Ancient Grains Archive
Introducing Our Woman In Italy: Dispatches From the Front
Ancient Grains, Politics
Aug 13, 2013
So. I'm Italian.
I was born here, and 35 years later, I still live here. I could give you a number of plausible-sounding reasons for it---I enjoy spending time with my family; I almost make a living as a writer in my native language---but, the truth is, I did try leaving. It
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The Long Climb to Nowhere: On Oprah and the Impossibility of “Transcending Race”
Ancient Grains, Racism
Aug 13, 2013
I love Oprah Winfrey.
When The Oprah Winfrey Show was on the air I didn’t watch it much, because that woman has a gift for finding my heartstrings and pulling them until I’m feeling whatever emotion she wants me to feel. Full disclosure: I cried like a baby when she interviewed John ...Read More
Things Done Better Elsewhere
Advice, Ancient Grains
Aug 13, 2013
Following the successful crowd-sourcing of our recent Things You Know installment, I thought it might be interesting to delve into the world of how things get done in other places that we could learn from.
Now, I'm not talking "health care" or "paid maternity leave" or "decent sandwiches on trains," I'm talking
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V.C. Andrews and “Disability Horror”
Ancient Grains, Books
Aug 12, 2013
You may have heard the phrase “body horror” used to describe a genre focused on producing terror and disgust by doing gruesome things to bodies. A lot of V.C. Andrews’s work falls into this category. Physical discomfort is a huge part of her work. There's a lot of painful childbirth and missed
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The Delightful Deviance of Flowers in the Attic
Ancient Grains, Books
Aug 12, 2013
When I look at some of the fiction I’ve written, it’s not really surprising that as a young girl, I was obsessed with V.C. Andrews’s Flowers in the Attic. Wealth! Children! An attic turned into a playground! Evil grandmother and eviler mother! Incest! I still cannot eat powdered donuts and am very
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“Whither Flowers?”: The Future of Illicit Reading
Ancient Grains, Books
Aug 12, 2013
This piece came about in a strange-ish way, as they so often do. I had fallen down a Wiki hole of truly epic proportions, having stumbled upon the fifty most interesting Wikipedia articles and fifty more.
STOP. I know what you're
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Suggestions From Various Internet Commenters On Improving Lifetime’s Upcoming Flowers in the Attic Movie Remake
Ancient Grains, Books, Meta
Aug 12, 2013
The setup:
V.C. Andrews’ controversial bestselling book, Flowers in the Attic, is getting a TV movie adaptation at Lifetime. The cable network has greenlighted the film, which will star Heather Graham and Ellen Burstyn. Flowers In The Attic weaves the gothic tale of four young siblings, two boys and two girls, who, after the ...Read More
Our First Encounters With Flowers in the Attic
Ancient Grains, Books
Aug 12, 2013
"I never watched horror movies as a little kid. Once my wife and I started dating, I found out that she had LOVED horror movies from pretty much the moment she saw her first one. After we moved moved in together, we often did all-day movie marathons. There was a cheap, crummy
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