Lit Hub Weekly: February 16 – 19, 2021

TODAY: In 1924, South African novelist Alex La Guma is born.

Emily Temple recommends 50 classic novels under 200 pages—because what is an attention span and where can we buy one? | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“Am I prepared? Is anyone, ever?” Oncology nurse Nina Solis reflects on turning to Mary Oliver as she watches her first patient die. | Lit Hub
“I became attached to this blindfold, perhaps because, in that world of al Qaeda prisons, it was my only possession.” Theo Padnos on surviving capture and torture in Syria. | Lit Hub Memoir
COVER REVEAL: Oxford American’s Spring 2021 Food Issue, guest edited by Alice Randall. | The Hub
“We are now living, belatedly, in the age of Tartt.” Amy Gentry on the new wave of dark academic thrillers. | CrimeReads
Merve Emre on Patricia Lockwood’s debut novel, Bill McKibben on Bill Gates’ climate change road map, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
“I’ve never met a woman who did not at some point, in those first early weeks of motherhood, break down.” Lynn Steger Strong on considering Britney Spears as a new mom. | Romper
Viet Thanh Nguyen on the power of Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, and what it teaches us about the “greatness of our unfinished country.” | TIME
“Here is the space where the syllabus remains to be decolonized—not through substitution, but addition.” Sumana Roy rethinks the postcolonial syllabus. | The Chronicle of Higher Education
“The reason you careers fell for us in the first place is that we managed to be unsteady and unreliable even in the most stable and predigested situations.” A break-up letter to a writing career. | n+1
Can historians be traumatized by violence they experience through “imagination and immersion”? | The New Republic
On Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was forced to live in isolation, and how to cope with living in lockdown. | The Guardian
“You have to figure out a way to live in the world, that’s life.” Mariame Kaba discusses activism, abolition, and transformative justice. | Chicago Reader
Bernard Ferguson on the poetic lineage of Gwendolyn Brooks and why “it seems everything—the poems, the music, the seasons—points me back to her.” | The Paris Review
“Marriage made me an antisocial person, while divorce made me open-hearted.” Haley Mlotek talks to Torrey Peters and Ethan Philbrick about divorce art. | Jewish Currents
Read a new short story by Lily King. | O Magazine
“The pandemic has made us all stand still and face our own brand of bullshit.” Tiana Clark on writing through a global pandemic. | Poets & Writers
“An erasure of memory is part of how the United States constructs its national identity.” Laila Lalami on American mythology and citizenship. | LARB
How did the owners of Hobby Lobby get involved in “one of the largest frauds in the history of religious artifacts”? | Harper’s
How Onyinye Miriam Uwolloh’s “Ishmael Na My Name” updates—and challenges—Melville’s original text. | Words Without Borders
“What is interesting, for me, is just how long trauma can linger and how sometimes when you least expect it you have these reminders.” Roxane Gay discusses how to write about trauma and handle criticism. | Vanity Fair
On finding kinship with Octavia Butler’s Lauren Oya Olamina. | NPR

Also on Lit Hub:

Kristin Iversen profiles Patricia Lockwood • A comic strip by Pardis Parker and Andrew Hamm • Abbigail Rosewood’s recipe for cooking Thịt Kho • Adam Grant wants us to get in the habit of forming second opinions • Paisley Rekdal considers appropriation in workshop • Maria Adelmann on writing a novel and learning Danish during quarantine • Wendy Lower asks what a person should do about a photograph that documents a murder • Tracy Clark-Flory on assignment at the Adult Entertainment Expo • María José Ferrada remembers accompanying her father, a traveling salesman, around Chile • Gretel Erlich introduces Orion’s best political writing of the past 20 years • Howard Sherman on the Our Town spinoff you never heard about • Michael Patrick F. Smith finds a model in Theodore Roosevelt • Rebecca Morgan Frank on literature’s long-standing relationship with robots • Kevin Young on how the Schomburg Center became Harlem’s literary sanctuary • Yemisi Adegoke grapples with what it means to be a “returnee” to Lagos • That time Marie Curie was almost excluded from winning the Nobel Prize • Sandra Beasley embraces the medicalized body • Encountering John Muir in bear country • An interview with indie press Milkweed editions • Jeremy Atherton Lin on the literary history of gay and lesbian bars • Five books you might’ve missed in January • Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore on the writings that launched the women’s liberation movement • Janet Skeslien Charles on researching Dorothy Reeder • Will Self on what we mean by the literary canon • Michelle D. Commander unearths the lives of her formerly enslaved ancestors • Kathryn Nuernberger on the very rare case of a male witch’s execution

Best of Book Marks:

From the archives: the first reviews of every Toni Morrison novel • White Teeth, A Visit From the Goon Squad, Letters to a Young Poet, and more rapid-fire book recs from Emily St. John Mandel • Back in 1885, critics called Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn both a “tour de force” and “a piece of careless hackwork” • New titles from Patricia Lockwood, Roberto Bolaño, and Bill Gates all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week