Another article wonders what happened to the To Kill a Mockingbird author. Leave the old woman alone, she doesn’t want to be found. Though maybe the other literary mavens in this Book magazine article want nothing better than to be found.
“When Julie Shigekuni, author of the upcoming “Invisible Gardens,” was interviewing to teach a first-time course in Asian American literature at the University of New Mexico near her home, she says this is how she was asked about the insights she would bring to the class: ‘Amy Tan has already written the Asian American experience. Why should we hire you?’
Tan also haunts Mako Yoshikawa, author of the June release “Once Removed” (Bantam), an explosive novel about two estranged sisters, a Japanese American and her American stepsister, who find each other after 17 years. “I feel uncomfortable with the Amy Tan legacy,” Yoshikawa says almost reluctantly, like countless young women who say, yeah, I’m grateful to Betty Friedan and all, but jeez, isn’t it time to move on?”
Read That was ‘Joy Luck,’ this is now .
Kathryn Chetkovich writes about what it was like to be a struggling writer and to have Jonathan Franzen for a boyfriend. The green-eyed monster reared its head.
Link via Gawker.
Say you forgot the title of one of your favorite children’s books…well, you can use Stump The Bookseller. The fine folks at that site will solve the mystery.
EW‘s It books list (which is in fact an It authors list) features no major surprises. They picked one or two authors each for novels, memoirs, short stories, and chick lit: Heidi Julavits, Augusten Burroughs, ZZ Packer, Anthony Doerr, Jennifer Vanderbes, and Sophie Kinsella.
“Rejecting the First Amendment arguments offered by civil libertarians and the association representing the nation’s librarians, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is constitutional. The law requires libraries that receive federal money for their Internet tools to use filtering software to block access to adult Web sites and other online information deemed inappropriate for minors. ” The Washington Post’s Cynthia Webb explains. The problem, of course, is that there isn’t really any filtering software that works appropriately. See for example, the case of the library that filtered itself out.