For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In the mid-1950s, my great-uncle was a young Indian physicist in the United States, where he met and married a white Catholic woman from Boston. They were married for over sixty years, with three children and numerous grandchildren, and lived happily until both passed in their late eighties, within two years of each other. … Read more
[ad_1] Research has shown there’s a hereditary component to trauma—its effects can be passed down in utero, etched into our DNA. When I first came across the research, I thought about this country’s horrific history of genocide and slavery and wondered about the implications beyond a single generation. What are the effects on the descendants … Read more
[ad_1] Jake Goldsmith’s memoir opens with both a statement and a confession: “I am very ill. That would be the first and most obvious thing to know.” Suffering from a unique form of cystic fibrosis, he knew early on that he would die far sooner than his peers and that the deterioration of his body … Read more
[ad_1] It would be remiss to read Lucille Clifton’s Generations: A Memoir, recently reissued by New York Review of Books, without considering the moment in which this book—Clifton’s sole memoir—was first released. Published in 1976, Generations emerged the year before the miniseries “Roots” aired on national television eight consecutive nights in a row, a year … Read more
[ad_1] The artist Winfred Rembert accomplished unbelievable things in his seventy-five years, and he was the first to admit how unbelievable they seemed. But he wants you to know what drove him from picking cotton at age nine to being a local basketball star to surviving a lynching, working chain gangs, and gaining renown as … Read more
[ad_1] Burning Worlds is Amy Brady’s monthly column dedicated to examining how contemporary literature interrogates issues of climate change, in partnership with Yale Climate Connections. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter to get “Burning Worlds” and other writing about art and climate change delivered straight to your inbox. Unlike most books explored in this column, Felicia Luna Lemus’s Particulate Matter … Read more