Rahawa Haile will be reading at The Difficult to Name Reading Series on May 30.
You're an amazing fiction and essay writer, and everybody knows that, so I'm going to spend this time asking you about action movies. Can you just talk about some of your favorite recent action movies?
That is very generous of you. Thank you. One thing I ask of all action movies is smart violence. Really. Don't be lazy. Is your hand-to-hand combat all rapidly edited brawn and no footwork, or can your protagonist take out an entire room using a gun without firing it? To what extent do physical environments lend themselves toward narrative progression through creative destruction? If a superpower is compromised (e.g., having only one repulsor during a brawl in Iron Man 3) does the fighting style adapt? And so on. So! In no particular order:
John Wick
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Mad Max: Fury Road
Godzilla (2014)
Falcon Rising
White House Down
Honorable Mention: The mountain scene from G.I. Joe: Retaliation
How did cloud twitter get started and what is it? I definitely know what it is, I just think it would be good to clarify *for other people.*
About a year ago, I tweeted a few photos of clouds because, surprise, the sky was lovely. Some friends responded with their own clouds, one in D.C. and one in San Francisco, and we began tagging each other when posting. It took off from there. Of course, cloud photography/enthusiasm is nothing new, but I love our group and think of it as a way to bring a bit of light into what has a tendency to be a fairly emotionally heavy digital space.
What can people expect from your reading?