Lit Hub Daily: July 3, 2019

• “I know our past, and I know our pain.” Maurice Carlos Ruffin on being a patriotic Black southerner. | Lit Hub
• For PEN America, Jhumpa Lahiri, Hari Kunzru, and more reflect on what it means to celebrate the 4th of July in the middle of a migrant crisis. | Lit Hub, PEN America
• “To Mary Frances, food was a metaphor for living.” Ruth Reichl on M.F.K. Fisher’s lifetime of joyous eating. | Lit Hub
• Odessa in (romantic, tragic) decay: Caroline Eden on the city’s rich geopolitical history. | Lit Hub
• Rachel Cusk on Yiyun Li, Deborah Eisenberg on Natalia Ginzburg, a graphic novel 20 years in the making, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Allen Adams on omnivorous reading, reimagined Shakespeare, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. | Book Marks
• Emily Liebert rounds up 7 thrillers that explore imperfect, conflicted, and sometimes sinister female relationships. | CrimeReads
• “I do not know how to write a book.” Chuck Wendig on this and other lessons learned while writing his latest novel, Wanderers. | Terribleminds
• On the history and legacy of Natalia Ginzburg, “leading voice of the antifascist generation.” | Jacobin
• “Krantz’s books are often dismissed as trash, but as any archeologist will tell you, there are few resources so valuable for reconstructing a historical era as a nicely overflowing dump.” Why Judith Krantz was the most important writer of the 20th century. | Jezebel
• U.S. officials gave a collection of Liberian literary and historical documents to the Liberia National Museum late last week, which comes as welcome news as the institution recovers from the aftermath of a 14-year civil war. | All Africa
• From Beloved to As I Lay Dying, the peculiar literary history of bedridden women. | AL.com
• “How is it possible that the United States has fallen so far from its moral standing to treat children and babies with such violence?” Washington’s poet laureate on the trauma of immigrant children. | The Seattle Times
• “Marlena stared at the faces of the small white men, made of metal and coated with cracked red paint.” Read a new story by Kristen Arnett. | Gay Magazine

Also on Lit Hub: On Otherppl, Bret Easton Ellis on (not) courting controversy • Reading Women‘s most anticipated books for the second half of 2019 • A poem by Mark Yakich from his collection Spiritual Exercises • On the Togolese “fixer” who helps immigrants play the U.S. visa lottery • Read from a new story by Mona Simpson.