The second episode of Professor Ato Quayson’s vlog Critic.Reading.Writing is up! In this week’s episode, Professor Quayson engages Toni Morisson’s Pulitzer Prize Winning novel, Beloved, to reflect on the meaning of freedom in the shadow of slavery. Revisiting his discussion of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from Episode 1, Quayson pushes readers and viewers to question Aristotle’s […]
Tag Archives: literature
What Does Tragedy Have to do With Grief? — Prof. Ato Quayson on a New Episode of Critics.Reading.Writing
The first episode of Professor Ato Quayson’s youtube show is up! Ato Quayson is a Professor of English at Stanford University, current President of the African Studies Association and one of the honored guests of Brittle Paper’s #WeTurnToBooks Instagram Live Series. Earlier this month, Prof. Quayson launched a YouTube channel titled Critic.Reading.Writing with Ato Quayson, […]
Reading with The Sense of Death All Around Us – Ben Okri
The last few weeks have been trying for the arts, an industry that lives on live performances and event curation. It’s been sad watching everything from book tours to book club meetings get cancelled. Like many in the community, we’ve had to ask soul-searching questions about the role of art during a time of crisis. […]
Watch Actress Ruth Negga Read an Excerpt of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time
Ethiopian and Irish actress Ruth Negga reads from Zadie Smith’s Swing Time. Ruth Negga was nominated for the Golden Globes for her role in Loving, an American movie about interracial marriage. Smith’s novel explores status and class and the way these distinctions shift between Africa and the Western world; a shift to which Negga herself […]
Adichie Talks Dior, Paris, and Her Fashion Week Experience in New Interview with Elle.com
In October, Adichie sat front row at a Christian Dior fashion show in Paris and watched models strutting the run way dressed in t-shirts bearing the inscription, “we should all be feminists.” [read here if you missed it.] In a recent interview published on elle.com, Adichie takes us back to when Dior first invited her to […]
Did Shakespeare Smoke Weed?
Is this what happens when American TV tries to think about literature? Jon Stewart, the anchor of The Daily Show, takes a trip down the literary lane and ends up in very strange and hilarious places. Plus, don’t miss out on GOP Chairman, Michael Steele, making a fool of himself. Dude can’t tell the difference […]
Invisible Cities…and The Dead
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. A bewitching little book. No use trying to figure out what it is. Is it a collection of poems, a series of vignettes, a novel, a travel guide, an ethnographic commentary, a bureaucratic document, a lineup of fireside tales, a meditation? What I can tell you is that it’s a rewrite or, […]
Rushdie at Duke Uni: “Man is a storytelling Animal”
On April 12, Salman Rushdie gave a lecture at Duke University titled, “Public Events, Private Lives: Literature and Politics in the Modern World.” As far as lectures by novelists go, I have seen better. To be fair, I would say it was merely boring. To be mean, I would say it was vacuous. But I […]
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