“In Defiance of Genre: on Octavia Butler,” by Jamal Stone.
by Jamal Stone Kindred, Octavia Butler’s 1979 best-seller, defies genre conventions. It is an intensely emotional novel that blends elements of sci-fi time travel with an antebellum first-person slave narrative. The novel takes African American protagonist Dana back to slave times at seemingly random intervals, leaving her to survive in a cruel world as she tries...
The Language of Grief
On the occasion of Pacific Northwest writer Charles D’Ambrosio’s new book of essays, Loitering, slated for November release from Tin House, we’re recommending “Documents,” a piece D’Ambrosio contributed to The New Yorker in 2002, and which is included in Loitering. The essay, a delicate yet devastating memoir in fragments, is partially composed of passages culled...
“Barrow, Alaska” Photographer Wins Recognition
Congratulations to photographer Dawn Whitmore, whose photo essay on Barrow, Alaska, is a centerpiece of Broad Street’s “Hunt, Gather” issue. Whitmore recently was awarded second place in the 2014 Photo Review Competition, juried by by Jennifer Blessing, senior curator of photography for the Guggenheim Museum of Art. Her winning work will be exhibited at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia from October 31-December 5....
Devil’s Advocate
From the 1997 film by Jamal Stone The facts: Broad Street Magazine’s “Bedeviled” issue draws closer than ever to publication, Halloween is less than a week away, and The Devil’s Advocate recently has been picked up as a TV series by NBC. This raises a question: Rhetorically, a devil’s advocate is someone who argues for argument’s sake,...
Truth by Lying
At the banquet for his Nobel Prize for literature in 2003, J.M. Coetzee, author of Foe, mused about truth and authorship. He recalled the moment in his childhood where he realized that Robinson Crusoe was not, in fact, written by Robinson Crusoe. Then, rather than delivering the traditional lecture, Coetzee told a strange story in which he claimed...
