Hope Isn T Stupid

Hope Isn’t Stupid is the first study to interrogate the neglected connections between affect and the practice of utopia in contemporary American literature. Although these concepts are rarely theorized together, it is difficult to fully articulate utopia without understanding how affects circulate within utopian texts. Moving away from science fiction—the genre in which utopian visions are often located—author Sean Grattan resuscitates the importance of utopianism in recent American literary history. Doing so enables him to assert the pivotal role contemporary American literature has to play in allowing us to envision alternatives to global neoliberal capitalism. Novelists William S. Burroughs, Dennis Cooper, John Darnielle, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, and Colson Whitehead are deeply invested in the creation of utopian possibilities. A return to reading the utopian wager in literature from the postmodern to the contemporary period reinvigorates critical forms that imagine reading as an act of communication, friendship, solace, and succor. These forms also model richer modes of belonging than the diluted and impoverished ones on display in the neoliberal present. Simultaneously, by linking utopian studies and affect studies, Grattan’s work resists the tendency for affect studies to codify around the negative, instead reorienting the field around the messy, rich, vibrant, and ambivalent affective possibilities of the world. Hope Isn’t Stupid insists on the centrality of utopia not only in American literature, but in American life as well.

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A history and examination of dystopia and angst in popular culture that speaks to our current climate of dread. At the dawn of the 20th century, a wide-ranging utopianism dominated popular and intellectual cultures throughout Europe and America. However, in the aftermathof the World Wars, with such canonical examples as Brave New World and Nineteen-Eighty-Four, dystopia emerged as a dominant genre, in literature and in social thought. The continuing presence and eventual dominance of dystopian themes in popular culture-e.g., dismal authoritarian future states, sinister global conspiracies, post-apocalyptic landscapes, a proliferation of horrific monsters, and end-of-the-world fantasies-have confirmed the degree to which the 21st is also a dystopian century. Drawing on literature as varied as H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and on TV and film such as The Walking Dead, Black Mirror, and The Last of Us, Robert T. Tally Jr. explores the landscape of angst created by the monstrous accumulation of dystopian material. The Fiction of Dread provides an innovative reading of contemporary culture and offers an alternative vision for critical theory and practice at a moment when, as has been famously observed, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Featuring readings of contemporary utopian poetry and fiction from authors such as Juliana Spahr, Mohsin Hamid, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lidia Yukavitch, and Cory Doctorow, this book investigates the commons - a form of organisation based on collectivity, communalism and sharing - as a type of transition between capitalist precarity and crisis and anti-capitalist futures. Each of the texts under examination was written in opposition to a particular crisis of the capitalist present - inequality, political representation, mobility, and climate change - and develops a particular mode of utopian 'commoning'. Through its examination of these writers, crises and texts, this book reaffirms the use of utopianism as a tool for generating and representing alternative futures for a world in the midst of ongoing planetary crisis.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

A massive contemporary BWWM romance box set filled with delicious alpha men and salacious encounters by African American romance author, Jamila Jasper. QUARANTINED WITH THE CELEBRITY WHO BOUGHT ME (4 BOOK SERIES) I was eighteen years old when my parents sold me to the star of the biggest boyband in the UK. Quarantined with the maniacal superstar with a body like a God and a craving for brown sugar should have been a dream come true. But Master Henry is not like any guy I’ve ever met. He’s obsessed with me and he wants me to return the favor and worship every inch of his chiseled body. I can’t allow myself to fall for him like every other girl… He may have bought my body, but he can’t buy my love. JEALOUS EX-BOYFRIEND A tipsy one night stand with my ex-boyfriend’s best friend. Perfect. Now Ian won’t leave me alone and if my ex finds out… I’m toast. My ex’s best mate is the last person on Earth I expected to sleep with. When I last saw him, he was a science geek and a total failure with women. Now, the 6’4” geek is so much more. He has a body carved by the gods, PhD smarts, and a tongue that could unlock the chamber of secrets. The mega-dong between his legs is only the icing on the cake. If I’m not careful, I’ll fall for him. Hard. POSSESSIVE BEST FRIEND A tipsy one night stand with my ex-boyfriend’s best friend. Perfect… Not. Ian plans to ensnare me forever. Step One: The Penthouse Step Two: The Contract The mega-dong between his legs might make me crazy enough to sign my body over to Ian. While I’m leaning over the counter to show him exactly how much I belong to him… A huge problem walks in: my ex. If we’re not careful, we’ll be toast. CONFEDERATE RUNAWAY A drafted confederate soldier escapes to the North… Elijah knows the war is wrong. When he escapes the battle of Gettysburg he ends up several hundred miles North. Injured and near death, he arrives on the farm of free black woman, Ellen Freeman. She holds a gun to the rebel's head and from thenceforth, his fate is hers to decide... QUARANTINED WITH THE 10-INCH SOLDIER I’m stuck in quarantine with the hottest soldier alive who happens to be off-limits. I shouldn’t fantasize about him but I can’t help it. Quarantine SUCKS bad! He’s supposed to be protecting me, not thinking about bending me over. I’m supposed to be avoiding human contact, not teasing him. I have to say no to this sexy beast no matter how incredibly bored I am. When my teasing goes too far, I don’t know what Tex will do to me… I hope it’s hot. PLOWED BY THE HUNG REDNECK “I’m a red-blooded American man. I know what I want and it’s you.” I’m here to claim his farm, he’s here to claim me… I’m Tee, with the IRS, and here to foreclose the Grambling farm. The enormous redneck sitting across from me man-spreads and then I see it… The BIGGEST hunk of man meat I’ve ever seen. He has another idea of how to settle his debts that include me… Bent over… Begging for him… Becoming his. BLIND LOVE I am marrying a man who I have never met. The first time we see each other will be after I say “YES!” Will the connection we built behind these walls translate to the real world? Will the explosive passion I feel for this man extend to the bedroom? When I meet Connor, the man I’m going to marry, I know I’ve hit the jackpot. He’s smoking hot and let’s just say, sometimes good things come in ENORMOUS packages. If you love African American romance, hood lit, hood romance, BWWM, WMBW, erotic romance, sexy black women and white men romance, billionaires, soldiers, alpha males, pregnancy romance, black romance, romance with a black female lead, interracial and multicultural romance stories with steamy scenes, you'll love this sizzling collection.

This book examines what literature and film reveal about the urban USA. Subjects include culture, class, race, crime, and disaster.