About a month ago, my second book came out. It’s called Invited to Life, and it’s a little genre-bending: a photo-illustrated, 224-page prose poem about my seven years meeting and interviewing refugees (who happen to be Holocaust survivors) who came to the United States, exploring the new lives they built.
It’s an intentionally lyric work, an intentionally American work, and an intentionally hopeful work. And it’s earned me, in those several weeks since, about two dozen different pieces of hate mail from strangers: people accusing me of various moral crimes, people writing to share their favorite ethnic slurs and, yes, several who have threatened to kill me.
On the day of the book’s release, a gentleman using a nom de plume/nom de doom sends me an email accusing me of being part of the “zog conspiracy,” which I have to look up after I confuse it with Superman nemesis General Zod, with whom I have never ever conspired.
Strangers on Reddit – where I’m also not – took plenty of time to try and discuss the matter in just the most similarly dulcet tones.