Lit Hub Daily: October 4, 2021

• “I decided that, in the end, I had to make up my own mind about art and belonging.” Colleen van Niekerk on the complex freedom of creating art as a Black Woman in post-apartheid South Africa. | Lit Hub

  Article continues after advertisement

• Parenthood in the end times: Emma Szewczak considers questions of procreation and responsibility in post-apocalypse narratives. | Lit Hub Climate Change

• Antonio Michael Downing recommends books about migration and Caribbean identity in America. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• An oasis in Cairo: Nadia Wassef reflects on owning Diwan, the first modern Egyptian bookstore of its kind. | Lit Hub Bookstores

• Faiza Guene considers how Babar, “an elephant on two legs, who lives the life of a grand bourgeois,” represents the troubling history of assimilation and colonialism in France. | Lit Hub  

  Article continues after advertisement

• “My heart still jumps when I see an older man in a billowing pinstripe suit, battling the wind, a thick wooden cane in his hand, walking in the particular straight-legged fashion of a certain Somali gentleman.” Nadifa Mohamed on the long, strange journey of her uncle Kettle. | Lit Hub Freeman’s 

• “Obscurity has a knack for self-perpetuation.” Soledad Fox Maura on Constancia de la Mora and the plight of writers in exile. | Lit Hub 

• Stephen Fry reflects on the enduring appeal of Georgette Heyer. | The Guardian

• “Sebald’s books suggest that we are powerless to remember adequately and powerless to forget.” Ben Lerner considers a new biography of W.G. Sebald. | NYRB

• Hilton Als discusses the role that art can play in rebuilding our fractured culture. | Interview

  Article continues after advertisement

• Phoebe Robinson talks about her new imprint, Tiny Reparations, and shaking up the publishing industry. | BookPage

• Why has it taken so long for foreign-language characters and words to appear in English cookbooks? | The Counter

• “I often find myself sitting down to write and then my ghosts arrive.” Ada Limón discusses writing through grief. | NER

• Read a roundtable of authors with roots in Latin America on identity, the publishing world, and their new work. | Teen Vogue

Also on Lit Hub: What to read this month, based on your zodiac sign • Read from Elaine Feeny’s debut novel, As You Were