“I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to teach me how to write…I prefer to stumble on it.” RIP Chinua Achebe.
Read our interview with the Nigerian writer here.
Whenever the writer writes, it’s always three o’clock in the morning, it’s always three or four or five o’clock in the morning in his head. Those horrid hours are the writer’s days and nights when he is writing. - Joy Williams
And we, poet and felon, know how certain times are right for others and wrong for us. We die 4pm on friday when the fun begins for others. - Richard Hugo
Dworkin’s “Heartbreak” also contains this quote — one that runs through my head each time we discuss Girls or Beyonce or Tumblr feminism (so… daily?).
Andrea Dworkin on discipline, from “Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant”
(Source: ulan-bator)
The Mao Mango Cult of 1968 and the Rise of China’s Working Class
“The next day, Mao delivered a message to the workers, who were still stationed at Qinghua University, designating them as the “permanent managers” of the nation’s education system. Accompanying the message was the untouched case of Pakistani mangoes. In the days to come, much would be made of Mao’s “refusal to eat the fruit,” which was interpreted as “a sacrifice” on the Chairman’s part “for the benefit of the workers.”
…The mangoes were imbued with all sorts of power. They were the vehicle conveying a rare personal message from Mao, in which he thanked them for their heroism in the battle with the Red Guards. Even more auspiciously, the mangoes’ appearance coincided with the transfer of the Cultural Revolution’s stewardship from members of the nation’s intelligentsia (as personified by the student Red Guards) to its workers. Indeed, the mantra of the revolution soon became, “The Working Class Must Exercise Leadership in Everything.””
You have to wonder if the “estimated 30 million Chinese citizens dead, most lost to starvation” from Mao’s Great Leap Forward policies may have also contributed to the fruit’s reverence. At any rate, really dug this piece and the artifacts.
“Skeletons Fighting Over Pickled Herring”
