Etaf Rum on the Role of Palestinian Artists in Resistance

Posted on by Jo Lou

Etaf Rum’s Evil Eye is a captivating, heart wrenching novel about navigating intergenerational trauma, and finding your identity in a culture where women are not perceived beyond the roles they perform in service of others.

Yara, a Palestinian American young woman, spends her days stretching herself thin as she takes care of her two daughters, fulfills her responsibilities as a graphic designer and art instructor at the local college, and cooks elaborate dinners for her workaholic husband. It doesn’t help when traumatic childhood memories creep up on her unexpectedly during the day, making her relive her tumultuous relationship with her mother, the abuse her father inflicted on her mother, her grandmother’s painful stories of living through the Nakba—the start of the decades-long, ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine. Yara knows she’s had it much better than her mother, her grandmother and yet, she’s unhappy. She can’t help but think that her mother was right: she’s cursed. Yara’s feelings are reinforced when a spat with a racist coworker gets her fired, though not before she befriends Silas, the culinary teacher at the college. Time off from work to paint, to journal, becomes an unexpected opportunity for healing and her growing friendship with Silas too offers support, ultimately leading Yara to arrive at a crossroads: how can she fight for the life she wants as she partakes in a community where women are not allowed to have a voice?

Etaf Rum is the New York Times best-selling author of A Woman Is No Man. Born and raised in Brooklyn by Palestinian immigrants, Etaf tells me that she creates and shares her work to bring hope to people’s lives, to connect with others through language. It’s no surprise that her latest novel is a love letter to the Palestinian community who have been fighting for their rights for over seven decades. Etaf and I spoke over Zoom about the Palestinian artists’ role in resistance and challenging the erasure of Palestinians, how we can hold space for our ancestors’ trauma while breaking the cycle, the flaws within Western empowerment ideals for women, and much more.

Bareerah Ghani: A poignant through line of the novel is how women are often defined by the roles they perform. We see Yara feeling burnt out, trying to “make something of herself” while her husband and in-laws tell her that she should feel fulfilled by being a wife and a mother. How do you contend with this idea, often prevalent in Eastern cultures where women aren’t seen as individuals with personal aspirations, an identity of their own outside of the family unit?

Etaf Rum: Challenging the prevalent notion in Eastern cultures, where women are often perceived primarily as family-oriented individuals, involves fostering a shift in societal perspectives. Both of my novels are rooted in this transformation, emphasizing the celebration of women’s autonomy, particularly within the Palestinian American context. I wanted to explore the ways in which women yearn to be seen and validated beyond their roles within the family unit, and how it’s considerably more challenging for those grappling with intergenerational trauma to navigate how to speak up and articulate their desires.

We see this internal struggle with Yara, with her family’s refugee status in the occupied West Bank and the enduring trauma resulting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948, intensifying the challenges she faces. In Yara’s perspective, her desires seem almost self indulgent, especially when considering that, compared to her mother and grandmother, who grew up in poverty and under occupation, she already enjoys a relatively fulfilled and liberated life. My intention was to spotlight women like Yara, who grapple not only with the overarching constraints of patriarchy but also contend with the unique lens of trauma and occupation, which amplifies their oppression. This intricate interplay further complicates their quest for validation, both within American society and their own cultural context.

BG: When Yara realizes she’s been pursuing a job only because she thinks she should want a career, it got me thinking about Western society, where women are seen as individuals but there’s this idea that a precursor to being somebody, having an identity is for women to have a career. I would love for you to share your thoughts on the seemingly empowering Western ideals for women, perhaps in connection with your experience with motherhood in the U.S. and its intersection with identity?

ER: Absolutely. In Western societies, women are indeed seen as individuals, but there’s a pervasive notion that a perquisite for a woman to establish herself and claim her identity is by having a career and being independent. It’s a paradigm that can inadvertently deprive women of their roles as mothers and caretakers. In essence, it introduces a different form of patriarchal thinking, where a woman’s self-worth becomes intrinsically tied to her financial contributions or her accomplishments. For Yara, the conflicts are so varied—initially, she’s conditioned to believe that her mother’s choice to stay at home was a form of oppression, and to succeed in America, she should pursue empowerment, education, and a career. But as the narrative unfolds, Yara begins to realize that even in the Western world, she’s subjected to another form of oppression. The Western perspective often perceives Eastern mentalities, which encourage women to embrace their femininity and motherhood, as more oppressive. But in reality, these high standards imposed on women in Western societies often lead to their physical and psychological oppression, making them believe that they must leave their homes to find fulfillment, which may not be truly fulfilling.

For me, this theme resonates on a personal level as a Palestinian American woman navigating my identity in the United States while also honoring my ancestral heritage. I’m deeply interested in addressing what I see as a stark reality—Western ideals are, in many ways, just as toxic, if not more so, then those in Eastern cultures. The difference lies in the illusion that we are empowered because we are independent, when in reality our agency over our lives can be limited, and we often find ourselves conforming to a system that may not truly serve our best interests.

BG: Absolutely. In the West, motherhood is not really an achievement by itself. One other thing that struck me about what you just said is how you’re trying to find your identity while also honoring the legacy of your ancestors. At many points we see Yara berate herself for wanting more from her life when she has it so much better than her mother did, than her grandparents who were driven out of their homes because of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. How do you think we can hold space for our ancestors’ suffering, honor their sacrifices, especially of the women who came before us, without diminishing our hardships?

ER: In minority and marginalized communities, especially among immigrants, the first step involves recognizing that our ancestors endured their own traumas. It’s crucial to validate these experiences without passing the burden of recycling that trauma onto the next generation. Understanding the reasons behind our parents’ desires and worldview, shaped by their own experiences and the limitations of their past, helps empower us to make informed decisions about our future. We’re preparing our children for an uncertain world, and acknowledging the boundaries imposed by our own trauma and upbringing can help us honor the past while embracing change with openness, truth, and awareness.

BG: I love that, but you know, so much of awareness and so much of self healing and taking responsibility for that kind of healing, cannot be done in isolation. We see Yara really does break the cycle of intergenerational trauma through art and writing, and it’s beautiful. But there’s also Silas offering incredible support, and that really shows us that having a community matters. How do you think the conversation on healing, mental health and seeking professional help can be introduced and sustained in cultures resistant to such ideas?

Encouraging women to break free from their traditional roles also necessitates a corresponding call for men to do the same.

ER: I think art serves as an initial gateway to discussing healing, mental health, and seeking professional help, especially in cultures resistant to these delicate conversations. It’s often more approachable to initiate these discussions indirectly, through literature or television, mediums which provide a much more effective bridge for dialogue, especially for communities who are traditionally closed off to these topics. Breaking the cycle often involves individuals finding their own voices and then extending those conversations and fostering awareness in alternate, more receptive spaces.

BG: I find that the novel offers a powerful critique of domestic dynamics within Arab culture. A lot of those resonated with me because I come from a similar culture where women like Yara bend over backwards to please their mother in-law, only to be made to feel like you’re not doing anything monumental, you’re doing what’s expected of you. How do you think such cultural notion of relegating women in their own homes can be navigated, challenged and to what extent, changed?

ER: I think the key is to view both women and men as individuals not confined to predefined roles. Conventional norms often prescribe men as providers and women as nurturers, imposing rigid expectations on both genders. Encouraging women to break free from their traditional roles also necessitates a corresponding call for men to do the same. Families and households need to collectively decide how to honor both their masculine and feminine aspects without being restricted by them. We are dynamic beings meant to lead meaningful lives that evolve with each life stage. As long as we’re adhering to our truths, aspiring to high ideals, and supporting one another, we can dismantle the confines of societal boxes. And I think we’re moving towards that. The challenge arises when patriarchal societal structures pressure women and men to show up in certain ways. Modern society tends to push women towards hyper independence, but these expectations don’t necessarily align with our innate, creative urges. Men, too, often find themselves living outside of their true potential. We’re all influenced by a system that exploits our efforts, a way of life that does not serve our genuine essence or benefit us.

BG: The novel offers a heartbreaking portrait of the erasure Palestinians have been facing since decades now. I was moved when Yara’s Teta says, “I want our identity…to live on. It’s already enough that we are homeless and nameless…As long as we continue to share our stories, our history will be remembered.” Given Israel’s war crimes in Gaza are only escalating by the day, and countries like the U.S. support the genocide, refusing to acknowledge the blatant disregard for Palestinian lives, how do you perceive the role of Palestinian activists, artists and writers like yourself in challenging this erasure, and colonization of your people and homeland?

It’s crucial for us to stand up and speak our truth, regardless of the fear of being silenced.

ER: It’s crucial for us to stand up and speak our truth, regardless of the fear of being silenced. Palestinian artists, in particular, carry the burden of addressing the traumatic history of Palestine and raising awareness while simultaneously dismantling Western stereotypes and misrepresentations. Especially because there is a profound lack of Palestinian representation in literature, media, politics, and education, limiting our voices. And so those of us doing this work have a duty to use our platforms, to speak up, to tell our stories, now more than ever. I feel like it’s my responsibility to use my work to spread awareness about the Palestinian occupation and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians for over seven decades—to use my voice to fight against the evident hypocrisy in the way media covers what’s happening in Palestine. While any loss of life is tragic, it’s important to acknowledge that the suffering of Palestinian children and civilians, who’ve been killed by Israel military over the past 75 years, often goes unreported. As Palestinian artists, our duty is to fearlessly shed light on these injustices.

Recently, I faced criticism for my stance on social media in solidarity with Palestine. Numerous people tagged Jenna Bush, suggesting that I should be canceled for “supporting terrorists.” One reader even made a video of herself throwing my novel, Evil Eye, in the trash.

These actions only reaffirmed a sentiment I have carried with me throughout my life as a Palestinian in this country: that Palestinian lives don’t matter, that we are not worthy of basic human rights, that we are not seen as human, as people. We Palestinians are already stripped of our identity and the right to assert our human rights, so I won’t be silenced or cowed by baseless intimidations or attempts erase us. I’m not afraid of being cancelled; as a Palestinian, I’ve been cancelled since the day I was born. What more can they do to demoralize me that hasn’t already been done? We live in a country that has labeled an entire group of people as “terrorists,” a country that allocates billions of tax dollars to fund the killing of innocent people for decades, and we must break free from the cycle of blind trust in the mainstream media and do our own research. That’s why reading is so fundamental. Our collective responsibility extends beyond national identity; it’s a human rights issue. Just as we support human rights’ movements such as Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights, we must also stand up for Palestine. So regardless of the challenges I may face, it’s my commitment to raise awareness about the prolonged suffering, oppression, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

BG: It’s heartbreaking, truly. Given how rampant this invalidation of the Palestinian struggle is, do you see any hope of Palestinian artists like yourself being heard? How do you really contend with the fact that so much of the world is not listening?

ER: It’s incredibly hard, demoralizing, and sad. But what keeps me going is hope, faith, and an unwavering belief in what’s right. When we defend our right to exist and our right to prevent the loss of innocent lives, we do so for the sake of the millions of powerless men, women, and children living in Palestine. We fight for their right to a life of dignity. There’s a part of us that hopes the world will awaken to this grave injustice, that one day their suffering will end. I have faith that the Palestinian people will achieve justice, even when it seems improbable. As Palestinian artists and advocates, we are compelled to resist, to raise our voices because we believe in the cause. It’s what’s driving us. Our determination reflects the undeniable truth of the Palestinian struggle, even when the odds of global change appear slim. Without this belief and without speaking out, our existence loses meaning.

If we lose faith in our mission to support freedom, to raise our voices against oppression, and we succumb to the fear of being silenced or canceled, then what’s the point of our existence on this earth? What purpose do we serve?

Maya Angelou says it best: “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”

Lindsay Hunter Never Intended to Write a True Crime Novel

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

True crime is hot right now. It’s a genre seen across every media you can think of, from podcasts to TV shows to movies and even books. The idea of crime and mystery, of violence against a neighbor or family member—these narratives captivate and fascinate us, for better or for worse. 

But after the Dateline credits roll and you turn off the TV, what’s left? What lifelong traumas and consequences linger in the lives of those touched by the crime? How is a family transformed? In Lindsay Hunter’s newest novel Hot Springs Drive, the answers are ever-expanding and far more sizzling than you might realize. 

The novel follows Jackie and her best friend and neighbor Theresa as they embark upon motherhood, suburban life, and a weight-loss program to reclaim their bodies. But once Jackie loses the weight, a new desire consumes her, and she finds herself on a dark and dangerous path of secrets and betrayal. Theresa’s murder comes halfway through the novel, with the murderer immediately identified, breaking the formula of the crime narrative. Instead, in the second half of the book we’re deftly shown an unfolding over the years of how brutal the consequences of small actions can be, and how much an entire ecosystem of lives can be undone. Hot Springs Drive is where literary fiction meets mystery, and the marriage of the two is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. 

I was delighted to speak with Hunter over Zoom about mother and son relationships, the way secrets can spiral into hefty consequences, and the identity of motherhood.

Sara Cutaia: Hot Springs Drive takes a somewhat new spin on “true crime” at least in my opinion. You know fairly early who killed Theresa. And the suspense isn’t necessarily focused on the murder itself. Can you talk about how the idea for this novel came to be?

Lindsay Hunter: This idea actually came from my own true crime obsession. It’s based on an episode of Dateline NBC that I listened to as a podcast. And the episode is called “Hot Springs Drive.” I was completely blown away. I never let myself listen to it again after I heard it. But what struck me wasn’t the crime itself. I mean, because like you’re saying, it’s true, crime is everywhere and adaptations of real crimes are everywhere. And they sort of follow a formula. And I wasn’t interested in seeing if I could write that kind of thing. But what I was really interested in was this relationship between a mother and her son. How on earth could a teenage boy take it upon himself to murder his mom’s best friend in such a violent way? There had to be something in that relationship. Was it codependence? Hatred, rage, a mistaken sense of chivalry? That’s where it started for me. There’s some codependent relationships circling around me in my own life that I am obsessed with. I wish there was a team of scientists studying them and reporting back to me. And I thought this was going to be my way into examining that kind of relationship. It didn’t start with I want to write a true crime novel. It started with what the fuck, how? And I still think about it. I still wonder about that relationship.

SC: Wow. So Hot Springs Drive was an actual murder? 

How on earth could a teenage boy take it upon himself to murder his mom’s best friend in such a violent way?

LH: Yes. And I don’t even remember details because I have refused to revisit the podcast. I don’t even remember if she was having an affair with her best friend’s husband, how many kids she had… none of those details.

SC: Do you still regularly listen to true crime podcasts?

LH: Yeah. My brain is rotten. I love them. Before, I was looking at Twitter as a way of filling my brain with information in my idle moments, but I needed a way to fill my brain with information where I could also use my hands. And I was like, podcasts—I started listening to podcasts. 

SC: I want to focus on Jackie a little bit. She catches our attention most, not only because she has the first person narration every now and then, but I think she’s the messiest, and also the most honest of all the characters. Jackie centers herself in an environment—a suburban household with four children—where that’s not stereotypically encouraged of mothers. What’s been your experience with not only being a mother and raising children, but also trying to write about it?

LH: Yeah, that’s such a big question. And it’s something I think about all the time. As a mother, you’re always in your past looking at your mother and looking at yourself as a child. And you’re in the present looking at yourself as a mother and looking at your children. Then you’re looking at the future and hoping as your children embark in their lives, that you’ve done well. And so I think for me time is happening all at once. It’s a lot to ask of anyone to handle the kind of responsibility Jackie has, to process all of that at once. I think it can be very easy to fall into like a moment of can everyone just fucking shut up for a second? Can I just be me for a second? 

As a mother, you’re always in your past looking at your mother and looking at yourself as a child.

I was talking about this yesterday with an author for my own podcast, and we were talking about how motherhood is sort of an identity that’s layered on top of an identity that already exists. And she was specifically talking about mothers leaving their children and how that identity is kind of stripped off sometimes. I think it’s just a lot to hold. And for Jackie—for anyone—it’s locating yourself in that and holding onto yourself. It can be an act of self-care, as we like to say, right? Like finding time to lock the bathroom door so you can be alone. It can be an act of rage. I think Jackie thinks to herself, I no longer recognize myself, so I’m going to make myself into something recognizable. And that’s her struggle, right? She struggles to find control in a situation where she feels no control, she feels controlled. 

SC: I want to touch on this idea of control specifically. I feel like it’s really intertwined with other themes in the book, like “hunger” and “desire” and how both of those two things seem to merge with a need. Like you need food and you need to answer desires in specific ways. So ultimately I saw those things becoming a driving force for everything in the novel, from food to love to attention to sex. How did you see all those things working together?

LH: I think it goes hand in hand with what we were just talking about: your kids. At some point they’ll see you as a person, as a whole person. But they shouldn’t have to. You are there to care for them and shepherd them and be the adult in the room. Maybe Jackie should have just gotten a job. Like at a certain point in your life, you know, when you are only that and there’s no one who’s looking at you behind the mother and the wife, I think you start to pay more attention to that lack of control. Jackie feels like she’s lost control of her body. She’s lost control of her house. Once there was meaning for her in being a mom and taking care, but she’s started to pay attention to other things. Once she understands, oh there’s a way that I can control my body, it’s very informative for her. She can control it in an unhealthy way, in a punishing way. She can sort of feed this desire, which is, you know, this need, as you put it. There’s a way to feed it. There’s a way to remember that she exists, that she’s a body, that she can feel things, that she has control over other people. She’s attractive. She has a pull. But it gets to the point where she no longer has control over it. 

SC: I was especially intrigued by how the children observed and judged their parents and how they were monumentally shaped by what they find out about their parents, both big and small. You mentioned kids find out that their parents are people eventually, but these kids especially, I feel like they sort of jumped ahead and found out sooner than most kids do and in a really dramatic, dark way. So I was curious about how you go about examining those relationships from all those different angles and then putting it into a book in this way?

LH: As a child, I was obsessed with eavesdropping and figuring out why things mattered and what my parents and their friends were talking about. I felt like there was stuff they were keeping from me and I wanted to understand it. I would do anything to try to figure it out. Even now I have my mom’s high school yearbooks. I thought they were like the most fascinating documents because they were giving me an insight into her before I was ever a glimmer in her eye. And I was just obsessed with this notion of like, who are these people that are only showing me one side? My oldest kid is also equally obsessed with, What are you talking about? What does that mean? I think for the kids in the novel, they know something’s up. They know something’s not right. Their parents were already in the process of distancing themselves and of course they want to know why. Like, why is Jackie suddenly so thin? Why is she kind of mean now? And why is she sneaking around? And I think those kinds of things, secrets—badly hidden secrets can be bad for kids in the long run because the kids are trying to understand their parents with the information that they know. Every child starts to think it’s their fault, right? Like, what could I have done? And is there something wrong with me? And I think we see that with Cece especially. You start to take the information you gathered as a child and you apply it to yourself as an adult and you tell yourself these stories that aren’t necessarily true, but it’s a way for you to protect yourself from what happened.

I want to stress that motherhood is the best thing in my life. I just love them so much. I feel like sometimes I talk about the bad things too much, but they’re the best thing in my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But there’s like all these little failures all the time, every day, constantly. If I showed you my house right now… To me, it’s like, okay, it’s a little tidy, but there’s just messes pushed into corners, you know? And if I step back outside myself and look at it, like if I was going to have someone come to my home, I’d be like, Oh my God, you know? I think that one thing I’ve learned with every child, your love exponentially grows, but so does the chaos. Your failures feel exponential. So I’m thinking about how I can personally relate to why Jackie sort of abandoned all of her motherly duties because she focused on the successes that she could literally see happening. Her version of success. 

SC: I wasn’t expecting the novel to span decades, following the characters in the aftermath of a murder long after it’s been “solved,” and the murder’s behind bars. It really digs into the emotional fallout, the trauma, the lasting grief that comes with the death, but also with the consequences of actions and inaction of everyone involved. Did you spend a lot of time thinking about these ripple effects before diving into the structure?

LH: First of all, I have to congratulate myself because my first two novels, it’s a very tight timeline. Like I think Eat Only When You’re Hungry is like three days and then at the very end it jumps ahead. And Ugly Girls is like a week or two or something like that. It’s very tight. And that can feel as a writer so claustrophobic. So time moves in this book. This has been one of my obsessions all along as a writer.

When I was still living in Florida—18, 20 years ago—I was in line at the checkout at the grocery store, and I was watching this mother joking with her son, who was probably like 10 or 11, about the age my oldest is now. And I was thinking about my own family and how my brother and my mom had that relationship. But then sad things happen, as they do. So I was thinking, like, how does a relationship, a mother/son relationship or any familiar relationship go from this beautiful thing watching this mother and son laughing, to pain? The novel I tried to write in grad school, which is a shitty, terrible novel but necessary for me to write, was sort of trying to look at that. And so I think that’s carried me through everything I’m writing. And I think when I first started writing this book I wrote Cece as an adult. Those were things I wrote early because I wanted you to see who they were and who they became. And that to me is also part of the tragedy, or part of the redemption, the grace. There’s poignancy there. There’s meaning there. And so that’s what I wanted to show even more than these completely shattered two families. I wanted to show who you can become based on a huge trauma, but also these other little things that happen along the way.

7 Books About Objects That Changed the World

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

Back in high school in the 1990s, I was taught history with a capital “H,” the kind of history that focused on a single narrative. It was a view of history that revealed only the narrowest strip of the past, a thin swath of experience from which many people, places, and ideas were excluded.

Microhistories are a type of nonfiction that looks at history through the lens of a single object or substance. They show us how ubiquitous, everyday objects—the kinds many of us never think twice about—are actually the physical culmination of centuries of experimentation, violent clashes between some people, and hopeful collaborations among others. They reveal how communities, territories, and nations are stratified by race, gender, ability, and economic class by telling us who had access to such objects and who did not have access. Microhistories can tell us so much about who we are as a society by revealing how and why the objects became popular in the first place.

My book Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—a Cool History of a Hot Commodity at America’s past through the prism of one of the most commonplace objects of all—ice. This frozen object illuminates aspects of history that we may not learn otherwise: For example, the public’s response of “blasphemy!” to the invention of mechanically-made ice highlights America’s founding as a puritanical nation. Ice skating provided young lovers with the opportunity to enjoy each other’s company beyond the watchful eye of guardians, and through this, we discover 19th-century social norms surrounding courtship. I also delve into the ways in which ice made some people very rich—and left others with nothing—revealing a history of class inequality, whose legacy is still felt today at expensive craft cocktail bars and on the price tags of tabletop luxury ice machines.

To celebrate the release of Ice—and the genre more generally—here are seven must-read microhistories that teach us so much about our past in the most surprising and multifaceted ways. 

Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World by Catherine McKinley

Mixing history and memoir, Indigo tells the fascinating tale of how a mysterious color influenced everything from the fashion industry to the world’s major religions. McKinley weaves an exploration of her own family’s history throughout the book, highlighting the ways in which indigo touched the lives of her Jewish, Scottish, and African descendants. From these various connections arises a fresh look at colonial history, changing forever how you think of color.

Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet by Chelsea Wald

This amusing microhistory is as entertaining as it is smart. Wald interviews scientists, engineers, waste experts, and others around the world to learn why toilets play such an important role in agriculture, public health, and environmental safety. By looking at the globe through such a surprising lens, she reveals just how important (and luxurious) it is to have access to effective waste management—and why more than half of our world’s population lack such facilities. 

Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese

Coal transformed the planet. It gave rise to new civilizations, launched world economies, made new kinds of industry possible, and now, is a key contributor to climate change. In her breathtaking examination of the mineral, Freese examines what made coal such a transformative fuel and why it has an outsized impact on the world as we know it. In the latest edition of the book, Freese includes a chapter on how those who seek to defend humanity’s use of coal are facing increasing push-back from activists seeking to end our species’ dependency on it for fuel. 

Brolliology: A History of the Umbrella in Life and Literature by Marion Rankine

In case there is any doubt that no object is too commonplace to be written about, Marion Rankine gives us a history of the umbrella. The book is beautifully illustrated, with amusing references to Derrida and Dickens, and anecdotes about the ways in which some of the most revered thinkers and writers throughout history have considered the cultural importance of umbrellas. Like the best of the genre, Rankine also makes connections between her object of study and larger meditations on race, gender, and economic class. 

Eyeliner by Zahra Hankir

In this endlessly fascinating book, Hankir explores how eyeliner—the nearly  universal makeup tool used by so many contemporary women—has a richer and sometimes stranger history than many people (including me) would have guessed. Beyond its use as a tool to enhance beauty, it’s been used throughout history in cultures around the world as part of religious ceremonies, to ward off evil spirits, and to push the boundaries of gender norms. Readers will never think of eyeliner the same way after reading this book.

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson

Acclaimed food writer Bee Wilson reveals how the fork and other culinary technologies changed how people eat, cook, and serve meals. She covers prehistoric uses of food-related tools (such as rocks and rudimentary bowls) as well as more modern inventions, like the microwave. Wilson’s style is both funny and informative, and the history she reveals shows just how important the fork is and how its legacy of kitchen technologies have changed not only the food on our tables, but the roles that food plays in our ceremonies, social gatherings, and everyday lives. 

Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close by Hannah Carlson

Written by a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, this captivating book looks at how pockets in clothing (or, in some cases, the absence of pockets) illuminate larger issues of gender, power, and privilege. The book spans a long stretch of history, from at least medieval Europe through today, stopping to examine some of the most famous pockets in history—including those of Abraham Lincoln.  By focusing on the tiny object of the pocket, Carlson reveals how clothing can reflect the value systems of the world around us. 

This Android Hopes You’ll Swipe Right

Posted on by Wynter Miller

Requiem for the Most Famous Drag King of Our Lifetimes

Despite the urban legends
she lived to a ripe old age of 15—
a comfortable retirement in Santa Clarita,
long walks on the beach, lazing in the sun,
beloved, after traversing two star-studded decades
with the likes of Reese Witherspoon
and digitally lipsyncing to ethnic stereotypes
of which she had no real means to understand.
Cast as Taco Bell Chihuahua’s Girlfriend
she quickly proved herself too butch, usurping the starring role
with her action hero stunts and monster movie one-liners,
cheap spanglish catch-phrases oft repeated by snot nosed kids,
dressed up as a bandido in a sombrero or a Che Guevara beret,
eagerly chasing tail—not just pink bedazzled collared pups
but supermodels with indulgent, charmed smiles.
Gidget the chihuahua, the inspiration for a civil rights boycott,
whose performance lost Taco Bell over $30 million
in an intellectual property lawsuit, was born an Aquarius
the self same night latent lesbian icon Whitney Houston swept at the AMAs
belting I Have Nothing with sweat shining on her brow,
in a glistening desert city a beast was born with stars in her eyes,
slouching toward Hollywood, the most famous drag king of our lifetimes.

My Book Earned Out in Two Years and Nothing Happened

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

It was a stormy summer day, dead in the middle of August, with lightning sheeting the sky and a deep underwater gloom pervading the parking deck. My three-year-old had fallen asleep in his car seat on our way to the children’s museum, and I could hardly believe my luck: a whole hour to spend on my dumb internet routines.

My publisher’s sales portal updates in massive tranches every few (or two) weeks, so naturally I check it every day. And here was an update—in fact, a huge leap, with total unit sales topping 10,000 for the very first time. I fumbled around in my Gmail, found my book contract, punched the numbers into my phone calculator, did the math. Then, to be 100 percent sure, I had a Wall-Street-whiz friend check my homework. 

All it had cost me was incalculable time and energy, weekends with my family, the opportunity to finesse and sell another book.

I’d done it. I’d earned out. In less than two years, if barely. 

And all it had cost me was incalculable time and energy, weekends with my family, the opportunity to finesse and sell another book. Truly, I’d busted my ass. Hustled. Worked every connection. Taken what I learned during 12 years’ hard labor in corporate marketing and applied it. Hired a PR person, too. When my nonfiction debut came out in September of 2021, I did dozens of podcast interviews on shows large and small, popular and obscure, and placed excerpts or companion pieces everywhere from Literary Hub to the Wall Street Journal to this website right here. I also gave talks anywhere they’d have me: major museums, universities, writers’ conferences, fan cons, Zoom-based book clubs, libraries—even the reception hall of a pretty country church where, nibbling cookies after the event, a sweet older woman squeezed my hand and told me God had worked through me to write this book, making me wonder ever since if she’s read it and still thinks so. Likewise, I experimented with Amazon ads, and worked with my publisher to arrange e-book promotions. One Kindle Daily Deal that my editor spearheaded led to over 300 sales. Deeply discounted, they nonetheless counted, and even better, the promo spiked hardcover sales.

This was how I beat the odds to sell circa 11,000 books in 23 months, “earning out” my modest $20,000 advance. Depending on the stats you’re looking at, 98 percent of traditionally published books don’t sell more than 5,000 copies their first year in print. Much less their second year in print. Much less their third—you get the idea. By the same token, depending on your stats, only 25 or 30 percent of traditionally published books ever earn out, moving into the black for the publisher and ensuring you, the author, will begin receiving royalties. 

Here’s what happens when you earn out: Nothing. No one even notices.

It’s possible to earn out lots of different ways, with a mix of foreign-rights sales, e-book sales, audiobook sales, yada yada, but hardcovers tend to get you there quickest. At least this was true with my situation and my sales breakdown. Via all that hustling I scooped up a grim $1.80 of income per book, rising to $2.25 per book after the first 5,000. A breadcrumb trail, if that—Alexa, what’s smaller than a breadcrumb?—I’d been going down for nearly two years.  

The pall of the parking deck was nothing compared to these realizations, to the mood that came over me in my milk-spattered, stroller-choked SUV, hands sweating as I cupped my phone and stared until the numbers blurred together, a black soup of digital digits. Could it really be true that absolutely nothing happens when you earn out? That you in fact have to figure it out for yourself that you have earned out? I mean, isn’t earning out like a way bigger deal than that? 

Yes, yes, and no. 

Here’s what happens when you earn out: Nothing. No one throws beads, confetti, nada. No one even notices. They’re busy. They’ve moved on. They’re not neurotically checking the sales portal or pathologically over-working to try to make those figures tick up, up, up. Which only makes sense, of course. My little book was everything to me, and a blip, a rounding error to everyone else. Which is why I cried that humid, gloomy afternoon in my car, realizing that, hard as I tried, I’d gotten it all wrong. 

I didn’t go on late-night television shows. I didn’t become a household name.

It may be rare to earn out, but that doesn’t mean earning out should be the goal. I sought to move copies obsessively, nigh compulsively, because I don’t like feeling as if I owe anyone money. That I haven’t earned my keep. What I missed was, given the modest nature of my advance, the sales number required to earn out was modest, too. 

Had I really worked so hard for such an irrelevant result? Had I really sacrificed all that time—time I could’ve dedicated to my family, to writing, or to, I don’t know, some new and theoretically more rewarding pursuit—to appease a misguided sense of guilt? Or worse, my ego? 

Yeah.

The still more devastating reality—the one that’s even harder to face, which is saying something—is how everything’s just as difficult as it always was during those naïve early days when I was a young, hungry, ambitious, unpublished author lusting after the dream. Writing is not easier. Publishing is not easier. No one’s chasing me down for book #2. Readers, friends, and frenemies ask, but it’s not as if the Big 5 have circled me, barking. I’d thought, hoped, that if I showed I could make a fairly niche title successful, then I’d look better when shopping the next idea, something grander and splashier. But earning out hasn’t made finishing new proposals any easier, which I assume is why I haven’t actually finished a new one, not really finished, not to a salable level. Earning out hasn’t refined the drafts of a novel (labeled, variously and nonsensically, “V1,” “Not_final,” and “Sept23”) that litter my desktop, either. And the commercial realities of the marketplace remain just as difficult. Ditto my pitiful perch within it. 

I didn’t shatter my advance with record-breaking sales. I didn’t go on late-night television shows. I didn’t become a household name. I just became one of the 25 to 30 percent of authors who do earn out their advances, and who still remain nobodies, midlist maybes, yesterday’s “some personal news” tweets. Of all the hardships that characterize the writing life, I’m not ashamed to say this one has hit me the hardest. I’d always thought writers were full of shit when they said publishing a book doesn’t change your life. Now I know what they mean. It feels so great to publish a book—it was the crack-high I’d heard about—and that joy doesn’t go away, but it does fade, receding in the rearview. Whereas the shitty part of being an artist thing does not. Like Geoff Dyer said, being an artist means struggling to be an artist. Forever. I’m learning this lesson the hard way because, hahaha, it turns out the hard way is all there is! And man, I hate that, too.

That we always look to the next thing is a given. Ink drying on our first book deal, we start scanning for the second. Receiving one prize, we plunk right down by the mental phone to await the next, necessarily a bigger one. This is natural and uncontroversial and a sign of our perennially flowering hopes for our work. Earning out or not won’t change it. Hell, even becoming a household name probably wouldn’t change it.

In the end, we’re all still struggling artists, whether pros or amateurs, overwriters or underwriters, stoics or self-dramatizers: beating on, pursuing the impossible dream, starting from scratch every time, goddamn it.

Complicating the Narrative of Mental Illness Using the Monsters from Asian Mythology

Posted on by Jo Lou

Jami Nakamura Lin begins with a warning: “In the presence of a story—if the story is a good one—time collapses.” This is precisely what she achieves in a genre-bending memoir that collapses past and present, personal and mythical. The Night Parade begins with her attempts to trace the origins of her bipolar disorder that first manifested in her inexplicable childhood rage. Despite her teacher’s suggestion of therapy, her father insists she is not depressed, until she experiences a major depressive episode at 17. But it’s not until Lin’s suicide attempt soon after—an event that amplifies the ripple effects of her mental illness on her family, including her younger sisters—that she is properly diagnosed and given  medication. 

With illustration by her sister Cori, Lin weaves her own tale of coming of age, navigating love, a miscarriage, motherhood, and grief with those of yokai—or supernatural entities—from the Japanese, Taiwanese and Okinawan folklore of her heritage to shine a light on the monstrous and mysterious forces among us. Through the rokurokubi, a yokai whose head is able to detach from their body, she explores her teenage affinity for dissociation; through the baku, a nightmare-swallowing chimera, Lin writes about her father appearing in her dreams as she grieves his death. 

I spoke with Lin over Zoom about how folklore and myth can help us better tell a truth, the volatility of truth and reality itself, and the state of mental health narratives today in a time of “therapy speak” and TikTok therapists. 

Nicole Zhao: The use of folklore is interesting as a way to frame the stories of your life. What do you think folklore unlocks in understanding and telling the story of your life?

Jami Nakamura Lin: When I just try to write about myself, it just feels like tunneling towards the center of the earth and I can’t find my way back to air. Having context and seeing myself as part of a cultural lineage, having not just metaphors, but grounded examples of these legends and myths and monstrous figures really helps me see my stories in perspective, as part of a tradition, even though obviously they’re not exactly the same. 

NZ: The first chapter in the book references “The Dragon King” and you cast your father in parallel to a mythical character. What inspired that chapter?

JNL: I was just thinking about this character, Urashimoto, who goes down under the sea, thinks it’s been three days, and comes back and centuries have passed. His world is completely changed and his parents are dead.

This idea of returning and everything changing was really resonant to me, especially since I’d gone to Japan for four months and when I came home, my father was dying. For me, the delineation in my life was not between when my father died and after, but between when I found out he was going to die and after. I thought, “Oh, this really feels like what I’m trying to express about my experience right now.”

My father’s death is one of my main reasons for writing this book. A couple years after someone dies, often people don’t know what to say about it or don’t wanna bring it up in case it’s upsetting. So writing the book is just a way for him to be amongst us and to keep us remembering him. 

I could write this book again and in 10 years, it’d be completely different, because I’d have a different perspective on grief and motherhood and mental illness. It doesn’t necessarily negate the stuff that came before, but it’s just a different truth, a different type of excavation.

NZ: I feel like the book is as much about storytelling and the nature of truth as it is about your life and grief. I really enjoyed the chapter on how the story of Momotaro evolved over time to propagandize Japan’s nationalism and imperialism. There are also moments in the memoir where you write one thing and then a few pages later, you write that it actually wasn’t true. Why was it important for you to name the contradictions in stories and the ways that stories can evolve based on context and who’s telling it, especially in a memoir where the genre is based so much in fact?

JNL: I’ve always been interested in the difference between myth and history being who holds power at the time: who is naming something as history and who is naming something as myth. There’s this idea of the written historical record being the true thing. The things that are being told by communities, by families, by the people not in power are often given this legend aura. But truth is so subject to the context. I was trying to think about this project in a multiverse way. There’s so many different perspectives of what actually happened. There’s my sister’s story, my father’s, my mother’s—all of us could tell stories of our childhood and they all would be so different. We remember it slightly differently, because we’re different narrators. Our memory is fallible. But they are all equally important truths, and they all can happen at the same time, like Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, right?

People have always been writing speculative nonfiction work, it just hasn’t been labeled as this genre. Like Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior. It’s very interesting to me to think about the nature of truth, how things can be true and not true at the same time.

NZ: How would you define speculative memoir? 

JNL: Jaquira Diaz had a really interesting talk about speculative nonfiction at Sewanee this year. She said that the speculative is involving the theoretical rather than the demonstrable, the figurative over the literal, ambiguity over knowing, and marked by questioning curiosity, but it’s all purposeful. It’s not making up for the sake of making it up, but rather to interrogate memory.

The word “speculative” is also fraught because so many religions, traditions, cultures have in their versions of reality things that would be considered speculative in Western culture. 

Our monsters transform and we transform with them.

There’s always going to be those negotiations between whose version of speculation, whose version of reality is it. By writing speculative memoir, I am trying to put pressure on the idea of what reality is and whose reality it is.

Thinking about my episodes when I was younger, I was very uncertain about what reality actually was. I remember telling my psychiatrist, “I don’t know what’s actually happening.” My psychiatrist told me, ”Just don’t worry about that right now.” He was just trying to adjust my medication. And I wrote in my journal—I was 17—“How can I not be worried that I don’t know what’s actually going on?” Because it was all so confused in my mind at that time, hearing things that I wasn’t sure if I was actually hearing, stuff like that.

NZ: You write that your experience of being bipolar is feeling like you’re constantly doubting yourself. I was wondering if myth and legend felt like a way for you to legitimize your experiences of grief, or mental illness, or rage, even to yourself. Because people don’t question a myth or legend, in the way they might question mental illness.

JNL: It’s interesting you pulled out this idea of doubt ‘cause I didn’t even think about that. I do feel that, fundamentally, so much of my life is trying to figure out if my reaction to something lines up with reality.

What I love about the yokai is that people believe them. A yokai emerges out of the unknowable, the question of, “Why is this happening?” 

Maybe trying to put my stories in the same parlance as folklore is trying to see them in this realm where reality or unreality is besides the point—belief is. 

Grappling with Christianity also has a lot to do with that for me. Can I logically explain what I believe? No, I can’t. For me, it’s more emotive. I believe it’s true, but it also exists in this world of speculation to me. 

I went to this fundamentalist high school for my sophomore and junior years. In our history class, we’d learn about Bible stories. So sometimes I wonder why I don’t know much about X, Y or Z historical event, and I was like, “Oh, because in my world history class, we spent six weeks talking about like Noah’s Ark. Right.”

This framework of faith undergirds a lot of how I think about other things, even though it might be unrelated. I have to accept for myself that I just won’t know.

NZ: You write in the book that most of the yokai you encountered through research rather than through your family and oral storytelling. You also write that you feel a nagging feeling that filling in the gaps with the research is somehow false or inauthentic. Similarly, I also don’t speak my ancestors’ native language, and I feel a lot of self-imposed shame and anxiety around reclaiming stories from Chinese mythology since I didn’t necessarily hear them passed down through my parents. How did you reckon with those feelings and get over that hump of thinking, “these mythologies or these stories are not mine to tell”?

JNL: This idea of authenticity can trap us. We have this idea that these stories that existed way back when in the old country are separated from us, now. One of the things I really wanted to do in this book is to ask, “How are these stories situated in Japanese America now?”

Cori, my sister who illustrated the book, also very much wanted to see these yokai, the way she illustrated them, as not happening in old Japan. They’re happening to Japanese America, to Taiwanese America, to Okinawan America, to us. That’s why the oni, the mallet-wielding ogre figure is drawn in front of the landscape of Amache, the incarceration camp that my grandparents were in. 

Because of the normalization of mental illness and the invisibility of it, it’s easy for us to not think of ourselves as disabled or have solidarity with people who are disabled.

Japan is not this pure, authentic world that we are separate and distinct from, but rather this mutable, flawed and ever-changing culture that we descend from. People love this idea of cool Japanese cultural stuff from way back when, but then have no idea how much of Japanese America is so shaped by incarceration. 

Research is important, like talking to people as much as you can. But a lot of people don’t have access to their families or communities because of forces of oppression. Whichever way people find out about stuff is a valid thing to do while also acknowledging our own positionality.

Researching yokai helped because yokai change so much. People are constantly inventing new yokai, they are constantly transforming. This idea of chosen transformation and change is important. Our monsters transform and we transform with them. 

I’m trying to put aside the idea of authenticity and embrace the idea of transformation while also not pretending that I’m something that I’m not. So I resonate so much with what you’re saying about feeling that conflict. It is a complicated and difficult question. It’s different for different people and different situations. It’s something I’m still thinking about.

Why it’s so hard for a lot of us to write about these things and why white people write about us so easily is because they don’t have these fraught, emotional dynamics we all think about so deeply.

And then when white people write about our communities, it’s just like, “oh, I’ll do this research or not do this research and we’ll just write really easily” versus we’re like, “oh, but like my grandparents!” 

NZ: With mental illness, there’s a lot more popularity around the topic now and especially with social media and TikTok, there’s “therapy speak” and vocabulary around trauma entering the mainstream. I’m curious about what you think of the public’s understanding of mental illness today and what’s still missing or off?

JNL: One thing that I’ve been thinking about more is how it fits into disability justice. For me, my mental illness is not visible because a) I have a lot of privileges and b) it’s managed right now. Unless I divulge to you, you would not necessarily know.

I’m not myself if I were not bipolar. I’m not myself without the loss of my father.

Because of the normalization of mental illness and the invisibility of it in some cases, it’s easy for us to not think of ourselves as disabled or have solidarity with people who are disabled. So I think some of that normalization does come at that cost of not working politically or in community with these other groups with whom we have a lot of overlapping interests; we are being oppressed by the same factors. And yet, because ableist society can accept us in certain ways, it’s easy to try to just want to slide into that.

And that’s only just speaking from myself and my own position in mental illness, because obviously for people who are more visibly mentally ill or mad with a capital M, that is not a choice that they get to make in the same way.

NZ: I appreciated that you were very explicit about the privilege of your family, your parents and finances. In some chapters, you acknowledge that what you’re going through is not as severe as what others have gone through, in regards to both your mental illness or your miscarriage. How did you reckon with that?

JNL: That’s something that I’ve always struggled with when reading other people’s books where they don’t talk about the money. Clearly, money is there. It was something that I did want to acknowledge because especially for mental illness, how much money you have makes the most difference. I feel like not talking about it is a disservice.

NZ: In the chapter where you’re under the Hello Kitty comforter and refusing to get out of bed, you address the readers as an audience and tell them that this is not the most important moment, but you know they need this in order to understand, otherwise the narrative is not going to be coherent. Why was it important for you to name that?

JNL: When I was growing up and reading these memoirs about mental illness, it was always based on this trajectory towards wellness, towards getting better, and then it’s over.

Whereas I feel like being bipolar and also ADHD, which I don’t talk about in the book since I wasn’t diagnosed until I was deep into the writing process, affects me in all these little ways in my day-to-day life.

The very extreme situations, like my hospitalizations, affect me much less than different dynamics with my family and stuff that we’re in family therapy for. It’s all these more minor, but daily situations that I feel make up so much more of the story than these crisis moments. And yet because of the salaciousness of those episodes, I feel like that is what gets a lot of the attention in the way that we talk about it in society.

It’s hard for other people to understand that kind of negotiation or to understand that perspective of difficult, but daily struggle versus crisis episodes. ‘Cause, a lot of people are really good in a crisis, right? Like Americans, we are good in a very short-term crisis. When it was like, COVID is going to be more than two weeks, then it’s like, “oh, we can’t deal with this anymore.”

NZ: I was trying to think about the link between your father’s death and your mental illness journey, and why you wove the narratives into one book. I feel like a big moment was during your major depressive episode, when your dad was like, “Do you need help?” And you were like, “Yes.” Also when he said, back when you were younger, “I don’t think she’s depressed,” and then admitting he was wrong later. Do you feel like that is why those things are so intertwined in your mind? 

JNL: I think so. Also because my dad was a doctor, I deferred to my father so much in my life because he was the decision maker of our family. If dad thinks this, then this is right and I must be wrong. I knew he was wrong about me not being depressed, and I was very angry about that, but I didn’t know how to talk to him about it. So my dad shaped the trajectory of that in a way.

I have a lot of grief over my mental illness too. Not even my current iteration of my bipolar, but of what happened to me when I was in high school. I have a lot of grief over how difficult things were for me back then. 

By writing speculative memoir, I am trying to put pressure on the idea of what reality is and whose reality it is.

I’m not myself if I were not bipolar. I’m not myself without the loss of my father. I don’t think of bipolar as a loss in the same way my father’s death is a loss. But all the effects of it when I was a teenager, that was a loss—having to lose a lot of friends or having to be hospitalized so many times or like having such hard fraught relationships with my family. Those things feel like losses because we didn’t know what was happening to me. It’s the loss of the life I could have had if I’d been treated properly when I first started exhibiting signs when I was 12. 

NZ: I have a favorite yokai, but I have to ask, which yokai is your favorite and why?

JNL: Mine is the rokurokubi.

NZ: Oh my gosh, same! How did I know?

JNL: I’m getting her tattooed down the center of my arm this summer ‘cause her neck is so stretchy. My book is done, so I’m going to get a tattoo to commemorate her.

NZ: That’s an awesome tattoo.

JNL: I think about how some people think these stories started because they didn’t understand women’s illnesses or women’s mental illnesses. And just from the stories of rokurokubi themselves—this idea of being able to escape and separate from your body, always being hungry and looking for something, has always been very interesting to me, as someone who struggles with mind-body duality. She’s my fave.

A Black Belt in Karate Doesn’t Make a Fair Father

Posted on by Wynter Miller

An excerpt from A Nearby Country Called Love by Salar Abdoh

He couldn’t bear going back to the apartment just yet. The apartment of the dead. When they’d been much younger he had shared the big bedroom with his older brother while their father took the small one in the back for himself. Issa recalled the bouts of barely controlled rage and weeping that ensued each time their old man thought his firstborn was not manly enough. It was a dance of endless humiliation between the two of them, starting in sixth grade for Hashem, when he came home from school one day and asked if he could take violin lessons. The old man, busy making a banana shake for Issa after having just taught an advanced karate class, raised his head and looked at Hashem, dumbstruck. Issa was almost two years younger and even then he understood something was not quite right with this picture. Within minutes they were downstairs at the dojo, where a few of the higher belts were still practicing. Hashem was made to punch the heavy bag until he was out of breath. Then the old man made him do the chicken walk a half dozen times around the dojo before putting him to spar with a teenage purple belt.

Hashem, who had always found excuses to avoid the dojo, stands there with a nervous smile on his face. Their father telling the other boy to attack. Attack what? Issa thinks to himself even then. Attack Hashem’s desire to learn the fucking violin? He is nine years old and has been going to the dojo religiously for about half a year and wants to protect his brother but has no idea where his loyalty lies. He worships the old man and imagines what their father is doing will somehow cure Hashem of something. He does not know what that something is yet, but when he sees the other boy throwing a halfhearted mawashigeri roundhouse kick to the side of Hashem’s face and pulling back at the last moment he wants to go out there and rip the boy’s face apart, even though the other boy is twice his size. Suddenly, the old man’s anger washes over them like wildfire. There are several other students in the dojo, standing mesmerized at this display of wrath by a sensei who has never before shown a lack of control in their presence. No one understands it. No one says a word. And then their father is raising his voice and warning the purple belt to either fight with his eldest son or never come back to the dojo again.

This time the boy attacks with a low maegeri front kick that catches Hashem in the inside thigh. The boy closes the distance and throws a lunge punch just above Hashem’s right eye. He does not follow through with more punches, though. He looks embarrassed. And then Issa is running at him. The moves he has learned in the last half year at the dojo are out the window, and all he knows to do is to try to wrestle the kid by going for his legs.

The teenage boy shoos him off.

“Touch my brother again I’ll kill you,” he hears himself shouting ineffectively.

Hashem is rolled into a ball on the floor, holding his face, crying softly. Their father stands there with glass eyes, surely astounded at the wickedness he has just caused and looking as if he has just woken up from a bad dream. The purple belt bows and retreats.

The image stopped cold for Issa right there. He could not recall what had happened next. There was no talk of violin lessons ever again. Nor did their father ever lose his cool at the dojo like that again. But this was the last time Hashem stepped into that space. Something had been broken. And something had been built—a tall wall between them, for the remainder of the abbreviated lives of these two men, both of whom Issa had adored and who hated each other.

Then came the change in their bedroom arrangements. Issa had to move into the small bedroom by himself, and their father took the big bedroom and made Hashem his roommate. It was, in a way, the absolute worst punishment he could have inflicted on the two boys, taking away Hashem’s privacy and at the same time forcing Issa, the younger brother, to have his. And the next few years turned into a cold war punctuated with bouts of seasonal brutality that ended in Hashem crying in one corner of the apartment and their father feeling remorse in another. At school, Hashem was beloved and, unlike Issa, a perfect student. The more their father heard praise from school about Hashem and his grades, the angrier he seemed to get, and he devised yet more tests of manhood, which Hashem failed at spectacularly. One day, the old man decided Hashem had to learn how to ride a motorcycle; it ended in the bike falling over Hashem and the hot exhaust scalding half his leg. More than once, the three of them had to go hiking in the mountains north of the city and learn to stake tents and shoot bows and arrows. Another failure. If Hashem didn’t like karate, how about learning to box or wrestle or do judo? It was one thing after another, a desperate quicksand of man-making that always ended in disappointment and heartache. As time went by, Issa moved up through the ranks at the dojo and his belt colors changed. During the silent mokuso meditation intervals at the beginning and end of practice, he’d often wonder what their father was thinking. Did he think about Hashem then? Was his mind completely blank? Did he ever think about the men who still thought him an enemy of the revolution?

It was one thing after another, a desperate quicksand of man-making that always ended in disappointment and heartache.

He had loved this man. And sometimes he hadn’t. More than anything, he had wanted his father to love Hashem. Or at the very least cease trying to turn the older son into a version of himself. The wash of bad memories didn’t fade with age but rather lingered and just grew more stale. Like the time after the old man put Hashem in a vicious chokehold up there in the mountains. Back at the apartment Issa had taken the small picture of the old man from his military days and ripped it in half. For days he’d hidden the photograph, ridden with guilt and fear that their father would find it. He did find it, years later. It was taped together but still showed the rip down the middle. The old man put the photo away and didn’t ask about it, no doubt thinking it was Hashem who had wanted to destroy his mug and not the younger son.

What a relief when Hashem finally left home. As if a huge boulder that the three of them had been carrying was at last lifted. From his second year of high school, Hashem had refused to cohabit in the same room with the old man. To make peace, Issa had given him the small bedroom back and took to the sofa in the living room. Many nights he’d just go to the dojo and sleep there, leaving the old man and his brother to their silent revulsions. The stale scent of sweaty gi uniforms would always linger on his skin from those nights at the dojo. He had imagined even back then that the sourness was that of men’s odium of one another. All men. It permeated everything, unwashable.

He walked aimlessly for a long time. The fasting month, Ramadan, would be coming around, and soon it would be summer. The previous summer had been unbearably hot, and tiny, white airborne creatures had invaded the city in swarms. They got into your mouth and hair and eyes, they stuck to car windshields and hung from trees. No one was sure what they were or where they had come from. It was a version of the day of the locusts but lasting an entire season in scorching heat. Sometimes he wondered if Hashem and their old man weren’t better off gone from this world, or at least this city. Some of the old man’s best martial arts students had eventually ended up running their own dojos. A few were famous now. Others notorious. But times had changed; nowadays it was the full-contact competitions that drew crowds. Few were interested in the old discipline of a traditional karateka. And who could blame them?

He sat for a while on the benches at Hasanabad Square until weekend crowds started emerging from the metro. Then he followed them to the junction of 30-Tir Street and Imam Khomeini Boulevard. They had recently cobblestoned this part of the city and set out food kiosks. Street musicians jammed the sidewalks, and a huge i <3 tehran neon sign shone off a wall of the Malek National Library. Hashem had loved going to all sorts of libraries when they were kids. He was also an avid book thief. For a long time the books he read went completely past Issa. One time Hashem’s desk he’d seen a book titled Of Mice and Men. He was still in elementary school, and the title in  Persian—Moosh-haa va  Adam-haa—had really repulsed him. It seemed sinister to his young mind, even if he did not yet know what sinister was. He questioned the rationality of his brother’s universe on these occasions. But he was also a soldier, there to defend Hashem, even if he did not quite know from whom and why. But as the years passed and Hashem’s library expanded, he began to take a new interest in his brother’s books, and their variety eventually became his own entry point into literature. By now theater had taken over Hashem’s world. He was about to finish high school with dazzling grades, and their father could no longer force him into the dojo to humiliate him for loving an art form, as he had done with the violin. There was one book, Issa recalled, that never left his backpack: Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Issa thinking: I know who Shakespeare is. We read about him in some class. But why “our contemporary”? It seemed Hashem might always be trying to provoke their father with books out of the range of the old military man’s understanding, and frankly Issa’s understanding as well. It would take several years of studying at the university and fully catching up to Hashem’s reading list before he began to get an  inkling—a library with a shelf full of thin books by a man with hair like an eraser, Samuel Beckett; a book of poems by W. H. Auden, with the deeply lined face of a man whose gaze was a mixture of defiance and wisdom; and of course Hashem’s film heroes with exotic, sexy, and excessively beautiful European names: Bresson, Pasolini, Fassbinder. “Look after my books,” Hashem had asked him when he was finally leaving home. And he had, religiously, even getting a shelf built for them by hand. These were the very books that their father often thought of as the culprits stirring his firstborn toward that unreachable place where only shame lay.

It seemed Hashem might always be trying to provoke their father with books out of the range of the old military man’s understanding.

One day he’d come home to see the old man boxing all the books.

“Pedar, what are you doing?”

“I’m taking them to the bookshops along the university and selling them or giving them away. Maybe I’ll throw them in the sewer. I don’t know yet.”

“But they’re not yours to do that with.”

The old man had looked up at Issa. “What did you say?”

“Those books are my amanat. They are in my care. A man has a duty not to betray an amanat. You know that.”

“These books turned your brother kooni. You understand, son?”

“Books don’t turn a person into one thing or another. And so what if they did? I’ve read most of those books by now. They’re really mine.”

“Yes, and I can tell you’re turning into a homo like your brother.”

It was the first time, and last, that in so many words he’d told his father to go fuck himself.

They remained there like two combatants. Issa stood his ground. “I’m not betraying my brother like you betrayed your son.”

The old man came at him then. His yokogeri side-thrust kick purposefully missing him by barely an inch but denting the wall with a loud boom. The old man could have crushed him. But Issa still did not budge. And the old man did not pursue the subject again. The books stayed.

In “Company,” Every Story Begins With a Guest

Posted on by Jo Lou

Who is responsible for maintaining family lore? In Company, Shannon Sanders introduces—and repeatedly reintroduces—readers to the Collinses, a Black family with roots in D.C. and Atlantic City. Sanders, a master of character, makes every individual distinctive and recognizable even as they clearly belong to a whole, bound by shared history, values, and challenges. 

In “The Good, Good Men,” two adult sons try, for better or worse, to fulfill their presumed filial duties; in “La Belle Hottentote,” four nieces fill in for an absentee daughter; and in “Company,” an aunt struggles to live up to family standards of hospitality. By presenting characters across different perspectives, at different ages, and under different circumstances, Sanders forces readers to reckon with them in their full, complicated, beautiful humanity. And though certain characters believe otherwise, we gradually discover that they’re all custodians of their lore, and of each other. 

I spoke with Sanders over Zoom, where we discussed the many forms of inheritance, the importance of aunties, and the intense pressures of having—and being—a guest. 

Emily Mirengoff: Many of the stories revolve around the Collins family, but not all of them. How did you determine whose stories you wanted to tell outside of the central cast?

Shannon Sanders: Three stories in the collection aren’t explicitly focused on Collins family members, though we do see all their protagonists, if briefly, in other stories. I wish I could say I always had a firm idea of how many stories would branch away from the family, but I didn’t. I wanted to show that some of the pressures facing the Collins family—microaggressions, respectability politics—are things that their broader community would also have to contend with. These aren’t just issues that are carried through the generations of a single family. They exist across the different communities depicted in the book: the Black community of D.C., Black people in academia, Black people in the professional workforce. 

EM: You describe characters with such vivid, memorable efficiency. I think my favorite is when a man thinks of his mother as “a woman with air between her ears. Who lived by the word of her daily horoscope and always kept a tambourine handy to punctuate moments of spontaneous group laughter.” How do you come up with these kinds of details? Will your friends and family recognize themselves in your characters’ foibles?

SS: I could talk for hours about family and friends recognizing themselves in fiction! To begin with, none of these characters are real people. As a newer writer, I did start with prototypes of people I knew, people I felt conveyed certain elements of the human experience. For example—and he knows this!—the character of Theo is based on my brother in a specific phase of his life, when he’d recently moved to New York, and was trying to do a Mark Zuckerberg kind of thing. 

Even now, as a more confident writer, real people still help provide details that create authenticity and verisimilitude, without corresponding one-to-one with characters. For example, my mom has a tambourine that she loves to play! But she is not that character; I just thought it made a great sensory detail. When characters do correspond more directly to real-life figures, I made them minor characters, who would just peek into the story. 

When loved ones read our fiction, they’re looking for themselves, they’re sometimes nervous about how they’ll be portrayed, and they’re quick to recognize themselves where they are not. Writers are often eavesdroppers, people-watchers, and we’re collecting little bits of data to help form a cohesive person. The trick is to plagiarize the people in our lives without them realizing it. But I think it’s a compliment when people are sure that they recognize someone in a character, because that means that they’re seeing a person, as opposed to an assemblage of sentences. 

EM: All these stories center around visitors—or company, per the title. We learn a lot about characters from how they prepare for, and receive, guests; the impressions they’re trying to make. What does company mean to you—and how does it overlap with family?

SS: This connective thread throughout the stories actually took me by surprise—someone else pointed it out to me. But I think it’s a literary obsession for me because it overlaps with the ideas of performance, code-switching, respectability politics, and self-presentation. There are so many decisions that go into how we self-present in different spaces, and that’s especially intense when we have guests, or are guests. When I was in my twenties, I did so much guesting and hosting for bridal showers, baby showers, weddings, and church events. Some of the most stressful moments of my life involved this expectation of putting myself on display, or doing my hosting job. I’m an introvert, so I had to pull on real reserves of strength to get through some of these interactions. On top of that, so much conflict comes not just from the event, but its preparations, all the freight attached to the event. 

It overlaps deeply with family, because the way someone hosts doesn’t just implicate them, it implicates their upbringing, and I think mothers and grandmothers feel this especially acutely. I was most interested in how different generations of this one family would tackle these issues, particularly because of different generational expectations. Also, aunties are a huge motif in this book. The auntie is a figure in your life who knows what your upbringing looked like, who knows your freight and expectations, but her investment is different. She can bear witness to it, or nudge you in the ribs if your mom’s getting on your nerves. She can even be a maternal stand-in. She can see when your own preparation has failed, or when she thinks you’re absconding from it. I didn’t necessarily plan to set all the stories around these encounters, but they’re such momentous moments for women, and women of color, when we really take stock of who we are, what matters to us, and how we want the world to relate to us. 

EM: Speaking of aunties, in the titular story, one of my favorite characters, Fay, complains about “curating the goddamned Collins family museum,” when her niece visits. At the same time, it’s clear that she also cherishes her role in keeping the family memory alive. How did you think about that ambivalence?

Writers are often eavesdroppers, people-watchers, and we’re collecting little bits of data to help form a cohesive person.

SS: It’s such a big responsibility—to feel like you’re the custodian of family history, and to feel responsible for passing it on to the next generation. But when people are challenged on it, they tend to cling to it. Within our families, we are empowered by our understanding of that history; everyone has their own lens on it, and sometimes those different understandings end up competing. In that story, Fay is riled up that her sisters have created a certain impression of their childhood, their parents, and their values to this new generation without consulting her. One of the most interesting aspects of the aunt figure is that she knows your parents in a way that you never will. But you, as the child, know your parent in a way that she never will, and sometimes those come into tension. 

EM: The theme of inheritance appears on almost every page of this collection: inheriting money, looks, personality traits, lessons, talent, names, and memories. What do you think is the most important legacy that the Collins grandparents—these much-mythologized figures—leave their descendants?

SS: I agree—inheritance is a good way to sum up one of the major concerns of the book. I’ll also add, in addition to those positive inheritances: hang-ups, self-consciousness, and some real tensions! I think the grandparents’ major legacies are work ethic, concern with education and self-presentation, and self-reliance. What’s fun about writing multigenerational stories is that you build this family tree, and then you see how a legacy gets fractured and reinterpreted across generations. All four of their daughters have a strong work ethic, though how that looks in practice is a bit different for each one. They also engendered a real communal responsibility—asking the daughters to look out for each other, which we see play out in the next two generations. 

And they passed along the ability to turn lemons into lemonade—to take a negative circumstance and bring out its most positive aspect. The grandparents owned a nightclub: they took a segregated Atlantic City and turned it into a fertile place to run a business. They took drunk patrons and turned them into friends, in many cases. It’s resilience, but a step beyond as well: the ability to not just survive, but thrive, in difficult circumstances. That’s a legacy that we see in all the youngest generation. 

EM: In the stories “Birds of Paradise” and “La Belle Hottentote,” we see the same evening—the same events, the same sartorial choices—through two different sets of characters. Some impressions overlap, and many contradict each other. As a reader, you never get the impression that either narrator is lying or mistaken; they’re just experiencing different truths. As the author, how did you imbue both stories with equal credibility?

SS: That’s another reason I really wanted to write a multi-generational book. I didn’t want to tie the reader to a single protagonist. As millennials, I think we have a little bit of a superpower—and maybe this is a phase that every generation passes through—which is the ability to empathize with our parents, with our generation, and the slightly younger, next generation. As an observer of my mom and my many aunties, I’ve observed a lot of their concerns, the tensions between them and their children, their worries about the next generation’s values. I’ve also observed some of their misunderstandings about the pressures that we face. A basic example is the perpetual question, “When are you going to buy a house?” We’re like, “We would love to! Sell them to us at a price we can afford.” I have so much empathy for them because I’ve listened so closely to them throughout my life. But I also know that we, coming of age now, have a point too, in many cases. I wanted to really explore that intergenerational tension from both sides. 

In the two stories about the party, there’s a character who has been built by a certain patriarchal workplace environment, who invested her life and career in it and fully bought into it. But I also wanted to show these young people, on the cusp of entering their own adulthood, reacting to that same environment. When we’re handed the mantle and told, “this is what you’ll have to do to survive a workplace,” many of us just took that mantle and said, “Okay, this doesn’t sound great, but I’ll give it a shot.” Others rejected it wholesale, and that’s why we see such progress in the ways that women and people of color are able to participate in those spaces. Within my own family, I have a corporate job, while my brother is a creator; he’s entirely rejected it. Intergenerational tension is not between one generation that knows what it’s talking about and one that doesn’t. It’s about two generations that both have completely reasonable understandings of the world based on how they were built, and then have to figure out how to deal with each other. All the terrible events of the last twenty years—they’re so much richer if we see them through the eyes of fully formed adults, who came of age in the ’70s, as well as later generations, who are still learning about the world as they experience it. 

A Look Inside the Spookiest Literary Party of the Year

Posted on by Jo Lou

The Masquerade of the Red Death is the one night every year where we gather in Brooklyn, celebrate with our community, and raise funds to support our work. It is also the night the spirit of our party patron saint Edgar Allan Poe is strongest, and the spooky vibes reach their peak! This year, our friends, readers, writers, and beloved colleagues from the literary sphere showed up and showed out, fabulously decked in horns, feathers, and most thematically, many stunning and creative masks. Themed cocktails were sipped, tail-feathers were shaken, and party-goers ended the night with an armload of free books! Here is a recap of the red-soaked revelry of this most spooky night, captured by photographer Jasmina Tomic.

Our party favor is a Verso tote bag overflowing with free haunted house novels!

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” EL editors curated a giveaway table of novels and short story collections that feature houses—haunted, alive, or just plain creepy—as characters. The offerings include well-loved classics—The Shining, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House—and exciting newer titles—Devil House, In the Dream House, Broken River, Terrace Story, Caul Baby, Out There, and Bluebeard’s Castle.

 Bring your own mask, or take one of ours!

Thanks to to our beverage partner Interboro Spirits, the open bar included a Poe-themed cocktail hour: The Gold Bug, The Black Cat, and The Tell-Tale Heart.

It was a full house! And we just love seeing people mingling with books in hand.

This year, our honored guests are authors Morgan Jerkins, author of Caul Baby and Hilary Leichter, author of Terrace Story. 

It’s been a banner year for Electric Literature, after winning the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize in 2022. Executive Director Halimah Marcus announced that this year, Electric Literature had three stories in Best American Short Stories and two stories in Best American Mystery and Suspense, the first online literary magazine ever to do so. 

In her speech, Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris said: “Last year we announced the success of the Both/And fundraising campaign, our groundbreaking essay series centering trans and gender nonconforming writers that published this spring. Earlier this year we designed and launched a new creative nonfiction program. I’m really thrilled to announce that we’ll begin to publish these essays, weekly, on Thursdays, in mid-January.” Marcus added: “And as if we didn’t have enough going on this year, we partnered on the launch of Banned Books USA, an initiative to giveaway banned and challenged books to readers in Florida, for only the cost of shipping.”

After remarks, it was time to hit the dancefloor!

The DJ, novelist Ryan Chapman, had us all sweating and screaming on the dancefloor. In other words—he knows his tunes. And did we mention he has a new novel coming out this next spring?

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Some guests did not deign to unearth themselves from beneath their haunted dwellings—they brought them along to party! (Could it be One Story founder Hannah Tinti and managing editor Lena Valencia? They’ll never tell.) The deadliest couple of the night for the second year running goes to Catherine LaSota, founder of The Resort, and Karl Jacob.

Can we have a little commotion for the masks??

The turnout was deadly, mysterious, and stylish. (We promise the photographer has not been turned to stone!)

We love a good cape and this fabulous flock of crows, having a murder of a time (crow pun intended!).

We spotted so many book authors getting their grove on at the party. Picture here—from top to bottom, left to right—is Isle McElroy (People Collide), Greg Mania (Born to Be Public), John Manuel Arias (Where There Was Fire), Jennifer Baker (Forgive Me Not), and honoree Morgan Jerkins.

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Say boo for the photobooth!

And that’s a wrap from Electric Literature team. Left to right: Former interns Nzinga Temu and Lauren Hutton, Halimah Marcus, Books Editor Jo Lou, Denne Michele Norris, Recommended Reading reader Maddy Adams.

Thank you to our sponsors for making this gathering of incredible and vibrant book people possible! See you all next year!

8 Books to Help You Understand Venezuela 

Posted on by EL Assistant2

Venezuela, my home country, was once one of the richest countries in Latin America due to the discovery of oil at the start of the last century. Today, Venezuela is in political and economic turmoil with a mass exodus of more than 7 million.  

As I wrote my new memoir, Motherland about the fragile concept of home and my complicated relationship to my family and to Venezuela, there were several books that took me back on a quest to understand where we came from as a country. The horrific conditions in Venezuela over the last several years sometimes made us forget what happened before Hugo Chávez.

The list that follows includes some of the essential books about Venezuela. These are not only for people who may know little about the country, but also for Venezuelans who are interested in our past and how, after decades of abundance, we got to where we are today, where families are dismantled and millions of people leave the country in search of a better life.

The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela by Fernando Coronil

Taking some inspiration from Venezuelan playwright José Ignacio Cabrujas and his analysis of the providential quality of the State and the social impact of the sudden wealth that oil brought to the country, Coronil, an anthropologist, addresses the transformation of the Venezuelan State in the last century as the country became an oil nation. From the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez to democracy, marked by the spectacular first presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979), Coronil explains the relationship of Venezuelans to the State and its presidents. I first read this book when Chávez, thanks to a new oil boom, magnified and personified the notion of a generous and almighty State. It was no longer the State, now it was Chávez. That is why this book, first published in 1997, was also prophetic. Overall, it is key to understanding the Venezuela that preceded Hugo Chávez’s “revolution.”

Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela by William Neuman

William Neuman understands Venezuela as few outsiders do and opens a window into the country with this exceptional compilation of stories. Neuman, who arrived in Caracas to work as a correspondent for The New York Times in 2012, shortly before Chávez died, gathers testimonies and anecdotes that allow readers to understand the social complexities of a divided nation. One of this book’s great contributions is that its characters are those who live and suffer in the country, and the wealth of perspectives Neuman presents is only possible thanks to the years he spent traveling throughout Venezuela. 

Comandante: Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela by Rory Carroll

While working as The Guardian’s correspondent in Caracas, Rory Carroll was once the target of one of Hugo Chávez’s typical verbal attacks during his weekly Sunday television program. In this book, Carroll shows the seams of the political project of the man who ruled Venezuela for more than a decade under an eternal promise of utopia that never materialized. In a series of vignettes, Carroll incorporates interviews with people in the presidential entourage and figures who influenced the definition of the so-called “Socialism of the 21st century.” 

Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana

Simon Bolivar is similar to a founding father for us. We hear about him almost from the time we learn to read, and there is no shortage of literature about him. However, Marie Arana’s biography excels in capturing the intensity of the Liberator’s dramatic life and does it in an almost cinematic portrayal that matches the grandeur of the man who waged countless wars against Spanish rule to liberate what is today the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Bolivia. Arana also brings in the forces and influences that shaped Bolivar and expands on his ideas about politics, race and government in a narrative that transpires passion, but without caricaturing or mythologizing him, a frequent practice in Venezuelan politics. Bolivar has been quoted by countless regional leaders, but Hugo Chavez, who claimed to be his spiritual heir, took the fanfare to another extreme. Chavez, who drew parallels between himself and the Liberator and nurtured conspiracy theories of assassination attempts, went so far as to order a national broadcast of the exhumation of Bolivar’s remains by a team of professional investigators to determine whether the father of the nation had been assassinated. The conclusion is that he was not, nor would Chávez be. 

Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela by Alejandro Velasco

This book offers a different perspective because it approaches political transformations in Venezuela from an urban and popular point of view. “Over the years, Venezuelans – more and more concentrated in urban spaces – developed an expansive understanding of democracy that combined institutional and noninstitutional, formal and informal, legal and illegal practices in their dealings with the state,” writes Velasco. Barrio Rising reviews the decades leading up to Chávez’s arrival, describes how the concept of democracy was shaped in the working class and how years of exclusion impacted the notion of democracy. It focuses specifically on the changes experienced in the neighborhood 23 de enero, or January 23. Designed as part of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s ideal of modernity, this barrio became a symbol of democracy when the military was overthrown in 1958. Decades later, when democracy was teetering, the neighborhood became a bastion of resistance. Close to the government palace, its symbolism is such that it was in this neighborhood where Hugo Chávez voted in every election. The ballot became a popular televised show, with hundreds of people cheering for the president, who never lived there but was received with devotion as one of their own.

Hugo Chávez by Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka 

Much has been written about Hugo Chavez, the charismatic leader who first appeared on the scene in 1992 when he assumed the leadership of a failed coup d’état in Caracas. But one of the first efforts to portray the man behind the myth was this biography written by Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka during Chavez’s first term, just when his popularity continued to rise, and he became a divisive and polarizing figure. Marcano and Barrera Tyszka assembled a personal and intimate portrait of the President by interviewing people who were very close to him during his childhood and early years in the Army and by using Chavez’s valuable personal diary. The biography discusses his influences, his family relationships, and how his political ideals were shaped.

Iphigenia by Teresa de la Parra

Not many Venezuelan novels have been translated into English, but one of them is Iphigenia, which caused a stir when it was published in 1924 for giving a dissonant voice to a young woman who tries to rebel against the local machista elite into which she was born. It is the most famous work of Teresa de la Parra, a Venezuelan writer who, despite spending most of her life outside the country, focuses part of her work on portraying the Caracas society of the early 20th century. Iphigenia is notable for  addressing  the non-conformity of a woman and the veiled criticism of the elite.

Doña Bárbara by Rómulo Gallegos

Considered the quintessential Venezuelan novel and commonly summarized as the struggle between civilization and barbarism, Doña Bárbara narrates the dispute between the feisty protagonist and a landowner who after a time in the city returns to the countryside. Published in 1929 by Gallegos, who years later would become the first president of the Venezuelan democracy, the novel is an ode to the Venezuelan llanos, the region where Hugo Chavez was born. Besides bringing the exuberance of the plains in which fierce llaneros only fear the implacable ‘Doña Barbara’ and the spirits, the novel shows the richness of a region that is rarely discussed in our literature and which Chavez claimed had culturally molded him.