As a warning for a future in which women lose the right to control their bodies, When She Woke is a solid contribution to the cannon of literature that cautions us against allowing religion to become government, for government to be able and actively monitoring all citizens, and for a future in which our reactions to plagues or violence lead us to lose our rational minds and submit to irrational tactics to seemingly solve our inability to comprehend or live with ambiguity.
Shana Thornton reviews Who Is Ana Mendieta? (Feminist Press, 2011) by Christine Redfern and Caro Caron: “We see the oppression and exclusion that motivated her, the violence against women that provoked her, her vulnerable passion for the earth and nature that healed her, and her own insecurities that propelled unhealthy cycles within her life. But not only do we see the strengths and weaknesses of Ana in the graphic comic, we also see the vulnerabilities and momentum of the women’s movement in the arts at the time.”
Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo reviews Margot Mifflin’s book, “The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman.” In the review, Corliss DeLorenzo writes: “Margot Mifflin sketches out a life in fine detail in her book ‘The Blue Tattoo’. Although an historical account, it rouses strong metaphors with timeless applications: the idea of what marks us, that which comprises our stories and how they are interpreted, appropriated or manipulated.”
Val B. Russell reviews Solitaria, by Genni Gunn, a novel "with an earthy, lusty, almost ancient tone that lingers long after you close the book."
Laura Delaplain reviews Nancy Kilgore’s newly-released first novel, Sea Level, about the first female minister in a rural, coastal Virginia church of the 1980s: “Kilgore skillfully weaves theological diversity, lived spirituality, and indigenous belief into this tale of grace.” Read more from this review…
Wendy Jones Nakanishi reviews The Beautiful One Has Come, a collection of short stories by Suzanne Kamata: “Certain themes run through Kamata’s work like a refrain, or like the insistent pulse of life itself. These include the agonies and ecstasies of parenthood, with both its pleasures and its pains exacerbated for the fathers and mothers of disabled children. Kamata is also skilled at portraying the messy compromises entailed in personal relationships, especially those involving couples of different nationalities, and she is good at outlining the difficulties experienced by adventurous spirits who dare to venture from the familiar and the safe by settling in a country such as Japan that can seem profoundly foreign to its non-native inhabitants.” Read more of this review.
Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo reviews Ellen Meeropol’s debut novel, House Arrest. In the review, Corliss DeLorenzo writes: “Meeropol takes the reader deeply into the complexities of friendship and the blurred lines of right and wrong as the characters confront painful pasts and reach conclusions that allow them to move beyond the limitations of those histories.” Read more of this review.
LouAnn Muhm reviews Deborah Digges’ final poetry collection, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart. Muhm writes in her review: “Writing a review of a posthumous collection from a well-loved poet is a daunting task. What is there to say that is not elegiac praise? How to know which poems are as the poet conceived them, and which are constructed from unfinished notes and drafts? There is an unevenness in this collection. Is it due to the untimely death of the poet before the collection was finished? Could it be showing the poet’ s descent toward her apparent suicide? There is no way to know.” Read more from this review.
Val B Russell reviews Katie Farris’ boysgirls, her debut collection of stories. Russell writes in the review, “As the title suggests, the book is split into gender specific sections. “Girls” is Farris’ intelligent and pointed treatment of what it means to be a girl based on her own modern mythical creatures. “Mise en Abyme,” depicts a girl with a mirror for a face. (…) In the second half, “Boys,” we encounter the male characters. “The Boy With One Wing” is clearly a reference to the emotional neutering of boys by a patriarchal society. (…) Read more from this review.
Mayra David reviews Siohban Fallon’s debut novel, You Know When the Men Are Gone: “Among the plethora of truly touching impressions one takes away from these short stories, the title story actually conveys the essence of the strongest one: the sheer emptiness of Fort Hood when the men are deployed. Imagine: a town loses 20,000 of its people, mostly men, in one day—husbands and fathers assigned to distance and danger somewhere overseas. (…)” Read more from this review.
Tori Grant-Welhouse writes about The Chalk Circle, a new anthology of intercultural prize-winning essays and finds that “our melting pot days are behind us. The impetus can no longer be homogeneity but validation of the diversity that makes us different or ‘other.’”
