“My guy”, the first of the short stories in Izumi Suzuki’s collection “Hit parade of tears”, is a love story about a young woman and an extra-terrestrial.   Sean Sheehan   This could be too kooky for its own good but the tale is as convincing as it is affective. […]

It may be a musical myth that Robert Zimmerman took the name Bob Dylan after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.   Sean Sheehan   Just as uncertain is whether he knew about the poet’s radio play, “Under milk wood”, written in 1954 for the BBC. A new edition of the […]

The lynching of Black Americans that claimed the lives of thousands of known victims bears testimony to the hideous depths of racism.   Sean Sheehan   The castration, burning or other mutilations that could preface an actual lynching point to some fear of Black sexuality in the psyche of those […]

The “first ordinary woman in English literature” – a lovely way of introducing the Wife of Bath from Chaucer’s “The Canterbury tales” – “not a virginal princess or queen, not a nun, witch, or sorceress, not a damsel in distress”.   Sean Sheehan   The Wife of Bath is a […]