TOBI'S DESK

Inspired by Roland Barthes, Meghan O’Gieblyn’s monthly column Objects of Despair examines contemporary artifacts and the mythologies we have built around them. A drone (Photo: Pexels) There was a big magazine story several years ago—I don’t remember where—about drone pilots who worked at an air force base in Nevada’s desert. The pilots spent their days in a windowless control room at this complex, which was some distance outside of Las Vegas, operating drones in Iraq—or maybe it was Afghanistan. I can’t seem to remember any of the details precisely. At the time, drones were still novel, and the central thrust of the article seemed to be the ethically troublesome fact that a strike could be enacted from a distance of 7,500 miles. One detail I remember clearly was that the base was deliberately remote, so that the pilots, after their shifts were over, were forced to drive several hours back to civilization. Whoever was in charge decided that humans who had been at war should not be ...

The Women’s Prize for Fiction  announced its 2019 shortlist. Formerly the Orange Prize and Baileys Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction recognizes the best English-language novel by a woman published in the U.K. in the previous year. The award celebrates “excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.” The shortlist includes one debut author ( Oyinkan Braithwaite ), one previously shortlisted author ( Anna Burns ), a previous Orange Prize for Fiction winner ( Madeline Miller ), and an Orange Award for New Writers winner ( Diana Evans ). The list also includes a few Year in Reading alums , and all the books were featured in our 2018 First-Half and Second-Half Book Previews. Here is the 2019 shortlist, with Publishers Weekly reviews: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker Read Publishers Weekly ’s review here: Barker, author of the Booker-winning The Ghost Road , speculates about the fate of the women taken captive during the Trojan ...

Judy looked back at the paper in her hand to be sure that they were standing before the right house. It was a three storey building situated by the side of the busy street; she had never been to Aggrey Road on her own and visiting a stranger on her first outing was definitely not … Continue reading HAPPY HOLS! (Episode Eleven) → from NaijaStories.com http://bit.ly/2XUMwrH

In the last 20 years or so, the discussion of diversity in the American literary canon has exploded, garnering space in mainstream media outlets. A wide array of magazines, journals, and websites have tackled the issue. A 2013 New Yorker article titled “Canon Fodder: Denouncing the Classics” details the prickly and vague assumptions with which experts attempt to define canonical works. Other articles aim to deconstruct or expound upon the problem, often with similarly severe titles: “What is Literature?: In Defense of the Canon” ( Harper’s , 2014); “The Literary Canon Is Still One Big Sausage Fest” ( Jezebel, 2012); “Reconstructing the Canon” ( Harvard Political Review , 2018), “The Canon Is Sexist, Racist, Colonialist, and Totally Gross. Yes, You Have to Read It Anyway” ( Slate , 2018). The majority of literary Americans—readers, writers, editors, publishers, professors, reviewers, and so on—are now all too aware of the serious problems surrounding literary inclusivity and represen...

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s crime thriller My Sister, the Serial Killer and Diana Evans’ exploration of midlife crisis Ordinary People have been shortlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Both are Nigerian, with Evans half-British. While their longlisting back in March brought the number of African nominees for the 27-year-old prize—formerly known as the Orange Prize for Fiction […] from Brittle Paper http://bit.ly/2vsQtb2

Nawal El Saadawi, I wonder why she has not yet won the Nobel Literature Prize. Memoirs of a Woman Doctor narrates the story of a girl who is forced to grow up in a society dominated by men.  "because from early childhood a girl is brought up to believe that she's a body and nothing more, so her body becomes her main concern for the rest of her life, and she doesn't realise that she's got a mind as well which must be looked after and encouraged to develop" "How can a woman live alone without a man? Why is she going out? Why is she coming in? Why is she smiling? Why is she breathing? Why is she taking gulps of fresh air? Why is she looking at the moon? Why does she hold her head up and open her eyes wide? Why does she tread with confidence and pride? Isn't she embarrassed? Doesn't she want a man to protect her?" She managed to have a voice of her own against all odds. "I like myself as I am, and I rely on myself being as I am so I ca...

Fredrick got in and looked around. It was a duplex. The compound was very neat and beautiful with trees and flowers everywhere. There were two cars parked, a Peugeot and a Mercedes Benz. Those two cars speak money or at least comfort. The gate-man who let him in was looking at him strangely. “May I … Continue reading Love Beyond Reason 7 → from NaijaStories.com http://bit.ly/2GO5gDm

April 26 was Lesbian Visibility Day, and to mark it, BBC Pidgin released a video with the Nigerian activist Pamela Adie, in which she talks about self-discovery, family, and “the most elevating, free, real time” of her life. Here is a transcript. I have had relationships with women before. I never really considered myself lesbian. […] from Brittle Paper http://bit.ly/2ZHmR7q

Pamela shook her head vigorously that Dan almost thought it would fall off, “All I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t make any sense”. “Fine”, Judy retorted. “Prove me wrong”, she added with arms akimbo as Dan who was sitting on the single sofa turned his eyes back to his phone. He was already … Continue reading HAPPY HOLS! (Episode Ten) → from NaijaStories.com http://bit.ly/2L7eeji

The Joy Luck Club remains one of the best-known works of Asian American literature, and on the 25th anniversary of its publication, Amy Tan looks back on the landmark novel and its subsequent film adaptation in an interview with the Center for Asian American Media. Tan also reflects on the future of Asian American literature among second generation immigrants. “I think that we have many more second generation Asians in this country now whose parents are a little bit more open to their kids doing things other than the traditional jobs that make parents proud in former generations. My mother and father wanted me to be a doctor. I have friends now and their kids want to be filmmakers and they’re fine with that, even though it’s going to be a very hard road.” The post ‘The Joy Luck Club’ Turns 25 appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://bit.ly/2DC4FTp

  Your body is the last house left in a ghost town whose inhabitants took their good time to practise their segue, make their departure thorough, and sound like a tribute to reluctance they stayed the years it took to exorcise the idea of a revenant and scrub clean memory off your walls all what’s […] from Brittle Paper http://bit.ly/2IKG6YH

  Sometimes, God happens in showers. Papa once owned a house. At Angwa Rimi in Jos. When he and his friends spoke of houses the same way women speak of pregnancies, his often sounded much like a stillbirth. The house collapsed, already roofed and plastered, after days of ceaseless showers. I never saw the house; […] from Brittle Paper http://bit.ly/2IY04OY

Mary Miller. I’m inclined to call Mary Miller’s new novel, Biloxi , a lonely book. The narrator, sixty-three-year-old Louis McDonald Jr., is perhaps how one might cynically imagine the average late-middle-age man. He’s recently divorced, distant from his daughter, anticipating an inheritance from his father’s death, and living a quiet, burger-and-beer-fueled existence in front of TV marathons of Naked and Afraid . On a detour to avoid his ex-wife, he impulsively adopts a dog named Layla, and his solitude becomes a strange, blundering parenthood. Louis oscillates between embitterment and naivete, cloaking his anxieties in a devotion to Layla that verges on delusion. But even as he falls prey to shortsighted impulses—which include neglecting his medications, burning through his bank account, and impersonating a Baptist missionary to meet a woman—Louis retains a genuine desire for connection, despite his insistence otherwise. The narrative remains intimate throughout, swinging between ...

A 1958 case study is widely believed to be “the first sociological case study of a transitioning person.” A new documentary short, premiering at Tribeca, finally allows Agnes to speak in her own words.  Kristen Schilt. Photo: Dan Dry. In October 1958, a nineteen-year-old woman called Agnes approached the psychiatry department at UCLA, having been referred there by a physician in her hometown. “She was tall, slim, with a very female shape,” the sociologist Harold Garfinkel noted. “Her measurements were 38-25-28. She had long, fine dark-blonde hair, a young face with pretty features, a peaches-and-cream complexion, no facial hair, subtly plucked eyebrows, and no makeup except for lipstick.” Agnes arrived at UCLA seeking genital surgery for her self-described intersex condition. According to Agnes’s self-reporting, though she had apparently been born a boy, female secondary sex characteristics began to spontaneously develop during puberty. Extensive physical and endocrinological t...

The 2019 Edgar Allan Poe Awards were handed out last night in New York City. Presented by the Mystery Writers of America, the Edgar Awards honor the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television published or produced in the previous year. The full list of nominees can be found here . Here are some of this year’s winners: Best Novel: Down the River unto the Sea by Walter Mosley Best First Novel: Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin Best Paperback Original: If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin Best Fact Crime: Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation by Robert W. Fieseler Best Critical/Biographical: Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s by Leslie S. Klinger The full list of winners can be found here . The post Mystery Writers Honored at 2019 Edgar Awards appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://bit.ly/2W8LCHs

In late November 2016, the poets Alex Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky decided to bring their shared love of astrology and poetry to the world, and Astro Poets was born. They’ve since amassed hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers for their sharp, snappy takes on the signs, and this November, they’ll release their first book together, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac . To celebrate the reveal of the book’s cover, Dimitrov and Lasky read the charts of some of literature’s most beloved (and reviled) characters .   Aries: Janie Crawford ( Their Eyes Were Watching God ) Janie Crawford is the quintessential Aries: resilient, determined, and ready to take control of her own destiny. Taurus: Elizabeth Bennet ( Pride and Prejudice ) Elizabeth Bennet will marry for love, and she doesn’t care if that goes against convention, and she doesn’t care who she’ll disappoint. She is the epitome of a Taurus: strong-minded and endlessly passionate. Gemini: Emma Bovary ( Madame Bo...

Kelsey Wroten ’s new graphic novel, Cannonball , is by turns a satirical social portrait of a queer, binge-drinking, abrasively ambitious young writer and a hilarious meditation on artistic purity and self-delusion. Dumped by her girlfriend, surrounded—in her opinion—by philistines and sellouts, and usually broke, novelist Caroline Bertram escapes her abusive middle-class family home determined to write a literary masterpiece and settle a few scores. Obsessed with a cheesy female pro wrestler and driven by rarified artistic ambition, Bertram is relentlessly entertaining, no matter whether she’s wallowing in boozy self-pity or spewing lengthy, hyper-articulate rants at friends, enemies, or anyone who will put up with her. This is a 10-page excerpt from Cannonball , which will be published this month by Uncivilized Books. This piece was produced in partnership with  Publishers Weekly  and appeared on publishersweekly.com . The post Panel Mania: ‘Cannonball’ by K...