Exploring Utopian Possibility in “The Mandorla Letters” – Chicago Review of Books

Exploring Utopian Possibility in “The Mandorla Letters” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] While award-winning creative flutist, composer, and bandleader Nicole Mitchell Gantt is no longer based in Chicago, she has certainly left a legacy. She was the first woman president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and founder of the Black Earth Ensemble (BEE), “a musical celebration of the African American cultural … Read more

A Man Called White and Exploring America’s Darkest Secret in “White Lies” – Chicago Review of Books

A Man Called White and Exploring America’s Darkest Secret in “White Lies” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] When we speak of the peak years of the Civil Rights Movement, typically we refer to the period beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56—which thrusted Martin Luther King, Jr. onto the national stage. This canonical era concludes with the passage of the Voting Rights … Read more

Exploring a Man’s World in “Sea State” – Chicago Review of Books

Exploring a Man’s World in “Sea State” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Tabitha Lasley’s new memoir is built upon a flawed premise. When she explains her plan to travel to Aberdeen and talk with offshore workers to discover “what men are like with no women around,” her editor points out “you’ll be around.” One of the men Lasley interviews responds to the same explanation of the … Read more

Exploring Where the Novel Ends and the Person Begins in “A Splendid Intelligence” – Chicago Review of Books

Exploring Where the Novel Ends and the Person Begins in “A Splendid Intelligence” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Cathy Curtis’s subject in A Splendid Intelligence: the Life of Elizabeth Hardwick is mighty. A writer whose career spanned decades—a ‘literary lion’. It is a chronological account of the writer’s life. The first couple of chapters trace Hardwick’s origins. It draws a portrait of a young Elizabeth whose “bookish tastes made her an anomaly … Read more

Exploring the Future of Humanity in “Persephone Station” – Chicago Review of Books

Exploring the Future of Humanity in “Persephone Station” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] In Persephone Station, Stina Leicht negotiates the conflict between humanity and technology in a future universe. While many science fiction novels grapple with this central question of what exactly it means to be human, Leicht goes to great length to give us a wide array of characters with diverse gender identities, different planets of … Read more