For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In a powerful essay for The Nation, Toni Morrison recalled “feeling helpless” in 2004’s political climate. A friend called, cheering her. “This is precisely the time when artists go to work,” he said. “Not when everything is fine, but in times of dread.” Morgan Jerkins has already shown herself as a writer who goes to work … Read more
[ad_1] From the first time I read Rachel Kushner’s novels, I thought about nonfiction. The biting yet elegant voices of her narrators reminded me of literary criticism, and the detailed renderings of people and places I thought resembled journalism. I was evidently not alone in this response: James Woods praised her fiction as possessing “the … Read more
[ad_1] Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul by the Indian writer Taran Khan is exciting in the way unclassifiable things are exciting. It’s no surprise that it was recently announced as the winner of the 2021 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. It is a refreshing work of nonfiction, but also an exercise in … Read more
[ad_1] Across his fiction, journalism, and letters, Fyodor Dostoevsky spoke in many voices. He spoke as a radical who would face mock execution and years in prison for plotting against the tsar. He spoke as a Russian Orthodox believer excoriating liberal society for its smallness and lack of faith. He spoke as a prophet carrying … Read more
[ad_1] As primarily a reader of fiction, I am wary of non-fiction that attempts to encompass an entire city in a single book. I can’t help but begin with a maximally heightened sense of caution; a complete image of a city seems so unlikely as to dissuade attempts in the first place. Usually, I am … 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] A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, features Hanif Abdurraqib’s considerable talents as a poet, essayist and thoughtful social commentator. Reading this book reminded me of listening to the late-night DJs of my youth—I especially remember Alison Steele, the Nightbird—who used songs as the starting point to improvise a jazz … Read more
[ad_1] “I saw my mother raise a man from the dead,” Libertie Sampson tells us at the beginning of Kaitlyn Greenidge’s second novel. Libertie is a young girl living with her mother, a trained physician, in a community of free Blacks in Brooklyn, and the man is an escaped slave she calls Mr. Ben who … Read more
[ad_1] After a storytelling show a couple of years ago, years after the Weinstein news was everywhere, I mentioned to a group of women who gathered around me after my performance that I had been sexually assaulted twice in my twenties. My point wasn’t to discuss my harm. My point, I went on to tell … 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 Nicola … Read more