For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] A debut novel should pack a wallop. Be it through the language or the themes, the feelings the text evokes in readers must be powerful and undeniable. Jesse McCarthy’s novel The Fugitivities does just that, and can perhaps be best explained as a music playlist curated by the likes of authors Jonathan Lethem and … Read more
[ad_1] Just like Tiya Miles, historian at Harvard University and author of All That She Carried, I grew up in Cincinnati, a city where history, voices and ghosts enter without knocking. For Miles, these echoes are held within her Great Aunt Margaret Stribling’s quilt, for me it is my great grandmother’s silver spoon, and for … Read more
[ad_1] Western audiences may not have first-hand experience cramming into Tahrir Square with two million other souls in protest, but we are more than ready to believe in ghosts. The hauntings in Slipping, Mohamed Kheir’s fourth novel (translated by Robin Moger—the first time Kheir’s work has appeared in English), take place in a post-Arab Spring … Read more
[ad_1] The successes of the vaccine rollout in the United States must not be allowed to obscure earlier failures to contain COVID-19. At the time of writing, almost six hundred thousand Americans have died of the disease. In his new book, The Plague Year, Lawrence Wright argues that they did not have to. He believes … Read more
[ad_1] Welcome to another installment of a collaboration between the Chicago Review of Books and the Your Favorite Book podcast. Malavika Praseed, frequent CHIRB contributor and podcast host, seeks to talk to readers and writers about the books that light a fire inside them. What’s your favorite book and why? This week’s guest is Jesse … Read more
[ad_1] My sister used to live on Wellington Avenue. I would drive in from Iowa, search for free parking on nearby Cannon Drive, and stay the weekend. We sometimes walked around, late at night, and I could hear people at all stages of love affairs conducting their lives in the street. Lakeview East happens to … Read more
[ad_1] As a cisgender white male, I am least interested in what cisgender white males have to say. Too often, too many suck the oxygen out of discourse leaving no space for others to speak and reducing everything down to another version of mansplaining. Their work seems to be in service of shaping the world … Read more
[ad_1] Elinor Cleghorn’s Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World is an intriguing exploration of the history of women’s health, specifically how women are perceived as individuals and members of a larger healthcare system. The theme, across countries and time periods, is centered on disbelief. The female body, long-held in a place of … Read more
[ad_1] The final story of Nana Nkweti’s debut short story collection, “Kinks,” bears the book title in a telling passage: “No matter how many boardroom doors Jennifer walked through, sometimes she felt her steps falter—in the Ghanaian beauty shop, at Awing tribal meetings, she felt like a counterfeit African, felt the unworthiness of the maid’s … Read more
[ad_1] Stories of family trauma, parent-child relationships, and sibling relationships are not new in literature. Compelling examples go as far back as the Bible. Unfortunately, writing about family trauma has also often been negatively characterized as confessional, as if certain life experiences are either too embarrassing or otherwise unworthy for literary exploration. The Brothers Silver, … Read more