Lit Hub Daily: January 27, 2021

• “By the early 1950s, female sexuality, once hailed as explosive, now seemed almost as frightening as communism.” Gabrielle Glaser on the history of “girls in trouble.” | Lit Hub History
• Ellen Harper reflects on growing up among folk musicians, a community of activists. | Lit Hub Music
• Disrupting whiteness in the classroom means starting with educating teachers. | Lit Hub Politics
• “Initially, I approached this idea in the same way that I approach everything: through books.” Rhian Sasseen on learning how to ride a bike as an adult—just like Simone de Beauvoir. | Lit Hub
• The value of writing “a potential communicative act,” AKA a book that might never be read. | Lit Hub
• Kaori Fujimoto on the highs and lows of learning to write in a second language. | Lit Hub
• Luster, The Fire Next Time, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and more rapid-fire book recs from Avni Doshi. | Book Marks
• Curtis Evans on the “One Cent Hitch-Hiker Slaying” and the 1946 novel that captured an era. | CrimeReads
• “For the reader of Mating, love and politics, intimacy and justice, are held in perfect equipoise; the pitfalls and possibilities of both are precisely—and thrillingly—explored to their limits.” Considering Norman Rush’s masterpiece at 30. | The Point
• Lydia Kiesling recommends the 40-year-old parenting book that actually made her a better parent. | The New York Times
• “The greatest trick that Irmgard Keun ever played was convincing the world she didn’t exist.” On the banned German novelist who disappeared herself from the Nazis. | Smithsonian Magazine
• A New Mexico book club is helping people in their town get vaccinated more efficiently, because apparently book clubs are our healthcare system now! | The Washington Post
• “Bearing witness to what frames an American identity has been a humbling, often unexpected experience.” Here’s what Heather John Fogarty learned from a project to read across America. | Los Angeles Times
• Facing allegations of underpayment and discrimination, Small Press Distribution has started an internal audit process. | Publishers Weekly
• “The impulse is to either put the book down in disgust or anger or keep reading to see what he will come up with next.” Considering the late work of Frederick Seidel. | Poetry

Also on Lit Hub: Michelle Duster remembers the legacy of Ida B. Wells—her great-great grandmother • Robert Michael Pyle reflects on the life cycle of Gray’s River Valley • Read from Natalie Haynes’s new novel, A Thousand Ships.