Lit Hub Daily: March 9, 2022

• Sofi Oksanen recommends reading about the Soviet past to understand Ukraine’s present. | Lit Hub Ukraine

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• What makes a great opening line? Allegra Hyde looks to Toni Morrison, Nell Zink, Jenny Zhang, and others for answers. | Lit Hub Craft

• Mona Chollet considers the self-fulfilling prophecy of sexism. | Lit Hub

• Azar Nafisi wants us to read more dangerously. | Lit Hub

• “What does it look like, these novels ask, to take anything too seriously?” Tara Isabella Burton on the power of campus novels. | Lit Hub

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• On Darryl Hunt’s boyhood in segregated Winston-Salem, long before his wrongful conviction and imprisonment. | Lit Hub

• Why Ben Okri wrote a book for children (and how trees helped him). | Lit Hub

• Flowers in the Attic, 2666, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and more rapid-fire book recs from Kevin Barry. | Book Marks

• Darryl Pinckney considers Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro” and the roots of white America’s infatuation with Black. | The Nation

• “It seems more and more that, with each book, I feel less bound to rely solely on my own brain.” Sheila Heti on loss, writing, and ejaculate. | Interview

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• “Writing and reading are my only weapons.” Azar Nafisi on the role of books in troubled times. | Los Angeles Times

• The Texas Library Association has formed a coalition against banning books. | KXAN

• Mary Frances Knapp details some of the best self-help books out there. | VICE

• “Like a cracked door the cold seeps through, so did the truth begin to seep into me.” Melissa Febos on the creative and spiritual experience of writing her own story. | Bookforum

• Chris Feliciano Arnold explores the Sesame Street songbook, and parenting through despair. | The Believer

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Also on Lit Hub: How Rumi became a poet • Ariel Delgado Dixon on what it means to find a true best friend • Read from Andrey Kurkov’s newly translated novel, Grey Bees (tr. Boris Dralyuk)