Lit Hub Weekly: March 25 - March 29, 2024

• “We await our moment, in pursuit of the picture that Corky envisaged, a portrait of a community that is too large and too brilliant.” Hua Hsu examines the visionary work of photographer and activist Corky Lee. | Lit Hub Photography
• “There has been one single experience that taught me more about storytelling than anything else in my life: telling bedtime stories to my children.” Mark Cecil on what he’s learned from the toughest audience there is. | Lit Hub Craft
• Shilpi Somaya Gowda recommends novels with rotating perspectives by Barbara Kingsolver, Celeste Ng, Taylor Jenkins Reid, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• “Top o’ the morning’ to ye, Zeus.” Ferdia Lennon on the role of idiom and dialect in bringing the distant past to life. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “History cannot contain our story. It never could.” Jason Allen-Paisant on translating Aimé Césaire and how poetry reaches beyond history. | Words Without Borders
• “I followed Lorca’s contrails south and found that his New York had been demolished and substituted.” On searching for Federico García Lorca in contemporary New York. | The Paris Review 
• On unions, solidarity, and the work of Herb Mills: “In 1984, his local boycotted a ship bound for apartheid South Africa for ten days.” | Jacobin
• On Hmong American poetry: “The loss felt by Hmong Americans who became refugees at a young age and who continue to relive the experience through their parents’ memories echoes through the lines.” | JSTOR Daily
• “‘Human beings are inherently corrupt,’ Nguyen says. But he also believes that we are equally capable of redemption.” Mari Uyehara profiles Viet Thanh Nguyen. | The Nation
• Sarah Weinman reflects on Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis, and the understandable desire to protect your own narrative in the face of illness. | The Cut
• What Toni Morrison’s rejection letters from her time as an editor at Random House reveal about an era of dramatic change in publishing. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “No matter how many books, articles, Tweets, and TikToks I’d gobbled up, it had apparently eluded me that no one was ever going to say I’d produced enough.” Kelly Stout chronicles her quest for optimal productivity. | Esquire
• Margaret Atwood reflects on the enduring appeal of Carrie, fifty years on. | The New York Times
• “The Paper Menagerie,” universities in crisis, and arguing in defense of imagination. | Public Books
• “One set of universities serves a colonized, brutalized people, and the other, the colonizer.” Esmat Elhalaby explores the intellectual history of genocide in Gaza. | The Baffler
• In this close read, Brandon Taylor makes a case for Zola’s “moral arguments against war, convention, the petty gods of the bourgeoisie” | London Review of Books 
• Anna Kornbluh talks to Jacobin about the literary and economic ramifications of our obsession with the individual experience. | Jacobin
• Tobias Carroll recommends six new books in translation, from Bengali sci-fi to Polish Gothic. | Words Without Borders
• Will Glovinsky asks, “Is our relation to the earth mainly a story of scarcity, of insatiable wants curbed by a finite planet? Or is it about humanity’s marvelous aptitude for discovering new ways to extract fresh abundance from finite resources?” | Public Books

Also on Lit Hub:

On what train travel and reading fiction have in common • The social media project humanizing Palestinians killed by Israel • Alex Trimble Young remembers the late Stanley Crawford • Alvina Chamberland on why she chose to be the cover model for her own novel •  Joyelle McSweeney explores the creative process that grief provokes •  Intan Paramaditha on rethinking literary influences • The liminality of the fictional store • Ben Ware on the problems with anti-natalism • 23 new books • Harry Cliff on the slippery nature of probability • How Candida Royalle became adult entertainment’s leading feminist performer • Alexandra Tanner and Sasha Fletcher talk about process • Kristine S. Ervin considers memoir and grief •  what Hanif Abdurraqib is reading now and next • Greg Wrenn recommends deeply researched eco-memoirs • Jade Song on what swimming has taught her about craft • People will always be better at recommending books than any algorithm • The Great Bambino wasn’t the only slugger with an unforgettable nickname • Keith O’Brien recommends literary baseball dramas • 5 reviews you need to read this week • Carys Davies considers the dynamic of older couples in literature • The best book covers of March • Glenn R. Miller recommends books about generational wealth and inheritance • Ed Simon discusses The Last Temptation of Christ • Rita Bullwinkel on writing sports narratives • The best audiobooks of March • Literary film and TV you need to stream in April • March’s best reviewed books • Kristen McGuiness considers the essential role independent publishing houses play