Kylie Grant reviews Emma Henderson’s debut novel, “Grace Williams Says It Loud”: “it is a brave book and one that plays with the reader as often as it wants to pass comment on the experiences of those forced into the fringes of society.”
Steady, My Gaze by Marie-Elizabeth Mali
Metta Sáma reviews Marie-Elizabeth Mali’s “Steady, My Gaze”: “Mali’s poems are deceitful: sizzling and quiet, brash and compassionate. Mali’s debut is a delight because it is more curious than afraid, more ‘twists and turns’ and seeking than absolute and all-knowing.”
I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl by Kelle Groom
Tori Grant-Welhouse reviews Kelle Groom’s memoir, “I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl”: “Her life, as she tells it, is defined by the birth of her son Tommy and his double loss. As a young, unmarried woman, she gives him away for adoption only to learn soon after that he dies from leukemia at the heart-breaking age of two. The memoir submerges us in Groom’s search for Tommy, and through Tommy, herself. Each short chapter acts as a small eddy as she tries to make sense of the course of her life.”
Writing the Revolution by Michele Landsberg
By the 1970s, the second wave feminist movement was well underway. Yet many Canadian newsrooms remained boys clubs, with stories documenting the changing landscape of women’s social and political lives all but ignored by mainstream media. Women writing about women’s interests during this time did so mainly through women’s publications, slipping pointed opinion pieces in [...]
When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
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.
Who Is Ana Mendieta? by Christine Redfern & Caro Caron
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.”
The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman by Margot Mifflin
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.”
Solitaria by Genni Gunn
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."
Sea Level by Nancy Kilgore
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…
The Beautiful One Has Come: Stories by Suzanne Kamata
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.
