October 1–7, 2023, is Banned Books Week, a week that “was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools.” Last year, Ashley Hope Pérez’s Out of Darkness was the 9th most challenged book. Out of Darkness debuted in 2015, and it went seven years without a ban or challenge. However, amidst … Read More Banned Books Week: Ashley Hope Pérez’s “Out of Darkness”
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Pecola goes to see Soaphead Church, a self-proclaimed “Spiritualist and Psychic Reader” who could help individuals overcome things that impacted them. Pecola comes to Soaphead Church asking him to give her blue eyes so she can feel pretty and be like the white movie stars that she idealizes. After Pecola leaves, he sits down at the table and write … Read More The Role of Names in Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”: Part I
+ american literature, Americanah, Charlotte Brontë, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jane Eyre, Literature, podcast
During the summer, my daughter, Juliette, and I started seriously talking about doing a podcast. This conversation started earlier, but we really started working on it around June. What arose from those conversations was Classics & Coffee, a podcast where we would talk about books while drinking coffee. This format seemed obvious to us since both of us read extensively. I, of course, read … Read More Classics & Coffee: Making a Literature Podcast with My Daughter
It has taken me a while to read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, but I picked it up recently because my daughter suggested it as one of the books she wanted us to talk about on our podcast Classics & Coffee. There’s a lot in Americanah, and I do not have the space to even scratch the surface of topics that Adichie covers. Today, I want to focus … Read More Performative Acts in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah”
When I initially picked up Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, I wanted to incorporate it into a course alongside Anna Seghers’ Transit, Magda Szabó’s Katalin Street, and other novels focusing on texts by European writers written during or following the Holocaust. However, as I read the five stories collected in Rezzori’s text, I discovered that it may be a difficult text, for … Read More Looking at Ourselves in Gregor von Rezzori’s “Memoirs of an Anti-Semite”
Interminable Rambling 