Great Writers, Great Lives: Those We Lost in 2014

Of the writers who died in 2014, here are nine who I admire for their literary output and for their lives spent engaging in the struggles of our times. They will thrill, entertain and enrage us no more, but their work as writers/activists will live on. Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) The work: Gabo produced a…

The King and Queen of Comezón by Denise Chavez

What a carnal novel this is. Three hundred pages of bodily functions and dysfunctions. A book full of seepages and oozings and assorted excretions: the housemaid farting in the bath, characters urinating on themselves, an undocumented border crosser having her period at just the wrong moment, the untold joys of defecation, projectile vomiting in a…

Mailbox Chronicles No. 4: Diary of a Citizen Scientist by Sharman Apt Russell

Last week a much-awaited publication arrived in my mailbox: Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World, by my friend and ex-colleague Sharman Apt Russell. The first thing you notice is the cover … and what a cover! It tells a tale in itself: a fearless explorer…

Mailbox Chronicles No. 3: African American Review

“African American Review” Spring 2014 is out. It’s one of my favorite journals, and I have a piece in this issue: “A Long Shot.” It’s based on the true story of an ex-slave who was rumored to be around 120 years old. She was interviewed in the 1930’s by the US Federal Writers Project. She…

Film review: “La Grande Bellezza”

Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old Italian writer, wanders around Rome, hosts literary soirées and parties, and lives la dolce vita.   Rome. Death. The film begins with a Japanese tourist collapsing. Before he’s even bitten the dust, an all-female vocal ensemble, dressed in black, sings a mournful Yiddish folk song (translated lyrics: “I lie down in bed…