A lot of people find magical realism annoying. It’s neither fish nor fowl to use the old fashioned expression. It’s not fantasy and it’s not realism. It’s trying to have things both ways, and many readers do not like that feeling of being in two different genres at once. It’s…

Stephanie Barbé Hammer Friends — there’s spoilers ahead!

Stephanie Barbé Hammer Once upon a time, Mahatma Gandhi decided to buy a mink coat. He came to this decision very suddenly as he sat at the airport in New Delhi, waiting for the plane to Bombay where he was to give an important speech. A magazine from America blew…

why representations of death matter (spoilers) A lot of people aren’t loving the House of the Dragon tv series. It doesn’t have enough action and is too thinky; the dragons are too expected and normal looking; there’s too much icky childbirth, and there isn’t enough fighting. …

Stephanie Barbé Hammer The Diminution There was once a girl whose parents were very big. Large, loud, and boisterous, they walked tall and used many syllabled words. The mother was a 6-foot-5 professor who taught Cervantes and Tolstoy to college classes of 200 or more. …

By Stephanie Barbe Hammer July 5th — Yesterday I was so depressed about the shooting in Chicago that I literally didn’t know what to say or do. I wandered around the house;I put a few things away (neatness is never a good sign for me, mentally). Then I sat on…

Comedy versus satire When I was working as a professor at the University of California, Riverside campus I taught a course on comedy and satire. It was a fun class to teach because it enabled me to work with some of my favorite works of literature: Lysistrata by Aristophanes, Tartuffe by Molière, Candide…

As some of you know, I was born and grew up in a big city. And, most of my life has been spent in cities. …

because now, like it or not, we all have to see ourselves as activists, meaning we have to act… Friends — I’ve been silent on this latest development — the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe — because I feel what everyone I know is feeling: disgust, distress, fear, rage, disappointment…