|
Politics & Current Events:
Masha Gessen, Surviving Autocracy Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent Tal Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America Adrienne L. Massanari, Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right A.R. Moxon, Very Fine People: Confessions of an American Fool, 2016-2023 Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: 20 Lessons From the 20th Century Rebecca Solnit, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain I’ve seen a lot of people quoting from Timothy Snyder’s book, particularly lesson 1: “Do not obey in advance.” He packs a lot more into a very short book. Two of the best essayists I’ve ever read are Rebecca Solnit and A.R. Moxon. No Straight Road takes up themes Solnit has discussed in Hope in the Dark and elsewhere: how resistance struggles that fail in the short term can still reap victories down the road. Moxon gained a following on social media for his skill at disassembling right-wing frames and mushy both-sidesing. Very Fine People distills those thoughts into a solid framework. Wild Faith is a chilling look into the lives of Christian Nationalists, who believe they are being “warriors for God” as they seek domination of the country. The chapter on child-rearing is especially disturbing: popular doctrine is that children must be taught obedience at all costs, and physical pain is the preferred method. Superior examines the whole concept of races — no one can even agree on how many there are or how to divide them — and the ways people have tried to “prove” their own superiority. Memoir: Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World Lyz Lenz, This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism Megan Rapinoe, One Life Like Lenz’s previous book, Belaboured, This American Ex-Wife is half memoir, half polemic, arguing that divorce can be a positive thing, even when children are involved. Careless People was authored by an early Facebook/Meta employee. If you thought Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were bad….they’re actually a whole lot worse. Doppelganger is hard to describe. It starts with the many times commentators have mixed up Naomi Klein with Naomi Wolf, and goes in a lot of directions from there. (Easy mnemonic: Naomi Klein, fine. Naomi Wolf, OOF.) General Nonfiction: Stephanie Andrea Allen & Lauren Cherelle, eds., Black Joy Unbound Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life & Faith David Grann, The Wager Becky Holmes, Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You: The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud Dr. Sue May, Unbreakable: Stories of Survival, Sisterhood, and Success Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend Wendy L. Rouse, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman, eds., The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America Eileen Weiss, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement Jane Austen’s Bookshelf was one of my favorite books this year, introducing me to women writers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, ones that Austen mentioned in her books and correspondence. Black Joy Unbound includes poetry, fiction, and essays about Black joy. Similarly, Unbreakable is about Black women overcoming obstacles ranging from teen pregnancy to cancer. Public Faces, Secret Lives was written in an academic way, but included some fascinating queer women from the suffrage movement, including some activists I’d heard of but had no idea they were lesbian or bi. Spell Freedom is also about a hidden piece of history: the schools that helped Black people get past the “literacy tests” and other obstacles set up to keep them from voting. Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You was another favorite, both informative and hilarious. The author had fun baiting online romance scammers with promises of money and some truly bonkers marriage proposals. Poetry: Kim Addonizio, Exit Opera Fatima Asghar, If They Come For Us Richard Blanco, How to Love a Country Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem and When My Brother Was an Aztec Percival Everett, Sonnets for a Missing Key Carolyn Forche, The Lateness of the World Tess Gallagher, Is, Is Not Juan Felipe Herrera, Every Day We Get More Illegal Nikki Giovanni, A Good Cry Luella Hill, Solid as a Rock I Stand Linda Hogan, A History of Kindness Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind and Lucky Wreck Aja Monet, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter Abby E. Murray, Hail and Farewell Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East and You & Yours Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence Morgan Parker, Magical Negro Claudia Rankine, Citizen Tarrant P. Storey, Poems of My Life Judith Viorst, Nearing 90, and Other Comedies of Late Life Adele Elise Williams, Wager I have two rules for poetry: I like it to be (1) understandable, and (2) actually about something. Every year I discover a few poets that blow me away. Mojave author Natalie Diaz writes poems about justice for the earth, passionate lesbian love poems, and heart-rending poems about her brother’s addiction and its effect on the family. My other newly discovered favorite is Richard Blanco, who writes about the contradictions of being a gay Cuban-American, and the space between what American could be and what it is. Also found several new-to-me poets writing about surviving and thriving while Black: Aja Monet, Gregory Pardlo, and Morgan Parker. I love Percival Everett’s fiction, but didn’t understand a word of Sonnets for a Missing Key. It had a recurring motif of music theory, a subject I know nothing about. Fatima Asghar’s If They Come for Us had a theme of division: between countries, religions, parts of the self. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen was a book-length multi-media project: poetry, prose, and art about living in a country that doesn’t see her as an equal citizen. Poetry Anthologies: Neal Astley, ed., Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times Richard Blanco et al, eds., Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing James Crews & Brad Peacock, eds., Love Is For All of Us: Poems of Tenderness and Belonging From the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends R.S. Gwynn, ed., Poetry: A Pocket Anthology Joy Harjo ed., Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry Joy Harjo et al, eds., When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: a Norton Anthology of Native American Poetry Luella Hill-Dudley, ed., Write on Sistahs Naomi Shihab Nye & Paul B. Janeczko, eds. I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You: Paired Poems by Men & Women I have a fondness for themed anthologies. I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You has an interesting approach: paired poems by men and women, on topics from love to aging to tomatoes. Both of the Joy Harjo volumes were good, but When the Light of the World Was Subdued had a lot more poems and so had room for a wider variety. Love Is for All of Us stuck to short poems, but each one packed a punch. There were also a few prose pieces talking about coming out and other topics. From the title, I expected Staying Alive to be purely optimistic poems, but it had some darker fare too, like Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving But Drowning.” The book is divided into loosely themed sections (love, home, death, etc), and includes both familiar poems (the “Journeys” section inevitably has Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled”), and lesser-known ones, including a great many in translation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |