Lit Hub Daily: January 8, 2021

• “This is racism as a triumph over history, the history of what you just did or didn’t do today.” Rebecca Solnit on the natural culmination of white supremacist identity politics. | Lit Hub
• “I was opening myself in strange ways at the very same moment I was displaying my incompetence.” Tom Vanderbilt embraces vulnerability and learns to sing in his fifties. | Lit Hub
• Nick Ripatrazone talks to English teacher Heather Clark about creating spaces for creativity, even amid a pandemic. | Lit Hub
• “The speech soared not when Jackson spoke in the prose of politics, but when he offered the poetry of testimony.” David Masciotra on Jesse Jackson’s most powerful speech. | Lit Hub
• In this month’s edition of the Astrology Book Club, everything is in retrograde except books. | Lit Hub
• Craig Pittman on Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, the woman who brought the Cuban-American experience to Miami noir. | CrimeReads
• New titles from Robert Jones Jr., Eley Williams, Peter Ho Davies, and Gretel Ehrlich all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, giant of Urdu literature, has died from Covid-19. | The New York Times
• “You have to let the ugly days stand.” Traci Brimhall on the urge to create art after grief. | Guernica
• “There are types of emotional truths that can be accessed through poetry that could never be accessed through any other medium.” An interview with the creator of Dickinson. | A.V. Club
• Revisiting the twists, turns, and quirks of the life of O. Henry. | Book Riot
• “I don’t think I’ve ever personally known a man or woman who was so loved by so many.” Bob Shacochis remembers his friend, Barry Lopez. | Outside
• When choosing books that feature people of color, here are five important questions to consider. | The Greeneville Sun
• As of this month, Kwame Dawes is taking over the “American Life in Poetry” newspaper column from Ted Kooser, who started it in 2005. | Brittle Paper

Also on Lit Hub: Neema Avashia on the deep connection of West Virginia’s Indian community • The quotidien uses of the fourth dimension, revealed! • Read from Una Mannion’s debut novel A Crooked Tree.