When Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein was a student, she only ever had one Black professor (a man) and “didn’t meet a Black woman with a PhD in physics until I was almost done with college.” That’s because only about fifty Black women in the United States before her had earned a…
In the 1990s, Neal Horsley, an anti-abortion activist tied to the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), published information about abortion providers. He created a website to which he posted their home addresses, home phones, license plate numbers, and names of their spouses and children. He called it The Nuremberg…
Recently, I spotted an error in a traditionally published book. Let me assure you that you can avoid this error, easily and forever, through choosing self-publication.
First, for those who aren’t aware of the difference between traditional and self-publication, I’ll give a very brief overview. …
When we ponder what’s possible, we help to build the future.
Today I am thinking about two ideas from Nikki Stern and Rohit Bhargava that teach me to hope better.
Nikki Stern lists these questions in the first chapter of her 2012 book Hope in Small Doses: Reasonable Happiness in…
Some people do not like the word “hope.” It is often an empty word. It is used in greeting cards. But hope, just as often, has deeper meanings.
I am not attached to the word “hope,” but it is a common word for certain concepts that are important. Here, in…
The science fiction writer Arturo Serrano releases a new alternate history novel today, and he greets us with a long tweet thread this U.S. Thanksgiving morning.
For reference, here’s the book:
Serrano gives thanks for Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt as his original “model for…
Recently I wrote about the question of evil.
It may not surprise you, then, that I also picked up Serial Killing: A Philosophical Anthology (2015), edited by Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley. …
What purpose is served by belief in God? Ara Norenzayan gives one answer in his book Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict.
When we claim to have such a belief, we imply we believe we’re being watched. By asserting our belief in God, Norenzayan says, we send the…
Madelyn Jablon’s 1997 book Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in African American Literature teaches about novels and what “metafiction” means.
Black fiction, Jablon writes, has a “tradition of self-consciousness.” She cites the theorists Robert Scholes (Fabulation and Metafiction) and Linda Hutcheon (Narcissistic Narrative), who acknowledge a couple individual Black writers of metafiction…
A couple months ago, Dara Horn released People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. It’s a collection of personal essays about antisemitism, especially in the United States, with special consideration of how people remember stories of Holocaust survival or non-survival.
Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report…
Writing on dignity, democracy, and truth. Author: ‘Ten Past Noon: Focus and Fate at Forty’ https://tuckerlieberman.com/ten-past-noon
