![]() They also show emotional states that shape a writing life: excitement at new ideas, despair at lack of progress, anxiety about the reception of the work, wonderful bursts of ego. In these letters I found gossip, frustration with war and politics, acts of tenderness (‘I embrace you’ – is how they signed off), bouts of depression, and certain words that made me flinch. The complete correspondence (edited and translated by Barbara Beaumont) maps the intimacy between the two authors after meeting in Paris in 1863. Sometime during this past year’s bleak European winter, I read FLAUBERT & TURGENEV, A FRIENDSHIP IN LETTERS. Too many poetry books, but NOTES ON THE SONNETS by Luke Kennard (Penned in the Margins) made me feel seen as the odd human animal we all are, EAT OR WE BOTH STARVE by Victoria Kennefick (Carcanet) is visceral bliss, AUNTY UNCLE POEMS by Gboyega Odubanjo (Smith|Doorstop) is the actual best, and POOR by Caleb Femi (Penguin) changed everything. Late to the party, I read and loved Maggie Nelson’s THE ARGONAUTS (Melville House): radical intertextual discourse and romantic ass-fucking on the first page – what’s not to love? JEWS DON’T COUNT by David Baddiel (TLS) was a deeply personal read, moving me to confront my own feelings of Jewish shame. Similarly devastating: NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS by Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury) reveals a world painfully recognisable, utterly surprising and finally, deeply moving. I was blown away by Natasha Brown’s ASSEMBLY (Hamish Hamilton): a searing account of everyday othering from both the maligned and the well-intentioned, with passages of staggering beauty and an ending that slayed me. ![]() A remarkable encounter with a book whose narrative is built from a singular question: where can the mind go when the body reaches its maximum threshold of experience? And from another time completely (1915) I read for the first time this year Jack London’s STAR ROVER. I also got a lot from Harry Sword’s book/long form playlist MONOLITHIC UNDERTOW (White Rabbit), which surveys the leaking of what seems like a singular drone through genres, epochs and ideologies. The essential contribution here is that to aestheticise politics is, under the right circumstance, not to decorate or to inappropriately beautify it, but rather an essential mechanism to make it sensible. An undeviating announcement of the subversive potential of contemporary aesthetic practices. Much closer to my filter bubble is Eyal Weizman and Matthew Fuller’s INVESTIGATIVE AESTHETICS (Verso). Kim Ghattas and I may be in parallel ideological lanes and yet the cluster-fuck constellation she accumulates around 1979, in her book BLACK WAVE (Wildfire), is a revelation (not least because we may finally have the answer here to who killed Moussa Sadr). The White Review depends upon the support of its readers, and with your support we’ll continue to create space for new art and writing in 2022 and beyond. This year, we’re taking our annual fundraiser online. Tomas Rivera’s short story, “Zoo Island,” describes how Mexican immigrants suffered in the 1920s and 1930s, but it also offers a bit of hope.Members of THE WHITE REVIEW editorial team, contributors and friends of the magazine reveal the books they’ve been reading and revisiting in 2021. The immigrants and their children work in the fields, day after day. When it’s dark, they go to the market and then back to their meager camp to sleep. They wake the next day and endlessly repeat the same, excruciatingly boring, cycle. One of the children, Jose, decides to ward off boredom by taking a census (a population count) to see how many people are in their community. Jose is a fifteen year old boy who lives in the migrant work camp with many other Mexicans. The camp is on a farm owned by an American. Jose’s census reveals that there are more people in his “town” than in the nearby town where they get their groceries. It has churches, schools and other standard facilities that Americans too often take for granted.ĭespite their greater population, the other town has far more wealth. ![]() Rivera’s story describes both the pain and pride that the young Jose feels at realizing his community is larger Knowing this gives the boy and his community a bit of hope. ![]() Rivera’s story highlights the inequity and poverty of immigrants during this time, but it also points toward a future where things might change. Tomas Rivera's own history reflects the situation of his characters. His parents were Mexican immigrants and he was born in Texas, 1935. His dream was always to break out of his migrant shell and he did. He got his PhD in Philosophy at The University of Oklahoma and later taught at high schools.
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