USA Archives - Andrew Blackman

Reading

Stories of Racism and Retail Hell: Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Race and capitalism in America should be fertile ground for literary fiction. This year’s Black Friday shopping frenzy brought the usual bout of stabbings and shootings to add to the overall death count, not to mention the looming environmental collapse that…

Thinking

Occam’s Razor and the Rise of Populism

Over the past few years, people have been wringing their hands over the rise of populism, whether it's far-right parties in Europe, Brexiteers in the UK or Trump in the US. Now, academics have found the rise in populism is…

Reading

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner: Review

I think I have a problem with over-hyped books. Although the hype is never true, I always end up believing it, and come to a book with ridiculously high expectations that can never be satisfied. A similar thing happened a…

Reading

Dog and Butterfly

Tolstoy famously wrote that “All happy families are alike”, but John Philip Riffice’s novel Dog and Butterfly proves that all good rules also have their exceptions. It’s a novel about a family that is, in general, very happy. The love between…

Reading

“Ruminations from the Garden” by Don Henry Ford, Jr.

Almost all writers carry a notebook around with them to record thoughts and ideas as they arise. They usually end up being quite random, a mix of the brilliant and the mundane, day-to-day worries mixed in with the germs of…

Thinking

Excited

I am staying up to watch the US election results. It probably won’t be decided until 4 or 5am UK time, but I wouldn’t miss it. The early results are good. I’m not optimistic that Obama will bring great changes…

Thinking

Get in touch with your inner racist!

When I lived in New York, there was a small shop across the street that was owned by a man from Afghanistan. I used to visit him in the days after September 11, and he had a bewildered, beleaguered look…

Thinking

Payback

Many people in Britain have been wondering for the last few years exactly what we get out of the “special relationship” with the United States. We go along with Afghanistan, we go along with Iraq, we go along with anything.…

Thinking

American left-wing blogs are myopic

I’m very new to blogging. I go out into the world and look for blogs that I might be interested in — things that are left-wing, radical, socialist, environmentalist, anarchist, etc. The name “LeftAlign” is a clue to my general…