In his farewell address, President Obama invoked the glorified version of To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch who has been incorrectly read as a civil rights hero for decades.
PRESIDENT OBAMA WANTS YOU TO BE EMPATHETIC LIKE ATTICUS FINCH. DON'T.
FOR ZADIE SMITH, THE CLOUDS HAVE ROLLED IN OVER MULTICULTURALISM
“On November 10 The New York Times reported that nearly seven in ten Republicans prefer America as it was in the 1950s,” Smith said, “A nostalgia of course entirely unavailable to a person like me, for in that period I could not vote, marry my husband, have my children, work in the university I work in, or live in my neighborhood.”
IN REMEMBERANCE OF A NOVELIST WHO TAUGHT ACROSS RACIAL LINES
After a year and a half of unemployment, E.R. Braithwaite decided to try teaching and is posted to one of the worst schools in London’s East End -- and even there was confronted by the specter of racism. The experience became the subject of his novel, To Sir, With Love.
TRUMP, TRUTH, AND ALL THE KING'S MEN
Like the rising demogogue at the heart of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All The King's Men, Trump understands that he is liberated from the burden of fact just so long as he continues to depict a reality that renders as True.
HOW A STEINBECK NOVEL FORETOLD TRUMP'S AMERICA
The Winter of Our Discontent is marked by the same sort of nationalism that has been given pride of place on the electoral stage. At the close of the first black president’s tenure, there has been a heightening of hate. The staggering reinvigoration of white supremacy--let’s call it like it is--is a response what some commentators have observed as a pushback against President Obama as a symbol for racial advancement. The racist underpinnings of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign are, for some, a way to set back the “rightful” order of this country -- you know, to “make America great again.”
IS 'THE HANDMAID'S TALE' A PROPHESY FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE?
Margaret Atwood's 30-year-old novel sheds a dark light on today's attacks against women from how rape cases are handled to allegations against Planned Parenthood.
(3+7) (Q&A) WITH NOVELIST JENNIFER CLEMENT ON MEXICO'S MISSING
Jennifer Clement's latest novel, Prayers for the Stolen, maps the landscape of violence wrought on the people of Guerrero, Mexico by the drug wars and traces the story of some of its "stolen." THE ALIGNIST spoke with Clement about her response to the disappearance of 43 teaching students from the state last year and asked her how her work came to be one of social protest.