Matt Snee is a writer based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Currently reading – A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry. Born in 1930, Hansberry was the first African-American playwright to have a play performed on Broadway. Had she not died of pancreatic cancer at age 34, there is no telling what she could have accomplished.
Currently watching – Beau travail, directed by Clair Denis, 1999. Born in 1946, Denis is a French filmmaker who was raised in colonial French Africa. This film is her modern interpretation of Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd.”
Currently watching – Pillars, a short film by Haley Elizabeth Anderson. Anderson is a young filmmaker from Texas.
Currently reading – The Pugilist at Rest, by Thom Jones. Born in 1945, Jones was an American writer. This collection of short stories, his first book, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1993. Jones died in 2016.
Currently reading – Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity, by Porochista Khakpour. Born in Tehran in 1978, Khakpour is an Iranian-American writer whose family fled Iran for Southern California when she was a child.
Currently watching – Days of Heaven, directed by Terrence Malick, 1978. Born in 1943, Malick is an award-winning filmmaker known for his lyrical, stunningly beautiful films. Been meaning to watch this one for a while.
Currently watching – Welcome II the Terrordrome, directed by Ngozi Onwurah, 1995. Born in 1966, Onwurah is a British-Nigerian filmmaker. This sci-fi film of racial strife in an Afrofuturist dystopia was the first film by a black woman theatrically distributed in Britain.
Currently reading – Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, a play by Tony Kushner. Born in 1956, Kushner is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Watching “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” got me started thinking about plays.
Currently watching – Grand Budapest Hotel, directed by Wes Anderson, 2014. Born in 1969, Anderson is an American filmmaker and a modern superstar auteur.
Currently reading – Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, by Jacqueline Rose. Born in 1949, Rose is a British academic focused on the relationships between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. This book examines the pressures and cruelties society inflicts upon mothers.
