Zito Madu

Jeollanam-do

Writer at Freelance

Writer - The Minotaur at Calle Lanza. “Well, I had to pay my debt of joy to a world that was so often hostile to me.”

Articles

Mother Tongue

1 month ago | somethingwonderful.substack.com | Zito Madu

This one is nonfiction. Something I wrote on IG for Mother’s Day. I keep saying I’ll use this blog more but I have too many projects going on, honestly I went home recently to see my parents after a few months of being away, and on the way back, I was thinking about the idea of a mother tongue. The relationship that people in the Diaspora have to the languages that they grow up with, and sometimes lose the ability to speak and try to regain as they get older.
Man Accused of Threatening Librarians and Assaulting Officers Dies at Courthouse

1 month ago | somethingwonderful.substack.com | Zito Madu

The story was written in the news under the title of Man Accused of Threatening Librarians and Assaulting Officers Dies at Courthouse. There was no clear cause of death given and according to the police and court records, the man was still awaiting his scheduled arraignment when he died.
The Bad Men Are No Mystery

2 months ago | flaminghydra.com | Zito Madu

Most of the actors I’ve seen play Iago, the villain of Shakespeare’s Othello, portray him as a serpentine character—literally, as an extension of the serpent in the garden of Eden, a slippery, slithering trickster and deceiver who leads everyone to their destruction with his schemes and cleverness.
The Best Memoirs: The 2025 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist

Mar 13, 2025 | fivebooks.com | Manjula Martin |Wei Tchou |Zito Madu |Erika Morillo

Thanks for talking us through the 2025 shortlist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Autobiography—has it been a good year for memoir and autobiography? It’s been one of the best years for memoir and autobiography in recent memory! It’s been a delight to read so many interesting, well-written, imaginatively constructed, and thought-provoking memoirs. What were the judges looking for, when they came to compile the shortlist? We weren’t looking for any one particular thing.
Review | Osamu Dazai’s bleak prose was matched only by his own misery

Feb 7, 2025 | washingtonpost.com | Zito Madu

Writing is a famously miserable profession, but Osamu Dazai stands out as one of the most despondent writers ever to live. That strain is everywhere in evidence in his work, but it is on special display in “No One Knows,” a collection of 14 short stories written in the first person, newly translated from Japanese by Ralph McCarthy.
#4: Move (Get out the Gym) feat. Zito Madu

Oct 16, 2024 | minormedicine.substack.com | June Everett |Nathaniel Friedman |Zito Madu

Writer and ex-pro athlete Zito Madu stops by to share his unified theory of sports humanism talk about exercise. Topics covered include:-The relationship between pleasure and health-Working out as false consciousness-The vast and untapped health benefits of playing a sport-Why Randy Moss is the all-time greatest cornerbackPlus 20 minutes of vintage NBA content!
A Brand of Love

Sep 10, 2024 | somethingwonderful.substack.com | Zito Madu

I always forget that I still have this substack, so here’s a short story that I worked on last night that may get taken down and edited some more at some point. Thanks for reading Zito’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. They don’t tell you that New York City is a very lonely place, he said. We were at Paul’s Cocktail Lounge at the Roxy Hotel. The room looked as if it was designed by someone who watched too many episodes of Miami Vice.
Zito Madu - "The Minotaur at Calle Lanza" - Zoe Zolbrod

Sep 9, 2024 | semcoop.com | Zito Madu

Thursday, September 19, 2024 - 6:00pm - 7:00pm Zito Madu will discuss The Minotaur at Calle Lanza. He will be joined in conversation by Zoe Zolbrod. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. At the Co-opRVSP Here (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required.) About the book: Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic.
Review | A ‘cosmic’ biography tries to see Audre Lorde as she saw herself

Aug 17, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Zito Madu

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Review by Zito Madu August 17, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT In the third chapter of “Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde,” titled “prologue,” author and poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes, “This biography will consider what Audre considered and what organized her life: weather patterns, supernovas, geological scales of transformation, radioactive dust.” Later in the same chapter, she continues to define the difference between this book and an ordinary...
Street Photographer Jean-Andre Antoine Recounts His Portraits of A$AP Ferg, Spike Lee, and More

Aug 6, 2024 | complex.com | Zito Madu

On another unbearably hot summer day in New York City, Jean-Andre Antoine and I met at Fotografiska half an hour before the museum opened. It was two days before his exhibition From Prince St with Love was set to open to the public. I arrived first and sat by one of the long tables by the cafe inside the building.