‘I’d love a scathing review’ says novelist Percival Everett. His work triumphed at the Oscars, but he isn’t interested in acclaim. He talks to the Guardian about race, taking on Mark Twain and why there’s nothing worse than preaching to the choir.
In the shadow of the Cold War, the rise of creative writing programs and ‘show don’t tell’ philosophy drained fiction of its political bite. Author Sandra Cisneros, writing about her college program said: How can art make a difference was never asked
This review focuses on a riveting novel about an African American couple caught up in the criminal justice system.
Erdrich takes up the genre of literary dystopia in a manner that is focused, writes reviewer Goodman, "on the agency of women and the centrality of procreation and pregnancy in the way they are treated by society."
In her eleventh novel, God Help the Child, Toni Morrison has created what Walton Muyumba calls "a tragicomic jazz opera played out in four parts." Here is his review of this eagerly awaited new work by the artist who is arguably the greatest novelist working in the United States today.
I was pleased, and rather surprised, when I saw that the U.S. Department of Labor—in honor of its one-hundred-year anniversary—is assembling a list of books that shaped American ideas about work.DOL officials, after seeing a 2012 “Books that Shaped America” exhibition at the Library of Congress, were inspired to make a similar call for books about work in order to emphasize the “significant role published works have played in the shaping American workers and workplaces.”
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