Spanish Poet Eva Baltasar’s Novel ‘Permafrost’ and the Art of Translation
Eva Baltasar’s Permafrost is an aesthetic novel that underscores the magnificence of a poet successfully translating poetic awareness into prose.
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Jayro Bustamente’s War Crimes Film, ‘La Llorona’, Reckons with Crushing Guilt
Bustament’s Efraín Ríos Montt-inspired La Llorona reimagines the Latin American folk tale of a woman mourning her children along the banks of the river where they drowned.
Michael DeForge’s ‘Heaven No Hell’ Delivers on Its Promise
Artistic evolution alone cannot explain what is found within Michael DeForge’s Heaven No Hell.
Shigeru Mizuki’s ‘Tono Monogatari’ Gives Readers Immersive Storytelling with a Personal Touch
In his adaptation of okai stories, ‘Tono Monogatari’, manga artist and historian Shigeru Mizuki is at once narrator, illustrator, reader, and participant, explaining the stories’ connections to Japanese legend and belief.
Filmmaker and Critic Virginie Despentes Is Still, Unfortunately, Quite Necessary
Virginie Despentes’ feminist arguments in her recently rebooted collection of essays, King Kong Theory, remain fresh and frustratingly relevant.
Silence Has a Sound: The Unempty Quiet in ‘Sound of Metal’
If punk is for those who reject mainstream culture, then in the music film Sound of Metal, nothing is more punk than radical deaf acceptance.
Truths Overlap in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Memoir of German Reunification, ‘Not a Novel’
Living under the repressive East German regime taught its citizens to distrust their government and read through the lines of its proclamations to glean the reality of a situation, Jenny Erpenbeck explains in Not a Novel.
Pretend It’s a City Proves Once Again, You Can’t Argue with Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz’s ubiquitous little smirk is still going as strong as ever because she never feels bad about herself.
Alvarez’s ‘In The Time of the Butterflies’ Returns with Undiminished Intensity
The lure of beautiful beaches might make the Dominican Republic among the most popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean, but the ghosts of its troubled history, as captured in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, stalk the living.
Box Brown Takes on the Ultimate Weed Killer in ‘Cannabis’
As cannabis legalization spreads, Box Brown's graphic novel, Cannabis, examines the sordid and racist history of how it became demonized in the first place.
Scorsese and Dylan: A Match Made in Fantasy
In Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, a cinematic genius and a Nobel Prize-winning musical icon pair for a magical and purposefully deceptive look at rock 'n' roll life in the mid-'70s.
‘How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents’ Holds Particular Relevance in These Times
Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is more relevant in America in 2019 than Alvarez might have imagined her debut novel would be in 1991.