I first learned about the decades-long Japanese occupation of Korea in 1985, when my grandfather told me he still dreamed in Japanese. “Granfy’s first language,” he said, referring to himself, as he often did, in the third person by his self-chosen nickname. He regularly spoke of the superiority of Korean language and culture, such that I expected him to bring it up at every visit.
And so this revelation startled me. He didn’t explain this to me, either. I wanted to ask questions, but given how painful it seemed for him to tell me this, I remember thinking questions could wait. How could it matter enough to me, to who I was, to put him through that?
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s new translation of 52 Chekhov stories doesn’t include many of his most famous works (their versions of those can be found in a collection from 2000, only available in the UK as an e-book). But walking the overgrown pathways of his less familiar stories can help give a fresh sense of why his storytelling has been so influential, and remains compelling in its own right.
Breasts and Eggs addresses the multifaceted nature of what it means to move through the world as a woman, which means presenting womanhood in a variety of ways, ages, and life experiences.
These source texts imagine that we continue to have a relationship with the dead after they have passed on, a relationship organized by a cosmic justice system. Underworld Lit thus asks: What is the underworld literature that can guide us now? What is the justice system that could address the sheer scale of death in our modern era, achieved by colonialism and racial capitalism? I don’t think that Underworld Lit aspires to be that text, perhaps ultimately suggesting through its intertextuality that any one book would be inadequate to that immense task. However, it does school readers on the fragility of innocence in a world where violence is epistemic and our sense of accountability is conveniently circumscribed.
Eric Weiner's The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers rekindled my love for philosophy. A smart, funny, engaging book full of valuable lessons, The Socrates Express is not an explanation — it's an invitation to think and experience philosophy filtered through Weiner's words.
The bullet train stops briefly to get the freshest meat from the vendors
it carries a returning army and the grown children are hungry