Johnson’s Imperial Liquor. | Lit Hub
• “How limitless our love for one another can be with our guards down.” Hanif Abdurraqib on friendship, community, and the cultural significance of spades. | New York Times Magazine
• “I think male con artists, at least for most of history, have been put on a higher pedestal.” Tori Telfer on female con artists and the research process behind her new book. | Shondaland
• Christopher Schaberg’s argument for slowing down and reading one book with students per semester. | Inside Higher Ed
• “For a person at the center of things, he was always a little off to the side, eschewing the light—he preferred instead to reflect it.” John Freeman bids farewell to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. | The Paris Review

Also on Lit Hub: Elizabeth Miki Brina on negotiating and embracing the differences between Japanese and American culture • Read Sy Hoahwah’s poem, “Black Haw” • Read from Gyorgy Dragoman’s newly translated novel, The Bone Fire (trans. Ottilie Mulzet)