Lit Hub Daily: May 11, 2021

• How did a phrase that started as legal jargon became a cudgel against equality? Nesrine Malik investigates the roots of “political correctness.” | Lit Hub

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• Happy birthday to these new books (and happy Tuesday to us). | The Hub

• How an obsessive scholar saved Iceland’s literary legacy, while a three-day fire burned down Copenhagen—and virtually every book in it. | Lit Hub History

• “I didn’t know there was a way to talk about feminism and pornography and body parts and sex and vaginal deodorant in a way that felt both extremely personal and completely universal.” Jennifer Weiner takes the Lit Hub Questionnaire (and praises Nora Ephron). | Lit Hub

• Notes from an unlikely teen heartthrob: Andrew McCarthy on landing his career-changing role in Pretty in Pink. | Lit Hub Film

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• “On this day, I was to play the role of executioner.” Suzanne Simard on the moral reckoning of clear-cutting a forest. | Lit Hub Nature

• This month’s 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers features Brian Broome, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Linda Rui Feng, Julian Sancton, and Monica West. | Lit Hub

• Joan Silber talks to Jane Ciabattari about false starts and polyphonic narratives in her new book, Secrets of Happiness. | Lit Hub

• The authority of suicide in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. | Book Marks

• “These concerns are the stuff of life: What are other people for? What do we want from them?” On reading Jon Klassen’s new children’s book on the eve of the After. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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• Jessi Jezewska Stevens considers Georgia O’Keeffe, Toni Morrison, and the “endlessly accommodating of projections” of flowers. | The New Yorker

• “She’s an albacore around my neck.” A masterclass in malapropisms from The Sopranos. | Counter Craft

• Curtis Sittenfeld talks about why she wrote Rodham and what it’s like living in her hometown of Minneapolis since the murder of George Floyd. | The Guardian

• When it comes to learning, do digital or printed texts work best for students? | Los Angeles Times

• Elizabeth Miki Brina recounts excavating the history of Okinawa—and her family’s history in the process—for her memoir. | Guernica

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Also on Lit Hub: Here are the most discussed books on the internet, according to robots • Read a poem by Geoffrey Nutter • Read a story from Brenda Peynado’s new collection, The Rock Eaters