For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Mayor Lori Lightfoot represented a lot of firsts when she became mayor of Chicago in 2019. The city’s first Black, gay woman elected mayor, she promised a new vision for the office and a progressive approach to crime and neighborhood investment on the South and West Sides. In a crowded race, she set herself … Read more
[ad_1] James—the latest novel from the prodigious (and finally widely-read) Percival Everett—is many things: a relentless code-switching satire, a meditation on the constructedness of racial identity, a love letter to the written word, and, yes, I suppose, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Before reading James, I imagined this review would likely hone … Read more
[ad_1] “Checking out Historical Chicago” is a feature series devoted to the work of historical worldbuilding. The world each featured writer builds is Chicago. And yet, each writer brings Chicago to life differently, with different hammers and bricks, brushes and hands. This series approaches Chicago as a city constantly under construction: a story that is, … Read more
[ad_1] My friends and I have a running tally of how long we can go before someone we cross paths with mentions the Great Chicago Fire. It’s become something of a local twist to the “How often do you think of the Roman Empire” trend, where the topic happens to find its way into the … Read more
[ad_1] How do we begin to talk about the past four years—or even farther back—where perhaps the most unprecedented thing is the unprecedented need to overuse the word unprecedented? Tell me about it! In The Great Wave, Michiko Kakutani’s latest—a part political, part historical, nonfiction ride of a book—she does just that, taking us on … Read more
[ad_1] Whenever I meet writers who are from my home state of Texas, I have an immediate desire to grasp their hands and talk for long hours about thunderstorms and cicadas and BBQ. And how these elements overwhelm the writing brain and find their way onto the page, regardless of any attempts otherwise. This is … Read more
[ad_1] When I began querying agents about my first novel, Plan Z by Leslie Kove, I faced a wall of “No!” And usually the reason included the phrase, “If J. D. Salinger were trying to sell The Catcher in the Rye in this day and age . . .” (the late 1980s), it would never … Read more
[ad_1] Where are your roots? How does language—that which you speak and that which speaks through you, if not literally then ancestrally—shift your identity and place in the world at large, and in your own community? Diego Báez’s collection Yaguareté White is an assured and intelligent debut that is lyrical and powerful, sharply examining such … Read more
[ad_1] Leslie Jamison’s Empathy Exams came to me nestled amidst a pile of Little Debbie’s Fudge Rounds—gifts my friends had chosen to soothe the pain of my recent miscarriage. I had no expectations of Jamison when I left my first chocolate smudges on the covers of her debut essay collection. My lack of preparation made … Read more
[ad_1] Love is a dangerous and frustrating emotion for Mariah Stovall’s main characters in her novel, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both. Khaki Oliver is a socially awkward Black woman who was born punk. She mostly interacts with the world through the lens of music as evidenced by the book’s title, which … Read more