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Burmese Pythons in Florida (11/23)
In her book
Pests, Bethany Brookshire provides several examples of introduced species becoming huge destroyers of local wildlife and ecosystems. One of the most well-known (and perhaps, if you dislike snakes as much as I do, most terrifying) examples of this phenomenon is the Burmese python in Florida. A
whole section of the Florida Fish ...
Novels by Cree Writers (11/23)
Jessica Johns, the author of Bad Cree, is a member of the Sucker Creek First Nation in Northern Alberta. The Cree, or ininiw, who also refer to themselves as nêhiyawak (Plains Cree), nihithaw (Woodland Cree) and nèhinaw (Swampy Cree), are the largest group of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and live in areas stretching from ...
Historic Black Communities in the United States (11/23)
Jamila Minnicks' debut novel
Moonrise Over New Jessup takes place in an all-Black town in 1950s Alabama. Residents are wary of integration, preferring to exist in their own space rather than being left to contend with racism in a white-dominated society. In an
interview with
The Rumpus, Minnicks explains that she wanted to write about...
A Brief Overview of the Good Friday Agreement (11/23)
Francesca McDonnell Capossela's novel Trouble the Living is in part set in Northern Ireland during the waning days of the Troubles, a 30-year period of violence brought mostly to an end by the signing of the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998.
In 1921, at the end of the Irish War of Independence, Ireland was partitioned into ...
The Pre-Columbian City of Tetzcoco (11/23)
In David Bowles' novel The Prince and the Coyote, Prince Acolmiztli is forced to flee his beloved city of Tetzcoco after it is overrun by enemies. Acolmiztli, later known as Nezahualcoyotl, was a real historic figure still famous today, and his city was one of the most important in the Aztec Empire.
Tetzcoco (also spelled Texcoco or ...
Dementia: A Two-Person Illness (11/23)
After a dementia diagnosis, the rules that families depend on — who takes care of who — just don't exist anymore. The hierarchy of parent and child or grandparent and grandchild dissolves under lost memory. Dementia is an illness that affects two people: The patient, and the person caring for them. Anger or frustration often ...
Imagining Life on Mars: A Reading List (11/23)
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's A City on Mars discusses what a space colony on that planet might look like. Science fiction authors, though, have been imagining life on the Red Planet for well over a century (some coming closer to reality than others).
The concept of intelligent life on Mars was likely sparked in the late 19th ...
Cult Psychology (11/23)
Cults are often difficult to identify from the outside, given that a common characteristic is members' denial that any dysfunctional elements are at play within their community. Many countries, including the U.S., do not have a legal definition, but prefer to use a series of criteria. However, a sort of colloquial understanding is more ...
Teddy Ruxpin (11/23)
The portability and low price point of cassette tapes meant that they were easily integrated into many areas of technology, as Marc Masters explores in High Bias. Toys began incorporating tapes too, and the most famous tape-playing toy of all was named Teddy Ruxpin. First introduced in 1985, Teddy was quickly a favorite cutting-edge toy ...
A World Not Built for Women: Gender Bias in Medicine & Science (11/23)
In March 2019, NASA was due to launch the first all-women spacewalk from the International Space Station. It was to be a milestone in space exploration. Astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain were to walk outside the ISS to replace lithium-ion batteries; Mary Lawrence and Kristen Facciol were to be lead flight director and lead ...
ChatGPT (11/23)
Artificial intelligence grabbed the headlines in November 2022 when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world (GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer). A large language model (LLM) designed to interact informally with a human interlocutor, ChatGPT has since released three more generations on the foundation model, with GPT-4's ...
Dream Interpretation (11/23)
One of the short stories in Kij Johnson's The Privilege of the Happy Ending lists whimsical interpretations of specific dreams. For instance, to dream about an Audi 'signifies great strife and financial disaster. It is hard not to connect this to the fact that your ex left you for someone who owns an Audi.'
But the interpretation of ...
Migrants in Italy (11/23)
Many of Jhumpa Lahiri's protagonists in Roman Stories, while not described as being of a specific ethnicity or nationality, are clearly foreign to Rome. So where might they be from? Italy's immigration statistics program only tracks non-EU newcomers to the country, giving an incomplete picture of immigration in general, but we can see ...
Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946) (11/23)
Noelle Salazar's The Roaring Days of Zora Lily follows a fictional aspiring fashion designer living in Seattle in the 1920s. But who were the real fashion designers of the day? In Salazar's novel, Zora wants to have a career like Coco Chanel and Jeanne Lanvin. While most American readers have likely heard of the Chanel brand and its ...
Female Frenemies in Literature and Reality (11/23)
In Rachel Hawkins's novel The Villa, childhood best friends Emily Sheridan and Chess Chandler decide to spend the summer together amid the splendor of Villa Aestas in Italy. Although the two women have fallen a bit out of touch over the years, this summer offers a chance for them to reconnect while combining work and play. But when ...
Korean Military Brides (11/23)
Franny Choi's The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On delves into how Korean women were treated before, during and after the Korean War, as well as the generational trauma and isolation resulting from this treatment. One aspect of this is the experience of military brides, or Korean women who married members of the American military...
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe (11/23)
In Jane Smiley's A Dangerous Business, the story 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' by Edgar Allan Poe becomes an important point of reference for main character Eliza as she and her friend Jean investigate a series of murders in 1850s Monterey, California. As Eliza examines the facts and circumstances surrounding the killings, her thoughts ...
Novels Exploring Terminal Illness in Middle Age (11/23)
In her novel We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman chronicles the final days of Edi's life from the perspective of her lifelong friend, Ashley. Though terminal illness and death can be tragic at any age, facing these realities at the stage of life Edi is in comes with a particular set of challenges, such as knowing she will miss...
The White-Savior Complex (11/23)
What exactly is a white-savior complex (also known as white saviorism)? In Dipo Faloyin's Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent, the definition is not as important as the negative impacts upon those who experience it.
According to Black Equality Resources, white-savior complex is defined as 'an idea in which a white ...
Cabramatta, New South Wales, Australia (10/23)
Tracey Lien's debut novel,
All That's Left Unsaid, follows a Vietnamese Australian family in Cabramatta, which is a suburb of Sydney, capital of the state of New South Wales. The presence of a migrant hostel in the area in the 1960s and '70s made it a hub for Southeast Asians fleeing the Vietnam War. By the mid-1990s, around a quarter ...
General James Oglethorpe (10/23)
In The Kingdoms of Savannah, author George Dawes Green describes General James Oglethorpe as a 'jewel of a man, a rare nonmonster in Savannah history.' Indeed, Oglethorpe was unique in the context of 1700s British imperialism: a champion of the oppressed who fought against the powerful in issues ranging from prison abuse to slavery to the...
The Harms of Industrial Hog Farming in North Carolina (10/23)
In Wastelands, Corban Addison recounts the true story of a group of North Carolina residents fighting for justice after suffering through years of pollution and nuisance from neighboring industrial hog farms. It's an uphill battle against a powerful multinational corporation, a broken regulatory system and a political establishment ...
Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man (10/23)
In his seminal work, On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin elucidated the theory of evolution by natural selection, explaining how organisms better adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on their genes. What he didn't explain, however, was human evolution — that was addressed in his second but ...
Simchat Torah (10/23)
Human connections are arguably at their most powerful when experienced through communal dance, music and other communication beyond words. Events such as these are highlighted numerous times in Isaac Blum's debut young adult novel, The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen, which creates a picture of Orthodox Jewish life that sears into one's ...
Taiwan and China's Palace Museums (10/23)
At the end of Fragile Cargo, Adam Brookes' excellent history about how China's cultural treasures were protected during World War II, the author informs his readers that the finest items in the imperial collection were moved to Taipan, Taiwan. They remain there to this day, an ongoing point of contention between Taiwan and China.
...
The Jane Collective (10/23)
Kerri Maher's novel All You Have to Do Is Call fictionalizes the story of the real-life Jane Collective, an underground abortion network that operated in Chicago during the late 1960s and early '70s before abortion was legalized with the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973. The organization was founded by Heather Booth, who as a college ...
Enslavement in Canada (10/23)
The nonfiction book Flee North recounts how activist and writer Thomas Smallwood encouraged the enslaved individuals he helped escape to relocate to Canada, where slavery was illegal, rather than remaining in the United States, where they might be returned to captivity if caught. Smallwood himself settled in Toronto with his family in ...
North Carolina's Ghost Lights (10/23)
In Ron Rash's The Caretaker, characters claim to have seen unexplained lights in Blowing Rock's cemetery and its environs: The previous graveyard caretaker, Wilkie, told Blackburn, the current caretaker, about a mysterious light that led a man to find his brother's grave after searching in vain in six other county burial grounds; and ...
Controlled Prairie Burning for Maintenance (10/23)
In Nathan Hill's novel Wellness, protagonist Jack is from the Kansas prairie, where his father was an expert at managing prairie fires. Prairie fires may look terrifying and unwieldy, but in fact they are often purposeful and controlled, and play a critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. In much of North America, prairies were ...
The Discovery of Plate Tectonics (10/23)
In Annalee Newitz's science fiction novel The Terraformers, characters threaten to trigger the development of plate tectonics on the planet Sask-E as a form of political leverage. The theory of plate tectonics has revolutionized our understanding of our planet and its geological processes. This theory states that the outer layer of Earth,...
Zines and the 1990s (10/23)
In his memoir, Stay True, Hua Hsu recalls his college years in the 1990s, including the role that zines played in the evolution of his identity: 'Zines are a metaphor for life…It's your creation and your voice.'
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a zine as being a short form of fanzine, a kind of amateur-produced magazine ...
Hemingway's Islands in the Stream (10/23)
The Birdcatcher by Pulitzer finalist Gayl Jones features numerous allusions to literary figures and artists. The narrator, Amanda, is a writer, and her friend Catherine, who has repeatedly tried to murder her husband, is a sculptor. While contemplating Catherine's relationship with her husband, Ernest, Amanda references the work of an ...
The Execution of Charles I (10/23)
When it comes to the execution of English royalty, perhaps the most famous are the two wives of Henry VIII who met their ends at the Tower of London — Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The double execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by guillotine in France is equally if not more famous, and countless other royals have ...
The 13th Amendment and Contemporary Slavery in the US Prison System (10/23)
As we all know, slavery was abolished in the United States after the Civil War when Congress passed the 13th Amendment. What many might not recognize is that the 13th Amendment did not ban slavery entirely. In fact, it explicitly states an instance in which slavery and involuntary servitude are permitted — when people are ...
Grime Music (09/23)
As Olivette Otele references in her book African Europeans: An Untold History, many Black British artists find music to be an effective and far-reaching medium in which to address and explore their heritage and life experiences as people of color. Grime music has become one of the hottest and most vibrant genres to emerge in the UK in the...
The Rise of Vehicular Homelessness in the U.S. (09/23)
In 2018, in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood, a woman named Sabrina Tate died inside her RV. She was almost 28 years old. A chronic drug user, Sabrina may have been killed by an infection. Two men living in the same vehicular lot, what was considered a safe space, had died there earlier in the year. Sabrina's parents, who had tried to help her...
The Bylina (09/23)
The bylina, an Old Russian form of epic poetry or song, is referenced in
The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes, in which the author notes its ideological significance.
The word 'bylina' (plural: byliny) has its origins in the Russian 'byl,' translating as 'that which happened.' Byliny began to be printed and popularized in the 17th ...
Captivating Fantasy Worlds to Explore Next (09/23)
A trip to Elsewhere in the young adult debut
Hotel Magnifique is enough to give anyone the itch to travel. The question is, where to next? Here are some suggestions of fantasy worlds to explore once you've checked out of Emily J. Taylor's wondrous hotel.
Battle Magic (2013): Tamora Pierce's worldbuilding is famed, with fans ...
Stravinsky's The Firebird (09/23)
The protagonist in Meg Howrey's novel, They're Going to Love You, is a choreographer, hired to create a new adaptation of Igor Stravinsky's renowned ballet, The Firebird. First staged in Paris in 1910, it is often credited as the show that catapulted the composer to international fame.
The ballet's story is based primarily on the ...
Fascism in Pre-War England (09/23)
In Marie Benedict's historical novel The Mitford Affair, much of the narrative focuses on the rise of fascism in Great Britain before World War II.
Merriam-Webster defines fascism as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime…that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized ...
New York Review Books (09/23)
Susie Boyt's Loved and Missed was first published in the United Kingdom in 2021; two years later, it has been published in the United States by New York Review Books, which specializes in both contemporary literature and obscure classics and embodies what it calls an 'eclectic, adventurous spirit.'
Since 1999, New York Review Books has...
Cetacean Trivia (09/23)
Much of biologist Hannah Stowe's memoir,
Move Like Water, records her experiences on sailing vessels researching cetaceans – an entirely aquatic group of mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Some interesting trivia regarding these magnificent creatures:
- The fossil record shows the first cetaceans ...
Books Addressing Young Peoples' Experiences During World War II (09/23)
The Second World War has been written about extensively from many different points of view. However, the history of this war is filled with unheard stories of individual heroes who played a significant role in their own way. Here are six books, some memoirs and some fiction based on true stories, that recount the tales of these unsung ...
Changelings in European Folklore (09/23)
In addition to being a reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, T. Kingfisher's novella Thornhedge is inspired in part by the tradition of stories about changelings. In European folklore, changelings represented an intersection between the fairy world and the human world; a fairy would steal a baby—usually one who had not yet ...
The Erasure of Eileen Blair from Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (09/23)
Readers might be forgiven if, in reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, they miss the fact that his first wife, Eileen Blair, was in Spain with him, working for the Republican resistance against Franco's fascist forces. As Anna Funder points out in Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life, when George does refer to her, he does not ...
Wishcycling (09/23)
Let's say you have an empty shampoo bottle or yogurt container. Should it go in your recycling bin or the trash? Chances are you'll check for the familiar three-arrow recycling symbol before deciding. But as Oliver Franklin-Wallis explains in Wasteland, the symbol we've all come to equate with recyclability simply means that ...
The Poetry of Shane McCrae (09/23)
As Shane McCrae documents in Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, he was born to a black father and a white mother. He lived alternately with both parents for three years until his maternal grandparents convinced his father to let him visit them for the weekend. When his father went to pick him up at the agreed time, the house was empty: '...
The Hubble Telescope (09/23)
In The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy, Moiya McTier references the discoveries made by the Hubble telescope. NASA refers to the Hubble as 'the most famous telescope,' and the reasons are easy to see. For over 30 years, it has provided insights and never-before-seen imagery — and it's still evolving.
The telescope is ...
Françoise Sagan (09/23)
In Yiyun Li's novel The Book of Goose, narrator Agnès Moreau recollects entering a surprising phase as a 14-year-old author in post-World War II France when a book that she was secretly assisted in writing by her best friend, Fabienne, became a hit and a public curiosity. Fictional Agnès describes the real-life French author ...
Nazi Plunder (09/23)
In Deanna Raybourn's novel Killers of a Certain Age, four women are betrayed by a fictional organization of assassins they joined that was formed to hunt down and kill former Nazis after the end of World War II and the fall of the Third Reich. Part of the organization's goal is recovering any artworks the Nazis may have looted and hoarded...
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