A Quick Reminder
This “Four Things To Read” roundup from the first fifteen issues of Four By Four is the second one I’ve sent. The first one included the sixty images from “Four Things To See,” and the third, which I have not put together yet, will “round up” everything from “Four Things To Listen To.” After the third one, these roundups will only be available to paid subscribers. If you’d like to receive the roundups along with all the other benefits of supporting It All Connects financially, click the button below. If you are not already signed in, you will need to sign in with the email address at which you receive the newsletter—it’s a one-time thing—and then click the Account button in the top right corner of your screen.
This roundup gathers links to the books and articles from Four by Four #1-15. I've divided the articles into categories and the books by genre. I’d be interested to hear what you think of the “Isms & Phobias” category. Rather than break it up into more specific groupings (racism, antisemitism, homophobia, etc.), I thought it would be interesting to see what kinds of connections might happen if I grouped them all under one heading. Enjoy!
Books
- Kindred, by Octavia Butler (fiction)
- My Mother’s Story, by Sonia Alland (memoir)
- Harold & the Purple Crayon, by D. Gilson (children’s literature)
- The Anti-Racist Creative Writing Workshop, by Felicia Rose Chavez (nonfiction)
- Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, by David Nirenberg (nonfiction)
- September 12, by Andrea Carter Brown (poetry)
Articles
Literary
- When Hamlet Speaks Persian: A History of Shakespeare Translation in Iran, by Samuel Tafreshi
- Poet, Artist, Erotic Muse of Mexico’s Avant Garde: Rediscovering Nahui Olin, by Claire Mullen
- The Art of Fiction No. 78 - A Paris Review interview with James Baldwin, by Jordan Elgrably
- On the Gleefully Indecent Poems of a Medieval Welsh Feminist Poet, by Lauren Cocking
- On narrative, reckoning and the calculus of living and dying, by Dionne Brand
- Tales from Crane Nation, by Alex Stein (A review of The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, by Omer Friedlander
- Coney Island, A Dadaist Sound Poem by Victor Packer
- Irene, Goodnight, by Jessica Cuello
- An Interview with Jared Hárel, by Catherine Fletcher
- Ode to the Powerless: Bessie Head’s ‘A Question of Power’ through a Personal Lens, by Nkateko Masinga
- A Persisting Inheritance: On the First-Ever Anthology of Sri Lankan and Diasporic Poetry in the UK, by Sohini Basak
- Do You Pay?, by Allison K Williams - If you’re a writer who submits to literary journals, this essay is well worth reading.
Jewish Culture
- What Bradley Cooper’s Makeup Can’t Conceal, by Yair Rosenberg
- Can Judaism Survive A Messianic Dictatorship In Israel? by Yuval Noah Hariri
- We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other, by Arielle Angel
Israel & Palestine
- A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return, by Peter Beinart
- What Did Top Israeli War Officials Really Say About Gaza?, by Yair Rosenberg
- A Mass Assassination Factory: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza, by Ben Reiff
- The Epidemiological War on Gaza, by Maya Rosen
- ‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7, by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella - While much, if not all of the reporting in this article was called into serious question, I am including it here as an honest record of what I was reading and recommending at the timer.
- Co-Teaching a Class on Israel and Palestine, by Bernard Avishai
Science, Medicine, and Technology
- A catatonic woman awakened after 20 years. Her story may change psychiatry., by Richard Sima
- What If Competition Isn’t As “Natural” As We Think, by John Favini
- ChatGPT and GPT-4 skew the most liberal — and Meta's LLaMA is the most conservative AI model, a new study says, by Kylie Kirschner
- So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent Printing As We Know It, by M. Sophia Newman
- The first observations of octopus brain waves revealed how alien their minds truly are, by Troy Farah
- Algorithms Hijacked My Generation, by Freya India
- He Was Falsely Accused of Using AI. Here’s What He Wishes His Professor Did Instead, by Erik Ofgang
- Children Anticipate What Others Want, But Great Apes Don’t, by Joanna Thompson
- A New English Dialect Is Emerging in South Florida, Linguists Say, by Phillip M. Carter
- Man admits participating in ‘castration by clamping’ incidents, by Emine Sinmaz
- If One Part Suffers, by Michelle Orange - about Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID)
Gender & Sexuality
- The rise of voluntary celibacy: ‘Most of the sex I’ve had, I wish I hadn’t bothered, by Ermine Saner
- A Professor’s Remarks on Sexual Consent Stir Controversy, by Vimal Patel
- Abortion Snitching Is Already Sending People to Jail, by Morgan Carmen
- Supreme Court Decision on Reckless Speech Will Cost Victims of Stalking and Harassment, by Michelle Onello
- The Vagina Museum’s Word Of The Day (May 26, 2023) - Unfortunately, you will need an X account to read the whole thread, so, for those of you who don’t have one, here is the Wikipedia entry.
- The Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence, by Maria Popover
Isms & Phobias
- I’m a Black Professor. You Don’t Need to Bring That Up., by Tyler Austin Harper
- Black English Doesn’t Have to Be Just for Black People, by John McWhorter
- The Lust Libel: Sexual Antisemitism in History and Contemporary Culture, by Jonah Cohen
- Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies, by Dara Horn
Social Issues
- No, I Will Not Debate You, by Laurie Penny
- The Parents Trying to Pass Down a Language They Hardly Speak, by Kat Chow
- 6 Iranians, 1 Year After the Iran Protests Began, by Alex Shams
- I Finally Found A Name For My Father’s Abuse, by Mia Brett
- An Interview With the School Board Chair Who Forced Out a Principal After Michelangelo’s David Was Shown in Class, by Dan Kris
- Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign, in His Own Menacing Words, by Ian Prasad Philbrick and Lyna Bentahar
- Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans, By Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
- Local Journalism Worth Reading From 2023
- Ukraine, by Dovid Hofshteyn, essay and translation by Daniel Kraft
- Behind the New Iron Curtain, by Marzio G. Mian, Translated by Elettra Pauletto
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I'm a poet and essayist. I write about poetry, writing, and translation; gender and sexuality; Jewish identity and culture; and the politics of higher education.
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