Freeman's 2: The Best New Writing on Family - Softcover

John Freeman is a literary bowerbird; he has an eye for treasure. It's a skill the New York-based writer and critic sharpened as editor of Granta magazine and is now showcasing with thoughtful confidence in Freeman's, a themed literary anthology with a compellingly global purview... He certainly excels at the art of collection, particularly when he looks beyond the big names. But curating an anthology is more than simple acquisition. You need to listen for rhythms and encourage the pieces to talk to one another, to tell a story greater than the sum of its parts. Freeman's succeeds because it does these things unobtrusively; it brings together strangers, and builds a family. * The Australian * Freeman's sets a new standard for literary journals. It's a welcome addition to the ever-growing roster of publications out there today. It's refreshing and full of nuanced stories that will linger with you long after you finish them. * Chicago Literati * Freeman's is fresh, provocative, engrossing. * BBC.com * Freeman's is very much like New York, a melting pot where folks can be themselves... The world has certainly arrived in the pages of Freeman's. * New York Observer * There's an illustrious new literary journal in town... * Vogue.com * A new literary journal that is sure to become a classic in years to come. * San Francisco Chronicle *

Freeman's: Family is the second literary anthology in the series reviewers are calling 'illuminating' (National Public Radio) and 'sure to become a classic in years to come' (San Francisco Chronicle). Following a debut issue on the theme arrival, Freeman circles a new topic that affects us all: family. Often family is a conduit into the past. In an essay called 'Crossroads,' Aminatta Forna muses on the legacy of slavery and her childhood in Sierra Leone as she settles her family in Washington, DC, where she is constantly accused of cutting in line whenever she stands next to her white husband. Families are hardly stable entities, so many writers discover. Award-winning novelist Claire Vaye Watkins delivers a stunning portrait of a woman in the throes of postpartum depression. Booker Prize winner Marlon James takes the focus off absent fathers to write about his mother, who calls to sing him happy birthday every year. Even in the darkest moments, humour abounds. In Claire Messud's home there are two four-legged tyrants; Sandra Cisneros writes about her extended family of past lovers; and Aleksandar Hemon tells the story of his uncle's desperate attempt to remain a communist despite decades in the Soviet gulag. With fiction, nonfiction and poetry from literary heavyweights and up-and-coming writers alike, Freeman's: Family collects the most amusing, heartbreaking and probing stories about family life emerging today.