Inside the September/October 2024 Issue
Shaken and Stirred
Feeling cursed to live in interesting times, I spent early summer sympathizing with Cassandra, who witnessed avoidable disasters amid her piles of unheeded warnings. Were we here again? It all felt too familiar.
This issue’s books were somewhat a source of comfort; many are peopled by defiant women. Proud, magical women misunderstood as crones (see Becoming Baba Yaga, which reconstitutes Eastern European folktales, unearthing their feminist power); unusual women persecuted as witches (see The Trial of Anna Thalberg, a poetic but fury-inducing novel about a woman whose truths those in charge refuse to hear); young women who wouldn’t let older generations tell them how to live (see The Forbidden Book, in which a girl promised to a rabbi’s son chooses a dybbuk, emancipation, and unexpected love instead). There are examples of persisting against the icy forces of historical prejudices; there are seeming fantasies about emerging triumphant for having done so. But so much felt out of reach—aspirational, but not probable. Hope remained elusive.
But then, as we prepared this issue for press, a powerful man did something wholly unexpected: he stepped aside for a woman whose greater potential he chose to recognize, rather than quash.
Fiction becomes reality. The unprecedented choice shakes us from our stupors. Suddenly, our inner Cassandras are alert. Readers and dreamers everywhere stir, ready to voice the frightening truth that ungirds all of our most powerful stories: that our potential is limitless, if we dare to brave untraveled paths.
We can turn the page. We can choose an ending different from those that came before. We can learn from the morals of the old tales; we can write ourselves into a more expansive future.
Perhaps I was choosing to sit with the wrong version of the proverb: perhaps we are blessed to live in interesting times, after all.
Sincerely,
Michelle Anne Schingler
Editor in Chief
mschingler@forewordreviews.com
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Here’s a list of the books we’re reviewing in our September/October issue.
Michelle Anne Schingler
