Garatas de Papel – Paper Girls

Ibirama The Livros de Sacanagem of Carlos Zéfiro. “The sun, the scanty clothing, the mixing of races, the taste of sin, all have contributed to making Brazil the most erotic land on the planet.  here we show how carnival, TV, newspapers, writers, composers, and fleshy girls are all together in a conspiracy against the citizen who […]

“My body may be here but my mind’s long gone with the Igbo.”

quote by Paule Marshall 2 of 7 books I love. This is my Igbo father inscribing a benediction in his book on our subject 9 days before mine, Life Turns Man Up and Down, was published. We hadn’t met until I’d written but not yet published and I blame editorial incompetence for LTMUAD’s not benefiting […]

Morte D’Urban

6 of 7 books I love. Save a very few literary Minnesotans, I don’t expect many FBers to know this novel, reissued by NYRB, won the National Book Award in 1963. It’s set, as was Mr. Powers, in the environs of St. John’s, the Benedictine college and monastery midpoint between my mother’s and father’s towns […]