Tormenta de pimienta
Rafael Ordoñez, Marisa Morea | NubeOcho | 9788417673796 | June 2021
“This book has such broad appeal and is so well done. The colorful pictures are subtly hipster, with a mid-century vibe, and the clever story has enough humor, elephant poop and boogers to crack up a classroom. While I think the recommended grade level is spot-on, I could also see assigning this book to older Spanish language students, who would have fun reading and translating it.”—Mr. Alex’s Bookshelf
Distant Fathers
Marina Jarre, trans. Ann Goldstein | New Vessel Press | 9781939931948 | June 2021
“[Jarre] writes about being haunted, about never knowing quite where she was, and about not belonging. . . . With imagery that ranges from poetic and contemplative to graphic and even disgusting, revealing herself as unafraid to show what is often kept hidden for fear of judgement. The eloquence of Marina Jarre’s insightful memoir reflects what had always been, even more than people and events, her true passion: words and stories.”—Foreword Reviews
Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground
Joanna Stingray, Madison Stingray | Doppelhouse Press | 9781733957922 | September 2020
“Red Wave is a warm and conversational autobiography detailing Stingray’s many rock ‘n’ roll adventures in the Soviet Union and Russia in the years before, during, and after glasnost. At one point she gets followed and interrogated by the KGB; at another, her plans to wed a legendary Soviet rocker get derailed by Cold War dynamics. Co-written with Stingray’s adult daughter, Madison, the book is a valuable document about a lost world, peopled with courageous artists risking their freedom for the ideas of expression, art, and rock ‘n’ roll. An essential narrative of a fascinating and under-documented period in music and art. Stingray draws vivid, emotional, and chatty accounts of the extraordinary underground stars of the time—people like Boris Grebenshikov, Sergey Kuryokhin, Viktor Tsoi, Yuri Kasparyan, Aquarium, Kino, and the Pop Mechanics. We root for her and her friends to overcome bureaucracy, oppression, isolation, deprivation, and the heavy footsteps of the KGB. In a readable and personable way, Red Wave helps shine some light into this remarkable corner of rock history.”—Guernica
Toxicon and Arachne
Joyelle McSweeney | Nightboat Books | 9781643620183 | April 2020
“Toxicon and Arachne was published in April 2020, a month and a day after Indiana, where McSweeney lives, confirmed its first case of COVID-¬19. Professionals in poetry often become amateurs in prophecy, and McSweeney has always boasted an unnervingly high batting average, connecting even with the wildest pitches. This latest book carries her most disquieting predictions yet. Speculating that ‘this endtime’s gonna last awhile,’ hinging on a crown (or corona) of sonnets inspired by John Keats’s death from tuberculosis, Toxicon and Arachne is a pandemic book that, flukily enough, was finalized months beforehand.”—Yale Review