Good prose

I discovered a blog with really good writing and then realized it is, in addition, from New Orleans. I am serious that this person can write and is more interesting than many writers who are packaged and famous. Axé.

Bad poetry

Here is a bad poem or at least, one I dislike. I read it while reading an interesting book review that shows precisely why everyone is fatigued with the Democratic Party, in the same magazine with a yet more interesting book review on Hitler, characterized as a warning from history. This was the title of … More Bad poetry

Research today

Ultimately, what really defines whiteness is not melanin or nationality – it’s power. And while demographics may be shifting, Kenneth Prewitt, a former director of the United States Census Bureau, is sceptical that whites will ever be a minority. White people will “figure out some way to reshuffle the deck”, he told me, finding new … More Research today

Famous writers I should have known about, or should have worked with more

I really do not get out enough. My students should know about Mario Bellatín, Hilda HIlst, Pedro Lemebel, Naty Menstrual, and Eugenia Prado. It seems that they, together with Diamela Eltit and others, wrote or are writing the nueva narrativa femenina latinoamericana. I should have told my student about Sarduy, Escrito sobre un cuerpo, and … More Famous writers I should have known about, or should have worked with more

The muse of history

I. CLIO “let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth” The past’s fantasia cannot hold or let us go. Flycatcher catching itself in the pool’s glint gaze, Samarkand where Tamerlane hewed his bloody thread, unspooling across the hacked-to-pieces field, a triple axle splitting Clio’s cataract, muddy then clear, the opal of a rain-sheened … More The muse of history

Encore des nouvelles. On modernity, and on race.

– Thursday is César Vallejo’s birthday and he will be 125. – This, as we know, could also be about Vallejo, as it is about many: Living in Budapest, connected to a self-confident and industrializing West but set apart from it by language and often religion, Polanyi and his contemporaries embodied one of the central … More Encore des nouvelles. On modernity, and on race.