Título: How to Read Now: Essays
Autor: Elaine Castillo
Sinopse: “How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories.”
“A book that doesn’t seek to shut down the current literary discourse so much as shake it up.” (The New York Times Book Review) Offering “its audience the opportunity to look past the simplicity we’re all too often spoon-fed into order to restore ourselves to chaos and complexity — a way of seeing and reading that demands so much more of us but offers even more in return." (Los Angeles Times)
"I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed while reading these essays from the phenomenal Elaine Castillo. What powerful writing, what a rigorous mind. For as long as I live, I want to read anything Castillo writes, and you probably do, too." —R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words—beautiful, aspirational—are sometimes even true. But award-winning novelist Elaine Castillo has more ambitious hopes for our reading culture, and in this collection of linked essays, “she moves to wrest reading away from the cotton-candy aspirations of uniting people in empathetic harmony and reposition it as thornier, ultimately more rewarding work.” (Vulture)
How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.
At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman’s reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy—within ourselves, and with each other.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “How to Read Now: Essays”, de Elaine Castillo, publicado pela editora Viking, em 2022 e com 352 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Viking
Páginas: 352
Ano: 2022-07-26
Edição:
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0593489632
ISBN13: 9780593489635
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Viking trazem uma experiência de leitura que alterna entre narrativas densas e reflexivas e obras de não ficção que exploram temas sociais, históricos e culturais com profundidade. O catálogo revela um interesse recorrente por histórias que abordam identidades pessoais e coletivas, como memórias familiares, trajetórias imigratórias e questões de poder, além de investigações sobre fenômenos culturais e econômicos contemporâneos. Há títulos que combinam relatos íntimos e jornalísticos com análises que dialogam com a atualidade, oferecendo um tom acessível, porém rigoroso. A diversidade se manifesta tanto em romances com ambientações históricas e contemporâneas quanto em ensaios que cruzam disciplinas, sugerindo uma linha editorial que valoriza a complexidade do real e do humano.
