New York. Viking. 2022. 272 pages.
“TRUTH” AND HOW we find it has never been an easy topic. If anything, the past decade has scattered any hope that the twentieth century’s stellar ri…
MISCELLANEOUS
London. Particular Books. 2021. 149 pages. IN TRYING TO convey the quality of Birdsong in a Time of Silence, I found myself remembering something from another beautifully wri…
Brooklyn. Street Noise Books. 2021. 118 pages. CONFLICT AND STRUGGLE, both political and personal, have long been potent subjects for literature. And in the past forty years, ever sin…
West Lafayette, Indiana. Purdue University Press. 2021. 456 pages. SOME LIVES ARE iconic; such is the case with Czechoslovakian intellect Agneša Kalinová (1924–2014), whose personal n…
Beijing. Beijing United. 2021. 313 pages. AFTER WINNING THE Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2019, Liang Xiaosheng gathered some of his life stories for his latest book, Ren Jian Qing…
Pasadena, California. Red Hen. 2021. 368 pages. IN HIS INTRODUCTION to New Moons, a collection of poetry, fiction, and lyrical memoirs by Muslims in North America, Kazim Ali…
London. Thames & Hudson. 2021. 320 pages. “UN MIRACLE D'AMOUR,” SAID French writer Paul Valéry in 1925 about the existence of PEN International, founded in 1921 by English novelis…
New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2021. 450 pages. DURING HIS AMERICAN exile, on the evening of November 17, 1942, at the Library of Congress in Washington, Thomas Mann gave an add…
New York. Seven Stories Press. 2022. 235 pages. AS TOLD TO journalist Rozenn Morgat by Gulbahar Haitiwaji, and beautifully translated by Edward Gauvin, this is a current and deeply di…
Minneapolis. Milkweed Editions. 2021. 136 pages. I READ VICTORIA CHANG’S poetry collection Obit (Copper Canyon, 2020) after the death of my father. It was the only book that…
Beijing. Beijing United Publishing. 2021. 246 pages. YANG BENFEN PUBLISHED her first autographical novel, Qiu Yuan (which translates as “Autumn Garden”), in 2020, wh…
Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2021. 348 pages. WRITTEN TOWARD THE end of his career as a novelist creating the incredibly successful Navajo mystery series, Tony Hillerman’s be…
New York. Dutton. 2021. 352 pages. THEORIZING ABOUT consciousness was long left to philosophers. Venturing into the field as a neuroscientist was risking ridicule and, possibly, caree…
Durham. Duke University Press. 2021. 262 pages. KNOWN FOR THEIR books on California history, literary criticism, and narrative fiction, Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita have released…
New York. Grove Press. 2021. 208 pages. POET AND NOVELIST Kei Miller is one of the most prolific Jamaican writers of his generation. Things I Have Withheld is Miller’s second…
We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by Frank Abe & Tamiko Nimura
Illus. Ross Ishikawa & Matt Sasaki. Seattle. Chin Music Press. 2021. 151 pages. FOR DECADES, THE stories of over 112,000 Japanese American individuals incarcerated in the United S…
Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2021. 920 pages. KIN, BY MILJENKO JERGOVIĆ, is a behemoth of a book: 920 pages long and covering more than one hundred years of history. Jergović…
New York. Riverhead Books. 2021. 232 pages. DEAR SENTHURAN IS Akwaeke Emezi’s first memoir in their prolific and growing catalog. Emezi’s “black spirit memoir” is about their…
Newcastle upon Tyne. Cambridge Scholars. 2021. 206 pages. ROBERTO CANTÚ’S Homecoming Trails in Mexican American Cultural History is a welcome contribution for understanding t…
New York. Anchor Books. 2021. 615 pages. TITLES CAN BE MISLEADING. In one sense, The Contemporary American Essay is perfectly chosen. It describes with commendable exactitude…
New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2021. 704 pages. THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING: A New History of Humanity is the grandiose title of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s n…
New York. Alfred A. Knopf. 2021. 80 pages. NOTES ON GRIEF is two portraits in one: that of a loved and loving man, and that of a daughter undone by grief. In a serie…
Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press. 2021. 448 pages. TRYING TO THEORIZE the beginnings of a phenomenon involves equal parts fascination and frustration; both are in ful…
Medford, Massachusetts. Polity Press. 2021. 155 pages. MEMORY AND FORGETTING in the Digital Age is a descriptive subtitle for Italian philosopher Davide Sisto’s book…
New York. HarperVia. 2021. 194 pages. VANESSA SPINGORA’S memoir, Consent, is not an easy book to read. This is not because of her writing style, or the translator’s rendering…