The Books Briefing: The Act of Writing Is an Oscar-Worthy Performance

📚 The UnAmericans, by Molly Antopol

📚 “Wants,” by Grace Paley

A new way of looking at To Kill a Mockingbird

“I realized that Atticus, as the protagonist [of the stage version of the] story, has to … have a flaw … It turned out that Harper Lee had [already] given him one; it’s just that when we all learned the book, it was taught as a virtue.”

📚 To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

🎭 To Kill a Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin

What Richard Pryor’s stand-up can teach writers

“When you take an empathetic perspective on the world, and step into things that don’t have human consciousness, you’re allowed access into moments in a way you never would be otherwise.”

📚 Love and Death in the Sunshine State, by Cutter Wood

🎭 Live on the Sunset Strip, by Richard Pryor

(Penguin Books)

Personal identity is (mostly) performance

“The objects with which we fill our homes play a vital role in how we construct our sense of self.”

📚 An excerpt from Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self, by Jennifer Ouellette

What Zadie Smith taught Roxane Gay: Identity is drag

“I was trying to figure out who I was and what might be possible for me. I was trying to write toward a space where I could reveal my most authentic self to the people who knew me but did not.”

📚 NW, by Zadie Smith

📚 An Untamed State, by Roxane Gay

The Reference Desk

(New York Public Library)

Write to the Books Briefing team at booksbriefing@theatlantic.com or reply directly to this email with any of your reading-related dilemmas. We might feature one of your questions in a future edition of the Books Briefing and offer a few books or related Atlantic pieces that might help you out.

About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Rosa Inocencio Smith. She’s currently rereading The Princess Bride, by William Goldman.

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Rosa Inocencio Smith is an assistant editor at The Atlantic.