Lit Hub Weekly: May 19 – 23, 2025

TODAY: In 1900, Eduardo De Filippo is born.

• Inside nan “new benignant of distinctly Black imaginative self-making” calved from the editorial narration betwixt Toni Morrison and Muhammad Ali. | Lit Hub Biography
• Hari Kunzru reflects connected Edward Said’s “startlingly contemporary” Culture and Imperialism astatine 30. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Debbie Urbanski connected nan invasive expectations of book publicity and why writers shouldn’t consciousness obligated to stock excessively much. | Lit Hub Craft
• “There is nary higher praise for a activity of actual penning than to opportunity that it sounds for illustration a John McPhee book.” Peter Hessler connected a beloved mentor and tireless proponent of imaginative nonfiction. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi connected ICE, activism, and Palestine aft being released from detainment. | Democracy Now!
• Hanif Abdurraqib writes in defense of despair. | The New Yorker
• “The NEA has ever been threatened.” Adam Morgan connected how nan nonaccomplishment of NEA grants impacts mini publishers and literate magazines. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Yiyun Li discusses extremist acceptance, uncovering a vocabulary for utmost pain, and Things successful Nature Merely Grow, her memoir astir losing some her sons to suicide. | The Guardian
• “Here, acquisition is nary longer a pathway to opportunity; it is simply a conflict for survival.” Four students successful Gaza connected really they support studying amid genocide. | The Intercept
• Aaron Boehmer looks astatine nan ocular connection of underground and replacement newspapers done nan ages. | Los Angeles Review of Books 
• Lily Meyer explores nan bequest of Argentina’s six-year-old leftist comics heroine, Mafalda. | The Dial
• Nora Claire Miller meditates connected the history of screensavers and nan transition of time. | The Paris Review
• “We request collectivism correct now, and it will look for illustration people literature: penning by a community, astir a community, for a community, successful work of a wider humanity.” Greta Rainbow connected literate movements, past and future. | Dirt
• “By her telling, those who want to lead a antiauthoritarian state complete nan brink into authoritarian strategies statesman by intending to deceive others, succumb to self-deception, and autumn yet into nan ambiance of ‘defactualization.’” On Trump, fascism, and Hannah Arendt’s essay, “Lying successful Politics.” | Public Books
• “Telling one’s communicative successful one’s ain understanding, reclaiming it, repositions refugees arsenic actants and not conscionable passive victims of convulsive humanities currents.” Peter Sloan discusses his caller study of exile literature. | JSTOR Daily
• James Hannaham on Essex Hemphill’s (profane, transgressive, sexy, bold) poetic legacy. | Poetry
• Joel Suarez considers education’s “fraught narration to some elitism and democracy.” | n+1
• Translator Ann Goldstein recommends books pinch “solid English rhythms, English idioms, English locutions, English sounds—the things that I for illustration to person location successful my mind, though not needfully consciously, erstwhile I’m working.” | The New Yorker
• “Her debut novel…was acold much daring for its clip than immoderate of nan caller literate trends that person had everyone blushing and gasping and scribbling.” Namwali Serpell revisits Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales.| New York Review of Books

Also connected Lit Hub:

Turning an obsession pinch your therapist into a novel •  On learning to love literate influences • Mariam Itani connected Beirut, home, and nan paradox of surviving successful Jordan • Lorna Graham recommends novels connected nan workplace • The power of Miguel de Cervantes’ illegitimate daughter, Isabel de Saavedra • Literature’s astir iconic culinary moments • On cults and Katherine Mansfield’s last days • On Spinoza’s metaphysics and uncovering nan galore rooms wrong ourselves • The similarities betwixt experimenting successful nan room and connected nan page • Why you tin ne'er permanently ruin a portion of penning • Reviving a extremist Black liberation movement successful Atlanta and beyond • The effect of contemporary problems connected fiction • Meg Serino recommends novels that picture destructive relationships • How to sphere the principle of language • America’s obsession with avocados • The hostility betwixt truth and imagination while penning spot • What draws america to danger successful our relationships? • When Oasis toured America • What’s connected Alison Bechdel’s TBR? • 5 book reviews you request to publication this week •  Why AI slop is truthful overmuch sloppier than thing a quality could constitute • On nan magic of Montauk, New York • Desire, death, and subtext successful Her Smoke Rose Up Forever • On Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty” • The champion reviewed books of nan week • The astonishing relationship betwixt Raymond Chandler and P.G. Wodehouse • Martha Park recommends apocalyptic nonfiction • The domiciled of show connected nan page and successful existent life