‘The Means: A Novel’ by Amy Fusselman
MARINER BOOKS, SEPTEMBER 2022, 256 PP. AMY FUSSELMAN WRITES like a comic—or a “stand-up philosopher,” as Mel Brooks’s character describes himself at the ancient Roman unemployment office window in History of the World, Part I. No matter how serious the topic, Fusselman reveals the humor. Her 2007 memoir, 8: All True: Unbelievable, for instance, delves […]
‘Sterling Karat Gold’ by Isabel Waidner
GRAYWOLF, FEBRUARY 2023, 192 PP. STERLING KARAT GOLD, the new novel by the London-based writer Isabel Waidner, begins in what we might call consensus reality: “I’m Sterling. Lost my father to AIDS, my mother to alcoholism. Lost my country to conservatism, my language to PTSD.” Relatable. But the novel tumbles headlong into a surrealism […]
‘She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400–2000 B.C.’ at The Morgan Library and Museum
Seated female figure with tablet on lap Mesopotamia, Neo-Sumerian Ur III period, ca. 2112–2004 BC. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Vorderasiatisches Museum. Photo by Olaf M. Teßmer. AT A MOMENT when it is difficult to imagine human existence fifty years from now, it can be an enormous pleasure, even a revelation, to step back five thousand […]
‘Animal Life’ by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, translated by Brian Fitzgibbon
GROVE ATLANTIC, DECEMBER 2022, 192 PP. IN 2013, THE University of Iceland crowned ljósmóðir, a compound of ljós (light) and móðir (mother), the most beautiful word in the Icelandic language. The English word for ljósmóðir is midwife, and that most intimate occupation forms the core of Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s latest novel, Animal Life, her seventh […]
‘Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination’,(Revised Edition) by Robin D.G. Kelley, Foreword by Aja Monet
BEACON PRESS, AUGUST 2022, 336 PP. IN THE ORIGINAL epilogue of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Robin D.G. Kelley writes, But now is the time to think like poets, to envision and make visible a new society, a peaceful, cooperative, loving world without poverty and oppression, limited only by our imaginations. This passage was […]
‘Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues’ by Kavita Das
BEACON PRESS, OCTOBER 2022, 344 PP. In the second year of my fiction MFA, just after quarantine lifted, I was sitting in the park with a few of my classmates. We were reacclimating to each other, and all the conversation felt like it was on stilts, ready to tip over into topics we might […]
‘It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror’ Edited by Joe Vallese
FEMINIST PRESS, OCTOBER 2022, 400 pp. I ARRIVED AT the anthology It Came from the Closet as I imagine many other queer horror fans will: excited to see which movies would be covered, counting down until a reference was made to the “final girl,” and feeling a bit nervous about how the writers would wrestle […]
Four ‘Abortion Novels’ for Dark Times
THE NOVELS BELOW revolve around abortions, but they are also about community, mutuality, the blurring of the lines between self and others. The connections and collaborations here remind us that people will always band together during the most difficult times and decisions of their lives. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore KNOPF, […]
‘Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation’ by Sophie Lewis
VERSO, OCTOBER 2022, 128 PP. I LOVE A good manifesto, and Sophie Lewis’s Abolish the Family is just that. Anchored in a strikingly hopeful feminist Marxism, Lewis leads the reader through a systematic, didactic introduction to the politics and possibilities of cutting ourselves loose from the constraints and impositions of the traditional patriarchal, capitalist family. […]
‘Pathetic Literature’ edited by Eileen Myles
GROVE ATLANTIC, NOVEMBER 2022, 672 PP. I’VE PREFACED FAR too many conversations lately with “I’ve just read Kafka’s diaries.” I actually read Kafka’s diaries about six months ago, but I can’t shake the feeling I’ve discovered something incredible. It’s silly, I know. Surprise, surprise: Kafka is good. But I’ve been acting like a teenager in […]