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Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
Helen Oyeyemi’s luminous fifth novel Boy, Snow, Bird reimagines the Snow White fairytale as set in 1950s America. The novel opens, fittingly, with mirrors: “Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for...
View ArticleAll the Shades of Black and White
Writing for The New Inquiry, Hannah Black explores race in Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird and the relationship of white, black, and mixed racial identities in modern western culture.Similarly,...
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Rewrite, Reboot, Remix
I suspect that everyone is always rewriting something or other, whether they are self-conscious about it or operating intuitively. It’s probably endemic to the literary impulse to wish to transform the...
View ArticleA Crucial Conversation with the Self
For a black woman in a white world, a conversation with the self is crucial: for when she walks through that often-unwelcoming world she is subjected to confining perceptions of who she might be. When...
View ArticleAll About Eva
She’s black, but not local, this new colleague who wears her boots and jeans and scarf with a bohemian aplomb that causes the others to ask her where she shops. “Oh, you know, thrift stores,” she says...
View ArticleOyeyemi’s Luminous Universe
Author Laura van den Berg has glowing words about Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. In her New York Times book review, van den Berg writes: “A collection is, by my...
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The Rumpus Interview with Manuel Gonzales
Manuel Gonzales’s first book, The Miniature Wife, a collection of short stories, was often compared to work by George Saunders, Aimee Bender, and Karen Russell. Three years ago, shortly after the...
View ArticleRooted Elsewhere
Most of the rest of the stories in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are linked, with major characters in one story later turning up as minor characters in another. This loose, multiracial, polymorphously...
View ArticleBorn of a Limitless Imagination
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ilana Teitelbaum writes a glowing review of Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, praising Oyeyemi’s singular voice....
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What If We Were Allowed to Do Anything We Wanted?: A Conversation with Clare...
Clare Beams’s debut short story collection, We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books), has garnered praise from Joyce Carol Oates, the New York Times, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A finalist for the...
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Carmen Maria Machado
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Carmen Maria Machado about her debut story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, her favorite horror writers and movies, and writing the book(s) she’s always wanted to...
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What to Read When You Want to Curl Up with a Good Book
Baby, it’s cold outside. When the holiday season ends, we’re left with the prospect of two or three months of dreary, gray days punctuated by snow bomb cyclones and unseasonably warm respites from the...
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Carmen Maria Machado
Folklore, speculative fiction, horror, fantasy, magic realism, comedy, and erotica collide beautifully in the eight provocative short stories that make up Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story...
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Renee Simms
I met Renee Simms in 2015 in Taos, New Mexico, at the summer retreat for the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction where we are both fellows. I introduced myself to Renee, bringing greetings...
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What to Read When You’re a PEN Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize Winner
The PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers recognizes twelve emerging fiction writers each year for their debut short story published in a literary magazine or cultural website last...
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What to Read When 2019 Is Just Around the Corner
It’s true that 2018 was another terrible year in so very many ways, but it was also a banner year for reading (find some of our favorite books from the year here and here). While we can’t promise that...
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Toil and Trouble
At the end of the summer of 1974, President Nixon announced his resignation. The date was August 8, nearly a month after a woman named Teresita Angeles committed suicide. I might refrain from...
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What to Read When You Want to Celebrate Black History
It’s Black History Month, and while The Rumpus celebrates writing by black artists year-round, we think it is especially important to share a list of work written exclusively by black writers this...
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Notable NYC: 3/9–3/15
Saturday 3/9: Karen Hueler, Andrea Rothman, and Erika Swyler join Trumpet Fiction for “Cosima Smiled: Women Scientists in Fiction.” KGB Bar, 7 p.m., free. Ser Serpas and Park McArthur join the Segue...
View ArticleNotable San Francisco: 3/13–3/19
Wednesday 3/13: Head over to Vallejo for the book launch of Verses, Voices, and Visions of Vallejo. John F. Kennedy Library (Joseph Room) in Vallejo at 6:30 p.m. Mesha Maren will be reading from her...
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