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Southside, Virginia (07/24)
The area where author Henry Wise's Holy City takes place—Southside—encompasses a swath of counties in the southern portion of Virginia's Piedmont region. Southside stretches from the James River south to the North Carolina border and extends as far east as Isle of Wight and Southampton Counties, bounded along the western edge ...
Cinéma Vérité (07/24)
In Aysegül Savas's The Anthropologists, Asya, the novel's narrator, is a documentary filmmaker set to embark on a project based around the goings-on in her local park. Though not explicitly identified as such, Asya's project sounds a lot like 'cinéma vérité,' a style of filmmaking developed in the 1950s and '60s that ...
The "Bury Your Gays" Trope (07/24)
The meaning behind Bury Your Gays' title becomes clear as soon as oily Harold Bros. executive Jack Hays orders protagonist Misha to do the bidding of the algorithm for the sake of his streaming TV show and kill off two lesbian characters. Author Chuck Tingle is commenting on the cynical use of queer representation in entertainment, ...
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (07/24)
One of the characters in Kate Quinn's The Briar Club played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), which existed from 1943 to 1954.
In 1942, owners of professional baseball teams and stadiums were in a panic. Young men who played ball were being drafted to fight in World War II, and several minor league ...
Artificial Intelligence in Literature (07/24)
As artificial intelligence has become an ever-present part of our world, more and more authors have considered its ramifications on our society. In recent years alone, a slew of novels and short stories have been published that explore themes like human nature, scientific progress, love, and human connection through the eyes of characters...
Capability Brown and the English Garden (07/24)
In The Garden Against Time, Olivia Laing traces the evolution of gardens and the different meanings they have taken on in society. One major European development she addresses is the work of Capability Brown and the advent, in the mid-18th century, of a style that came to be known simply as the English garden.
Lancelot '...
The Women of the Ku Klux Klan (07/24)
Timothy Egan's book A Fever in the Heartland mentions the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, a group of women who were actively aligned with the mission of the KKK during its 1920s resurgence. In 1923, the WKKK formed in Little Rock, Arkansas. The WKKK had chapters in every state and at least 500,000 members over the course of its existence. ...
Homelessness and Traumatic Brain Injuries (07/24)
Ava Carson, the protagonist in Ayana Mathis's second novel The Unsettled, is homeless because of domestic violence. At the Glenn Avenue shelter, she can't sleep or eat. She is listless and emotionally paralyzed. Yet Ava never considers that she might have a traumatic brain injury.
Researchers who analyzed data from multiple countries, ...
Women's Influence in the British Abolition Movement (07/24)
In The Fraud, Eliza's lover Frances is a passionate abolitionist whose commitment to the cause infects Eliza with a similar sense of urgency. Britain's Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833, freeing at least 800,000 people from bondage in the Caribbean, South America, and Canada. The act followed decades of campaigns from abolitionist ...
Cover Art for Young Adult Fantasy Novels (07/24)
The cover of the young adult fantasy novel Nightbirds by Kate J. Armstrong reliably hints at the promise and magic of the story that lies within while also seeking to differentiate itself in a saturated market. Not only is the artwork attractively rendered, but it shows the emotion and supernatural abilities of the character Matilde with ...
The "Dying City" of Civita di Bagnoregio (07/24)
Dominic Smith's novel Return to Valetto was in part inspired by his visit to Civita di Bagnoregio, a town roughly 60 miles north of Rome. Known as 'Il paese che muore' or 'The Dying City,' this tiny village sits atop a crumbling column of clay and tufa (a type of soft volcanic rock common in the region). As the column continues to erode ...
Germany's War Children (07/24)
In Fatherland, New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger chronicles his quest to understand his maternal grandfather's Nazi past—a past shrouded in mystery despite the fact that Bilger's mother, born in 1935, was old enough at the time to have memories of World War II and her father's role in it.
She remembered her father wearing ...
The Death Doula Profession (06/24)
The protagonist of Mikki Brammer's The Collected Regrets of Clover is a death doula. Just as a doula (or midwife) helps in childbirth, a death doula helps people who are approaching death. The profession has grown remarkably since 2000, when a New York City program co-funded by NYU Medical Center and the Shira Ruskay Center of the Jewish ...
The Vietnamese Folktale of Chú Cuội (The Man in the Moon) (06/24)
In Banyan Moon, author Thao Thai interweaves references to a Vietnamese folktale about a 'man in the moon.' In the story, a woodcutter called Chú Cuội is walking through the jungle one day when he sees a trio of tiger cubs. He approaches, thinking he might be able to catch one and sell it, then use the money to buy an ox. He ...
Book Translation (06/24)
In Maud Ventura's novel My Husband, we get a glimpse into the main character's work as a book translator. Translated books give readers the chance to step into the shoes of characters living in different countries and cultures. When it comes to American books in translation (like this English-language version of Ventura's novel, ...
V-E Day (06/24)
Patrick deWitt's The Librarianist depicts main character Bob Comet's childhood experience of being driven home by a sheriff, after having run away, on the day that officially marked the end of World War II.
May 8, 1945 is the day when German troops throughout Europe surrendered to the Allies, and is known as V-E Day (Victory in Europe...
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (06/24)
The power of a book is unquantifiable, depending on who reads it. When the character Margo Finch in Laura Sims's How Can I Help You catches her new colleague, Patricia Delmarco, fondly touching a particular title on the shelf at the Carlyle Public Library, it pulls her deep into a world where fantasy and reality often overlap.
Fans of ...
Is Separate Equal? The Sarah Roberts Case (06/24)
At the age of four, when Sarah Roberts was ready for school, her father Benjamin was insistent that she have the best education. It was the late 1840s in Boston. Benjamin Roberts had been traumatized by educational segregation. It incubated shame within him as a young black boy to attend inferior schools with inadequate resources. He didn...
Desegregation Activist Daisy Bates (06/24)
In We Refuse, Kellie Carter Jackson recalls the courageous and tireless efforts of civil rights activist Daisy Bates and her husband, L.C., to integrate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Bates home became a place of refuge for the students known as the 'Little Rock Nine' — the first group of Black children to attend the ...
A Shooting Star of American Astronomy: Maria Mitchell (06/24)
The central mystery of Sarah Perry's Enlightenment concerns an astronomer, Maria Văduva, and Thomas's uncovering of her hidden scientific contributions. Many real-life historical women partook in exploration of the night sky and space only for their discoveries to be similarly buried or forgotten. One such woman was the nineteenth-...
Montreal in Literature (06/24)
Much of Frankie Barnet's novel Mood Swings takes place in Montreal. Nestled in the southwest of Canada's francophone province of Quebec, Montreal is a multicultural and largely bilingual city with a thriving arts scene, which makes it an appealingly unique backdrop for all sorts of literature. Below are some notable books that have been ...
The Mysterious Life of Pirate Captain Jacquotte Delahaye (06/24)
Briony Cameron's debut novel,
The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye, is an imagined look at the life of a female pirate captain sailing the Caribbean in the 17th century. While some of her contemporaries, like
Anne Bonny and Mary Read, have become well known, Delahaye has been largely lost to history due to a lack of reliable records. Cameron ...
The Devil Personified: How He Shapeshifts in Literature (06/24)
The Hebrew word 'Satan' can be translated as 'adversary,' or 'accuser,' so in his nomenclature, he wasn't exactly set up for success. Satan, or the devil, is a figure who has origins in Abrahamic religions, well-known in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Conceptually, he has been depicted as a fallen angel, ghoulishly evil, as both an ...
Black Utopias (06/24)
As Jasmyn Williams and her husband King arrive in the fictional Black utopian suburb of Liberty, California in Nicola Yoon's One of Our Kind, Jasmyn reminds her husband 'that Black utopias ha[ve] been tried with little success before.' She names two examples of real-world short-lived utopian experiments: Allensworth and Soul City. While ...
The Bond Dance Hall Explosion (06/24)
Michelle Collins Anderson's historical novel The Flower Sisters draws inspiration from a tragic event that occurred in the author's hometown of West Plains, Missouri: the explosion of a dance hall packed with young dancers, the cause of which was never determined.
It was Friday, April 13, 1928. The Bond Dance Hall was located on the ...
An Overview of Black Land Loss in America (06/24)
In Terah Shelton Harris's novel Long After We Are Gone, the family at the heart of the story is at risk of losing their land because it's considered 'heir property' (aka 'heir's property' and 'heirs' property'). The author defines this as 'a form of ownership in which descendants inherit an interest in the land, similar to holding stock ...
Greek Words for Love (06/24)
Love is a universal and history-spanning feeling. What would we be without the Romantic movement or the Renaissance, fairy tales or the chivalry of the Middle Ages? Even further back, ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle took note of the many variations of this ubiquitous emotion, creating and describing different words ...
Religious Deconstruction (06/24)
The heart of the story in The Wings Upon Her Back lies in Zenya's hard-fought battle with her faith. Indoctrinated into the service of the mecha god in her youth, she has only ever known faith without question. The deconstruction of that faith and the rebuilding of her identity as a freethinking woman with agency isn't entirely assured by...
Sickle Cell Disease (06/24)
In the story 'Milk and Oil' from Uche Okonkwo's collection A Kind of Madness, Soty, a girl befriended by the main character Chekwube, has sickle cell disease. This fact is revealed to Chekwube slowly through certain habits and rituals that seem part of a foreign and sometimes strangely privileged world: Soty avoids the sun, drinks a glass...
Shakespeare's Henriad (06/24)
Allen Bratton's Henry Henry is a retelling of Shakespeare's "Henriad," a term used in Shakespearean scholarship to refer to the four plays chronicling the rise of Henry V, or Prince Hal, to the throne.
These four plays begin, chronologically, with Richard II, based on the life of King Richard II, who ruled from 1377 ...
The Symbolism of Urine (06/24)
From the first pages of K-Ming Chang's novella Cecilia, narrator Seven is preoccupied with urine. She describes overhearing the strong flow of a chiropractor's urine in the toilet, and remarks upon the receptionist's quieter stream. She holds her own urine until her bladder 'tautens into a grape of pain'; later, while dreaming of Cecilia,...
En Puntas by Javier Pérez (06/24)
During a pivotal scene in R.O. Kwon's novel Exhibit, a character mentions a short film he's viewed. In it, a ballerina performs atop a piano lid in customized pointe shoes; long kitchen knives have been attached to them, so she is literally dancing on points. This real-life film is the video-installation piece En Puntas ('on tips'), ...
Non-Speaking Authors Writing About Experiences of Language (06/24)
In Angie Kim's Happiness Falls, Eugene is diagnosed with Angelman syndrome, or AS, a neuro-genetic disorder caused by a chromosome-15 gene deletion on the maternal side. Most people with AS have limited speech and motor abilities. It is important to distinguish Angelman syndrome and other conditions that involve learning disabilities from...
Insects as Food (06/24)
In T.C. Boyle's Blue Skies, environmentally conscious Ottilie tries her hand at raising her own livestock—not chickens or pigs, but crickets. In Western society today, people often react with horror at the idea of eating insects, but there are advantages to including them in your diet. Many insects are an excellent source of ...
The Poor Clares of Sant'Orsola Convent (06/24)
In Natasha Solomons' novel Fair Rosaline, the eponymous heroine is destined for life in a convent – specifically Sant'Orsola in Mantua, Italy. Margherita Gonzaga d'Este, a wealthy widow, commissioned the convent in the early 17th century, sparing no expense; she hired architect and artist Antonio Maria Viani to design the building, ...
Pioneering Women Botanists (06/24)
Throughout their careers, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter helped to break barriers for women in their field. Beyond this, they became the first people in all of Western science to officially catalogue the plant life growing within the Grand Canyon. Despite their obvious expertise, much of the press coverage of their work at the ...
Fiji and the Girmit System (06/24)
The country and archipelago of Fiji is in the South Pacific Ocean, approximately 1,300 miles north of Auckland, New Zealand and 2700 miles southwest of Hawaii. It consists of more than 300 islands, about 100 of which are inhabited. The largest island, at approximately 66 miles long and 91 miles wide, is Viti Levu, or 'Great Fiji.' The ...
Eat a Bowl of Tea by Louis Chu (06/24)
In her book Orphan Bachelors, Fae Myenne Ng recalls her life-changing discovery of Louis Chu's 'defiant, subversive novel' Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961), now considered a classic of Asian American literature, which depicts Manhattan Chinatown bachelor society in the late 1940s.
The novel begins with two friends living in this milieu, Wang ...
The Collapse of Reconstruction (06/24)
In His Name Is George Floyd, authors Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa explain how Floyd's ancestors were dispossessed of their lucrative North Carolina farmlands via shady financial documents and restrictions on their literacy rendering them unable to read those very documents. This is just one example of the reassertion of white ...
Harm Reduction (05/24)
In The Forgotten Girls, journalist Monica Potts revisits her declining Arkansas hometown and her childhood best friend Darci, who is locked in a struggle with drug addiction that traditional interventions—stigmatization, directing the victim to God for help—have failed to cure. While Darci's struggle involves a pattern of ...
Crossing the Pyrenees (05/24)
In The Postcard, Jeanine Picabia, the author's grand-aunt, is a leader in the French Resistance movement. When she is betrayed, she becomes "one of the most wanted female fugitives in France." In December 1942, she flees to England by way of Spain, which she enters by crossing over the Pyrenees mountains. She takes a ...
Women Homesteaders of the West (05/24)
Where Coyotes Howl is set in the young and growing town of Wallace, Wyoming in 1916, following a couple named Ellen and Charlie's path as they set out to build a ranch on the High Plains. Author Sandra Dallas provides a slice-of-life picture of homesteading and ranching in Wyoming through the various characters. Many of Ellen's friends ...
Marie Antoinette, Fashion Icon (05/24)
In 1783, Marie Antoinette made a terrible faux pas—she dressed like a commoner. Painted by her favorite portraitist, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, the queen was depicted in a loose cotton dress, comfortably tied at the waist with no corset. Although one may think this would have endeared her to the citizenry, it only ...
Miranda July: The Essential Works (05/24)
Miranda July is an artist who works successfully in multiple mediums, perhaps equally well-known for her films and her fiction. Born in 1974 in Barre, Vermont, and raised in Berkeley, California, July dropped out of college in her early twenties and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she began exploring performance art before becoming a ...
Sojourner Truth Was Invisible — Or Was She? (05/24)
It was May of 1851 when 54-year-old Sojourner Truth took the stage. Truth, who would become one of the most famous women of any race of the nineteenth century, spoke her personal testimony to the mostly white audience at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. She was the only speaker who had been enslaved and the room was ...
Evacuating Children from London During World War II (05/24)
During World War II, the constant threat of German bombs falling on London and other key cities forced many English families to make an incredibly painful choice: whether to keep their children with them in this dangerous area or to separate from them, sending them away to places where they could hopefully live more safely and normally. ...
The Qin (05/24)
Music and poetry are a central part of Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin. They are cornerstones of life in the kingdom of Qi and the Celestial world beyond it. Music may entertain but it also expresses feelings Lin's characters can't express with words. Xue'er cannot bring herself to confess she is falling in love with Duke Meng, so ...
A Reading List of Palestinian American Literature (05/24)
Hala Alyan, author of the poetry collection
The Moon That Turns You Back, has also published two novels:
Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award; and
The Arsonists' City.
Her work is part of a flourishing Palestinian American literary scene. For a further taste of poetry, one might try ...
Books Exploring Our Relationship with Birds (05/24)
Throughout his collection of poems Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves, J. Drew Lanham explores the restorative effect of immersing himself in nature. His particular passion, however, is birds. Humans have long been fascinated by the freedom, grace, and beauty of our feathered friends, ingraining them in mythology and symbolism for ...
The Importance of Doulas Today (05/24)
Despite its original ancient Greek definition of 'a woman who serves,' the word 'doula' has come to mean 'one who mothers the mother.' In caring for mothers and their newborns, doulas advocate, listen, advise and comfort. They are professionally trained to provide emotional and informational support during pregnancy and labor as well as ...
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