This Week’s Reviews

trans(re)lating house one
Poupeh Missaghi | Coffee House Press | 9781566895651 | February 2020
“Powerful writing. . . . Throughout her searing novel, Missaghi not only seeks to map the spaces that are left over when those who occupied those spaces are gone, but also questions whether her cartography can be a memorial to the lost.”—Star Tribune

Constantly
GG | Koyama Press | 9781927668726 | January 2020
“GG brings craft and insight to an intimate vignette of depression and anxiety.”—Broken Frontier

Sports is Hell
Ben Passmore | Koyama Press | 9781927668757 | February 2020
“[E]very moment in Sports Is Hell is a loaded metaphor for race relations in America, and they’re all laid out easily and deeply.”—Multiversity
Amid the story’s chaos and the exhausting noise of politics today, Sports Is Hell provides an unexpected clarity on the complex schisms of modern American culture while serving up a ton of laughs.”—Broken Frontier
“This tale is a myth without a moral — which makes it a dead-on parody of the good-and-evil, triumph-and-tragedy narratives fostered by organized sports.”—Wisconsin Public Radio

Hull
Xandria Phillips | Nightboat Books | 9781643620084 | October 2019
“Vast in both ambition and scope, striving to capture the depths and complexity of queer diasporic African identity in verse that is as fierce as it is tender and searing as it is celebratory. And, like the oceanic waters of the Middle Passage that serve as its fulcrum, Hull has immeasurable depths and dangers swirling beneath its surface.”—Adroit Journal

This Is Play
Julia Luckenbill, Aarti Subramaniam, and Janet Thompson | The National Association for the Education of Young Children | 9781938113536 | October 2019
“A much-needed addition to the literature written for early childhood educators. The book is easy to read, provides many concrete examples, and is inclusive of the varied needs of children.”—Teachers College Record

Gather & Nourish: Artisan Foods – The Search for Sustainability and Well-being in a Modern World
3DTotal Publishing/Canopy Press | 9781909414853 | March 2020
“A theme that runs through the book: the joy of making things with our hands, of learning and inventing, and thus of making a bridge between the products of nature and human society… Gather & Nourish is a beautiful gift book, but it is also a political document.”—Food Society

Safe Houses I Have Known
Steve Healey | Coffee House Press | 9781566895613 | September 2019
“The poems are immediate. They bring human reality to code words, clandestine terminology, ruse and deception. . . . Throughout we discover Healey’s superlative skill in conveying emotion through poetry.”—Decatur Daily

SPEECH
Jill Magi | Nightboat Books | 9781643620077 | September 2019
“It is unsurprising to learn that Magi is also a weaver, knitter, and sewer. You feel this quality in the way her impossible citizen walks—or, better yet, weaves—through the city, pulling its various histories and injuries into this text. A true cosmopolitan may, perhaps, be a loom. Maybe Magi’s impossible citizen isn’t not possible, but rather, her ways are unrecognized. Her manner is to create.”—Ploughshares Blog

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *