Guest editor Rea Amit shares a list of 34 books by Japanese women writers
The noticeable changes from twentieth- to twenty-first-century writers reflects the continued presence and importance of feminism internationally as Japanese women continue to move out of the spaces given to them within a male-dominated field.
This erasured handmade map was crafted through and over Samuel Penniman Bates’s chapter on the 25th United States Colored Regiment in his History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–65 (first published in 1869).
“On the last solar term of autumn / so many good things are disappearing / The birds have printed their footsteps on the frosted tiles,” from “Frost‘s Descent,” by Ma Yongbo (trans. by Zack Rogow)
“my country is at war and I want a farmer cheese and vanilla bun / to travel to Europe and to not see the sign ‘You’re Safe Here’,” from [My country is at war], by Olga Bragina (trans. by Olga Zilberbourg)
You Have to Read This!
Be careful what you wish for—especially online, especially if you’re a woman—in this modern adaptation of W. W. Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw.”
The Devil’s Offspring
Desperate to have a child, a couple takes an unorthodox route to conception. But did they bargain with the devil?
An American teacher on a Fulbright in Kolkata encounters a surprising flashpoint in a classroom discussion of concrete nouns.
Inspired by a photo and the histories connected to it, a writer makes a film to mark Wole Soyinka’s ninetieth year.
Can we tell stories, the author asks, “in a way that makes more breathing room, that does not crush humans, not even one, not even a little girl?”
8 Questions for Barrack Zailaa Rima
An interview with Barrack Zailaa Rima, whose graphic three-volume trilogy, Beirut, traces a visit Rima made to the Lebanese capital.
9 Questions for Elif Shafak
A conversation with Elif Shafak, whose new novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky, hit the bookstores in August 2024. “Women are water-carriers, just like they are memory-bearers.”