Barbara Lane May 3, 2021
Is there any good fiction featuring excellent or even better-than-average parents? OK, once in a while we get an Atticus Finch or Marmee, but, by and large, negligent or even abusive parents are behind many more great stories.
Avni Doshi’s impressively assured first novel, “Burnt Sugar,” opens with this: “I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.” And it’s no wonder. Tara, the mother at the center of the novel, escapes her arranged marriage and highly critical mother-in-law to join an ashram, where she becomes the guru’s lover and completely neglects Antara, her young daughter, to the extent that she “would disappear every day, dripping with milk, leaving me unfed.”
I hope you tuned in this week when
President Barack Obama joined us for a conversation with filmmaker Ava DuVernay about his bestselling memoir “A Promised Land.” But if you weren’t able to attend the streaming event Wednesday, never fear: Watch this special book club event here.
Obama talked about leadership, failure, activism and police reform, which he says begins with reimagining the role of law enforcement.
“What does it mean for a community to be safe?” Obama asked during the book club conversation. “For most of our history, policing in the African American community has meant just keeping a lid on things and keeping control and maintaining barriers and boundaries, rather than actually serving those communities.”
Minari.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Eight films are in the running for Best Picture, the most prestigious award at the Oscars, this year. That’s a lot of movies to watch, analyze, and enjoy. So in the days leading up to the April 25 ceremony, Vox staffers look at each of the nominees in turn. What makes this film appealing to Academy voters? What makes it emblematic of the year? And should it win?
Below, Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson, senior culture reporter Alex Abad-Santos, identities reporter Fabiola Cineas, and critic at large Emily VanDerWerff talk about
Minari, Lee Isaac Chung’s vibrant family drama about a Korean American family living in the Ozarks in the 1980s.
Steven Yeun s Perfect Accent in Minari newyorker.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newyorker.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published April 19, 2021, 1:57 PM
The four novels today come from all points of the globe. From India to the UK, and from North America to South Korea. What unites these four novels, is the impeccable quality of the writing, no matter how different their genres are.
‘Death in the East’ by Abir Mukherge
A double-locked room mystery, the events of this entertaining detective mystery take place over two specific time periods. One is in 1905, as our main protagonist, Detective Sam Wyndham, is a fresh constable in East End London; and then in 1922 Assam, India, where the same Wyndham is a Calcutta detective, assisted by the quick-witted “Surrender-Not” Banerjee. Wyndham is at an Assam ashram hoping to be cured of his opium addiction, when he stumbles upon an old London acquaintance he had presumed dead or at the very least, disappeared off the face of the earth and then is entwined in a new, potential murder case.