For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Born in South Korea, raised in Peru, and currently living in the United States, Ae Hee Lee is a citizen of the world, and of the word; and that’s reflected in Asterism, which was selected by the esteemed John Murillo for the 2022 Dorset Prize. It’s indicative of the collection that an asterism is … 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] “One thing all truths have in common,” observes Angela, the protagonist of award-winning author Jennifer duBois’s fourth novel, The Last Language, is that “they are only visible from certain distances.” Angela is a twenty-seven-year-old PhD candidate in linguistics at Harvard. She is also the recently widowed mother of four-year-old Josephine. After a harrowing miscarriage, … Read more
[ad_1] We return to the time of green. It’s spring—yes, manifest it—it’s spring. The sharp blades of the most intrepid plants are pushing through earth still cold from winter snow. Where I live, tender white snowdrops still linger from February, watching over newcomer white and lilac crocuses with their creamy orange pistils. Each walk around … Read more
[ad_1] Brenda Lozano’s Witches, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary, tells the story of the lives of two Mexican women: Feliciana, an aging curandera, or folk healer, living in a small rural village in Oaxaca who has gained an international reputation, and Zoe, a young journalist from Mexico City. Zoe is dispatched to interview … Read more
[ad_1] Occasionally a novel comes along that stretches the formal limits of language on the page. A novel that bends the rules, that glides past the barriers that we had assumed were unassailable, firmly entrenched around our preconceived notions of fiction and form. It’s somehow odd that we are surprised each time this occurs, as … Read more
[ad_1] I have known Angela Buck for sometime. We went to graduate school together at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where I knew her to be funny, thoughtful, and incredibly talented. Her new story collection, Horses Dream of Money, exemplifies all of those qualities. The collection blurs horror and humor, fantasy and realism. It highlights the … Read more
[ad_1] The title of Raymond Antrobus’s debut collection, The Perseverance, derives from the name of the London pub the poet’s father used to frequent, an establishment whose doors were shut upon young Raymond, with “50 p. to make [him] disappear,” many an afternoon. Deaf from birth, the boy would stand in front of this everyday … Read more
[ad_1] An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura is an immigrant story turned on its head. In traditional tales, a foreign-born young person arrives on American shores unable to speak the language but grows up to become a great success. An I-Novel, instead, is about two Japanese sisters in America who long to go “home.” But what … Read more
[ad_1] Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte is a marquee visitor attraction at the Art Institute of Chicago. This painting of mid-19th century Parisians picnicking on the banks of the Seine is large, but the figures within it are made up of millions of tiny colored dots. To view the painting, visitors … Read more