Dread and Fascination: Sarah Thankam Mathews on Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North
10/09/24 • 78 min
Jo proselytizes about the marvelous medicinal powers of M.W. Craven’s Washington Poe novels before Charlotte (10:30) classes up the episode with a recounting of the viral, ugly-cry-inducing Harry Potter fanfiction “Manacled” by SenLinYu. Then the accomplished Sarah Thankam Mathews (28:30) expounds on colonization, anger, Dumbo’s opps, and the “short little knife” that is Tayeb Salih’s Seasons of Migrations to the North.
Also discussed in this episode: Othello, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, W. Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge
Sarah Thankam Mathews is the author of All This Could Be Different, which was shortlisted for the Discover Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and 2022 National Book Award in Fiction. All This Could Be Different was also a New York Times Editor's Choice and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Slate, and Buzzfeed. Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. Her most recent book is An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work. Learn more at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jo proselytizes about the marvelous medicinal powers of M.W. Craven’s Washington Poe novels before Charlotte (10:30) classes up the episode with a recounting of the viral, ugly-cry-inducing Harry Potter fanfiction “Manacled” by SenLinYu. Then the accomplished Sarah Thankam Mathews (28:30) expounds on colonization, anger, Dumbo’s opps, and the “short little knife” that is Tayeb Salih’s Seasons of Migrations to the North.
Also discussed in this episode: Othello, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, W. Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge
Sarah Thankam Mathews is the author of All This Could Be Different, which was shortlisted for the Discover Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and 2022 National Book Award in Fiction. All This Could Be Different was also a New York Times Editor's Choice and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Slate, and Buzzfeed. Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. Her most recent book is An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work. Learn more at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Previous Episode
Up Ladder Lane: Anna Fitzpatrick on David Grann's The Wager
Season 2 comes out of the gate hot, with Charlotte learning about the Magna Carta through Sharon Kay Penman’s Here Be Dragons, and Jo (18:50) enraptured by the visions of Nat Turner, Black Prophet, by Anthony E. Kaye and Gregory P. Downs. Then the special and wonderful Anna Fitzpatrick joins (29:00) to discuss boats, scurvy, informal autism diagnoses, radicalizing dads through reading recommendations, and David Grann’s The Wager.
Also discussed: Anna’s Good Girl, Dava Sobel’s Longitude, and Sarah Helm’s Ravensbrück.
Anna Fitzpatrick is the author of the novel Good Girl, a comedy about an aspiring slut with a panic disorder published by Flying Books. She is also the author of the children's book Margot and the Moon Landing.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte’s most recent book is An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work. Learn more at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Next Episode
Sobbing on the Floor: Sarah Miller on Elizabeth Jane Howard's The Cazalet Chronicles
Charlotte and Jo discuss the mortifying ordeal of being (visually) perceived and other trials of embodiment as explored in Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face and Judith Moore’s Fat Girl: A True Story. The REAL and spectacular Sarah Miller then joins to give her wholehearted endorsement to Elizabeth Jane Howard’s The Cazalet Chronicles.
Sarah Miller has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, and the Paris Review, covering topics ranging from climate change to American Imperialism to how ugly her unrenovated bathroom is. She works part time at a wine store in Grass Valley California and loves red and blue heelers. Her Substack is called The Real Sarah Miller.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte’s most recent book is An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work. Learn more at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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