Lit Hub Daily: November 16, 2018

• “My parents built a tower of words, I don’t know you anymore and evil and sin and unnatural. But I wasn’t listening.” Jessica Wilbanks on being rejected by her religious family. | Lit Hub
• Who’s afraid of communist writers? On the CIA-Soviet culture wars that shaped American art. | Lit Hub
• “The bear rolls on his back under the freakish white rainbow, kicking his feet like one other creature I knew.” When Amy Hempel’s dog was briefly reincarnated. | Lit Hub
• “The female fighter is this, and that. She is the syndrome; the syndrome is her.” Nimmi Gowrinathan on Stockholm Syndrome, dependence, and captivity. | Lit Hub
• “Our program is about connecting fun books to a male-centered space, and involving black men in boys’ early reading experiences.” The story of Alvin Irby and Barbershop Books. | Lit Hub
• Raleigh’s So & So Books recommends 10 great small-press new releases. | Lit Hub
• On Fiction/Non/Fiction, Edmund White and Lit Hub’s own Emily Temple discuss literary feuds, social media-as-equalizer, and our appetite for drama; with Whitney Terrell And V.V. Ganeshananthan. | Lit Hub
• “Life is always a bit of mystery, and that is especially true when you are walking across Antarctica.” David Grann talks crime, exploration, and the human condition. | CrimeReads
• Michelle Obama’s memoir, Jonathan Franzen’s essays, dispatches from the opioid crisis, and more all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• “Nothing ends anymore, and it’s driving me insane.” Amanda Hess on the current age of reboots, corporatized fanfiction, and infinite scrolls. | The New York Times
• Down with the “reality-show novel”: A group of French authors has written a manifesto against voyeuristic autofiction and bad historical novels. | World Crunch
• Pankaj Mishra on the connection between modern imperialism and liberalism. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year is “toxic.” Probably because “garbage fire hellscape” is three words. | NPR
• Which book best represents America? Kiese Laymon, Tayari Jones, Lydia Kiesling and others weigh in. | NYLON
• Considering what goes on in the Literary Hub office all day every day, we feel obligated to point you towards this defense of puns. Turns out wit and wisdom are the same thing! | The Paris Review
• If you think you should probably be reading more philosophy, here are some ideas about where to start. | IAI News

Also on Lit Hub: What the Stoic philosophers knew about freedom • Lit Hub recommends • Read Giusi Marchetti’s short story “Arturo”