Lit Hub Daily: January 4, 2023

• “History lays the road of a diasporic person wide and far. My lane winds across oceans.” V.V. Ganeshananthan considers authenticity, research, and writing about Sri Lanka. | Lit Hub

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• Aanchal Malhotra reflects on writing a historical novel as a historian. | Lit Hub

• On Samuel Beckett’s search for home: “The finely appointed but oppressively miserable home of his origins followed him like a spectre.” | Lit Hub

• Bill McKibben in praise of writing (sprawling, comic) serialized novels. | Lit Hub

• “First introduced to the world as an insert in New York Magazine, Ms. demonstrated the potential for journalism that centered news and analysis around women.” On its 50th anniversary, a history of Ms. Magazine. | The Cut

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• Eight self-help books that might actually… help. | The Atlantic

• “Whiteness was framed as freedom.” Matthew K. Ritchie considers American racial satire. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Faced with Ron DeSantis’ restrictions on teaching CRT in higher education, Florida professors are canceling classes that focus on race. | ProPublica

• “Tonks renounced literature as others do intoxicants, a clean break with an evangelical bent.” Audrey Wollen on Rosemary Tonks. | The New Yorker

• Kevin Koczwara explores the prescience of Don Delillo’s “perfect satire” White Noise. | Esquire

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• A growing number of librarians are turning to TikTok to connect with younger readers. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: Why I had to get older to write about youth • On translation and inherited trauma (or, what it means to truly inhabit an author’s work) • Read from Tom Crewe’s debut novel, The New Life