Lit Hub Weekly: April 30 - May 4, 2018

• “The idea is that seeing America through the lens of the slave trade—despite its broad stain on the country’s history—is best done from the point of view of a single person who had their life forever altered by it.” Hanif Abdurraqib on Zora Neale Hurston’s previously unpublished book Barracoon. | 4Columns
• From French astronomer Camille Flammarion to will.i.am, a brief literary history of Mars. | The Millions
• “There are Austen action figures and bumper stickers, fatuous feuds with the Brontë camp, and outraged ladies compelled to defend Austen’s honor. . .” On the enduring appeal of Jane Austen. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “Joyce, Dos Passos, and Döblin fashioned not novels but eternal text-cities in which the reader may witness, wander, get lost.” Tyler Malone on the modernist city-novel. | Lapham’s Quarterly
• “How do I combine this writing and this art to say as much as I can with as few words as I can: I knew I wanted to do that.” Rumaan Alam profiles writer and illustrator Maira Kalman. | The Cut
• “I have to forget the text I’m translating exists.” 10 literary translators on what makes a work of translation great. | Scroll.in
• “With diasporic intertexts in sound and footwork, hair movement—hairography—deserves due appreciation.” Close reading Beyoncé’s hair. | The Paris Review
• “Part of coming to terms with my longing is embracing new forms of home.” Chinelo Okparanta on craving sanctuary—and Trebor peppermints. | Tin House
• Lauren Groff, Amber Sparks, and 12 other writers share their favorite short stories. | American Short Fiction
• “Improvisation is how we make no way out of a way. Improvisation is how we make nothing out of something.” On Fred Moten and his “radical critique of the present.” | The New Yorker
• A profile of Pulitzer Prize finalist Hernán Diaz, whose debut novel In the Distance is “an uncanny achievement: an original Western.” | The New York Times
• “She is like nothing so much as that high little YouTube child fresh from the dentist, strapped into a car going he knows not where, further and further from his own will. Where is real life to be found? Is this it?” Patricia Lockwood on Rachel Cusk. | LRB
• “How could a person be too smart, too knowledgeable, too curious? And why won’t you just let them get on with it?” Lauren Oyler on Helen DeWitt. | The Baffler
• “Literature, like the economy, withers when it closes itself off from the world.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on how inclusivity will improve (not diminish) the established literary canon. | The Washington Post
• “We have your dog. We want $5,000 to give it back.” Sarah Weinman on stolen champ Kid Boots Ace and the history of dognapping. | Topic

Also on Lit Hub:

Joshua Wheeler on the first ever full-length film streamed on the internet (it’s even weirder than you’d imagine) • From the literary erudition of John Keene to the origin story of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the Lit Hub staff’s favorite stories of April • Our imaginations need to dwell where the wild things are: how children’s literature leads us to the uncanny • From John Shade to Carrie Bradshaw, 50 fictional writers, ranked • Lucas Mann wonders: if reality TV is superficial, why does it make me feel so much? • Min Jin Lee, Jamie Quatro, Rachel Lyons and more on envy, desire, and not asking for permission • 14 books you should read this May • Kristen Arnett wonders if “the customer is always right” might be wrong for libraries • Jennifer Schaffer grapples with questions of motherhood and desire through recent books by Sheila Heti and Meghan O’Connell • The little bear that revolutionized children’s books: see the earliest sketches of Winnie-the-Pooh • If it works for chickens… How a Coney Island sideshow kept thousands of premature babies alive • A rare conversation with the cult Chinese writer Xi Xi • “Yeah, she only wrote the one good book.” And other ways we suppress women’s writing… • John Berger on smoking: “We smoked between games of tennis” • Fri

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