Each year National Mental Health awareness month comes and goes, but for those living with mental health conditions, navigating daily life continues. At age 33, I was diagnosed with bipolar 1. Since then I’ve sought out books about mental illness that speak about the experience of involuntary hospitalization, which allows a state to detain an individual with a mental disorder for 72 hours or longer, sometimes much longer—an experience I know well.
Read MorePortrayals of motherhood have a long history in literature, as do people turning into animals to escape the shackles of their gender roles and societal norms (Enid Shomer’s story “Laws of Nature” comes to mind, as well as most portrayals of werewolves).
Read MoreSince the mass-production of plastics began in the early 1950s, humans have produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic—the majority of which has ended up as unrecycled waste in landfills and the ocean.
Read MoreKate Durbin has made her literary mark by meticulously investigating what happens to the human condition when capitalism backs it into a corner. Her latest collection, Hoarders, is artfully material and moving.
Read MoreLibertie follows hot on the heels of Greenidge’s critically acclaimed debut We Love You, Charlie Freeman, in which the Freeman family are invited to the Toneybee Institute to participate in a research experiment involving a young chimp. Greenidge’s highly anticipated sophomore novel does not disappoint in delivering her distinctive brand of thematic intensity.
Read MoreTo risk stating the depressingly obviousness: the internet has not transformed daily life in quite the way we hoped it might. Dreams of happy social communion brought about by widespread access to the information superhighway can now be seen, in this year of our lord 2021, rotting like roadkill on the shoulder.
Read MoreOne hundred years ago, eighty-seven men died when a fire raged through the El Bordo mine in Pachuca, Mexico. Many down in the shafts initially didn’t believe there was a fire, assuming the smoke to be powder dust from a recent blast
Read MoreA charming musician with a portfolio of riot grrrl songs. Her addiction to painkillers. Federal drug charges. A posse of sketchy characters with pseudonyms like Sugar Mama, The German Gentleman, and The Millionaire.
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