The key lines and uplifting sentiments chosen for this “erasure poem” sometimes show their age, but they still make inspiring reading. The text floats on Lewis’ evocative images of opening doorways and marching footsteps, of small figures standing on a mountaintop or rising through clouds, and of hands shaping a heart or holding a tool. […]
At Juniper’s school in the city, bullies—seen in the shadows but apparently white—taunt the young girl. On a day devoted to celebrating students’ heritage, they tell her she doesn’t know where she comes from. Juniper’s mojo bag, tucked in her pocket, doesn’t keep the bullies at bay. But soon enough, she packs up empty mason […]
Twelve-year-old Tuva has always felt different; she’s never had any friends. She hides mysterious scars on her neck behind her long, white-blond hair. But when her classmate Axel goes missing in an ominous fog, and Tuva finds his gym partner, Rasmus, being led through the forest by what turn out to be actual fairies, she’s […]
Her firstborn daughter, Onyesonwu, a powerful witch—introduced in Who Fears Death (2010)—transformed the world and left it, while Najeeba herself has become more dangerous and powerful—the kponyungo, sorcerer of fire, wind, and dust. Her mission, to find and kill the awful spirit that terrorized her father’s family, remains unfinished. But where to begin? First, birth […]
Sepúlveda presents this book (translated from Spanish by Denise Kripper) as a memoir written by someone identified as Ilse, a woman raised and brutalized inside Colonia Dignidad, the real-life Chilean cult and torture camp founded by the German Chilean minister Paul Schäfer. Ilse recounts her removal from Germany as a child and her transport to […]
When Redo Hauptshammer arrives from Vienna in the Prussian village of Szonden on the banks of the Oder River in the 1820s, his first task is to bury his murdered young Spanish wife, Odra—the victim of random gunfire—on the same plot of land where he hopes to raise sugar beets. But when he first places […]
Told entirely in Ruby’s voice, the story centers on the young pachyderm’s uncertainties around her Tuskday ceremony: a rite of passage that celebrates the appearance of an elephant’s front teeth. In the first-person narration, Ruby’s feelings—her anxieties about her emerging tusks, her traumatic memories of poachers, and her fears about growing up—all feel immediate. Judge’s […]
Sam is in her early 30s, two years out of her English and Comparative Literature Ph.D. program, and, like many of her cohort, barely scraping by as an adjunct. When she lands a spot at Rosedale, an elite private college, as a last-minute replacement for an older professor, her problems seem temporarily solved. Sam is […]
Founded by young revolutionaries in 1897 in what is now Vilnius, Lithuania, the Bund was “a sometimes-clandestine political party whose tenets were humane, socialist, secular, and defiantly Jewish,” as writer and artist Crabapple has it. Descended from Bundists and Puerto Rican radicals, Crabapple (née Caban) immediately connects the Bundist experience with modern leftist struggles: “The […]
Words can do any number of things: they can heal, they can hurt, they can describe sounds, they can ask questions, and they can even entertain. Howell reminds readers that, “Words are mighty, words are strong. We write them, speak them, sing our song! I hope you learn new words today and think about the […]