Bookworm
Rachel Kushner: The Mars Room
Rachel Kushner discusses The Mars Room, a novel set in a women’s correctional facility, a dazzling novel full of surprising details that can’t be forgotten.
By Michael Silverblatt • • 28m ListenThe Mars Room immerses a reader in the reality of Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley. Rachel Kushner discusses learning from prisoners about the collective will and conversational history of a prison, the rare intelligence required to survive. She discusses rearranging her internal moral map while writing this, a dazzling novel full of surprising details that can’t be forgotten.
Photos by Christopher Ho.
