The is much to gain from African knowledge, not least an understanding of how one’s ancestors can bless a life. We learn as much from Nigerian poet Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto, a PHD candidate in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.... Read More

The Mariana Islands claim a long line of Chamorro versemakers and storytellers. To this tradition, Danielle P. Williams adds a measure of Black gospel to create this wholly original debut collection. An essayist and spoken-word artist... Read More

Giles Tremlett’s biography of Francisco Franco traces his fast rise through Spain’s military to take lasting totalitarian control of the nation. Focusing on a span from the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 until Franco’s death... Read More

In the linked stories of Jennifer Sears’s uncompromising book "What Mennonite Girls Are Good For", sexual abuse and mental health issues beleaguer a devout family. The stories orbit Ruthie, who spends her 1970s-1980s upbringing in... Read More

Kate Eichhorn’s "School Yearbook" is an illuminating study of the meanings and uses of yearbooks—“semipublic documents” with surprising cultural and political value. The Yale Banner, circa 1841, is widely considered the first... Read More

"Lessons in Drag" started as a performance by LaWhore Vagistan, the drag persona of academic Kareem Khubchandani. In it, she stages Khubchandani’s ethnographic research into accents, aunties, appropriation, and other topics connected... Read More

Laura K. Field’s political science survey "Furious Minds" is about the intellectual underpinnings of authoritarianism in the US. Describing in detail the different strains of elitist far-right politics that came together in the past... Read More

Janet Burroway’s prismatic historical novel "Simone in Pieces" follows a Belgian World War II refugee from her traumatic relocation to England to her later life in the United States. In 1940, nine-year-old Simone boards a “trawler”... Read More