On Fiction
Inventing a Nation: Jacques Roumain and Haitian Kreyòl
Haitian independence from France in 1804 led to a host of consequences for the first black republic in the world. Among them was a fraught relationship with the new nation’s…
Conversations: Rion Amilcar Scott and Bro. Yao
Rion Amilcar Scott I’ve attempted many times to render as fiction my first conversation with Hoke Glover III (or Bro. Yao as many know him). Such a scene has always…
Six Proposals for the Reform of Literature in the Age of Climate Change
A century ago, China was in chaos. The Qing Empire had been overthrown by a loosely coordinated confederation of elites. The regional militias and armies that held sway were each…
Call for Submissions: Translation Feature
BOSTON, MA – MAY 2, 2016 | The Critical Flame, a bimonthly online journal of book reviews, criticism, essays, interviews, and literary nonfiction, announces an invitation for submissions to a…
The Mastery of Absences: China Miéville’s This Census-Taker
If texts with narrative plots and wholesome structures are read and written according to disciplines and procedures conforming to their configurations, then perforated structures, degenerate formations, and plot holes must…
A Taste of Immortality: The Post-Earthquake Haitian Novel
Quand on revient de l’enfer, chaque baiser a un goût d’immortalité. (When you come back from hell, every kiss has a taste of immortality.) —Yanick Lahens, Failles (all translations by…
50 Shades of Lydia Davis
“Sex is the brightest thread in the thick, strangely cut fabric of our lives; we can never know what it means, but we’re always sure we’re certain.” —Edmund White There are…
Missing the Mark: Nell Zink’s Racial Fluidity
When Jess Row’s “White Flights” was published in Boston Review in 2013, nobody in the American literary world, except perhaps Jonathan Franzen, had heard of Nell Zink, an American writer…
“Wherein past, present, and future he beholds”: Comics and the Eternal Present
“What, then, is time?” Christian philosopher St. Augustine asked. “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do…