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Appalachian Fiction & Non-Fiction 2024

The July "Leisure Reads" features a diverse range of fiction & nonfiction print and ebooks on Appalachia, researched and formatted for the website by MSJ Librarian Cynthia Gregory! Featured authors include bell hooks, Lee Smith, Harriette Arnow, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, J.D.Vance, & James Still. Titles are requestable from the MSJ Library and OhioLINK.

American Hollow (print) by Rory Kennedy, et al
An oral and visual history of the Bowling clan of Kentucky. It is a rare experience: a sympathetic and strength-giving portrait of love and kinship in the face of hard times. Photos from Bowling family albums, historical Life and National Geographic images from the 1960s, and pictures of the Bowlings of today lend depth and texture to the story of this North American family.
Any Other Place (print) by Michael Croley
Call Number: Request from OhioLINK
"There is not a wasted word in these thirteen taut and thrilling stories of grief, exile, and devotion." --Silas House, author of Southernmost A Korean woman in rural Kentucky clings to the love found in her new marriage as the mountain above her washes away. A dutiful daughter struggles to help her father navigate their shared grief--and the sudden release of dangerous, exotic animals. A new father driven by his pride confronts Japanese soldiers in a harrowing raid on his home. In his debut collection, Michael Croley takes us from the Appalachian regions of rural Kentucky and Ohio to a village in South Korea in thirteen engaging stories in which characters find themselves, wherever they are, in states of displacement. In these settings, Croley guides his characters to some semblance of home, where they circle each other's pain, struggle to find belonging, and make sense of the mistakes and bad breaks that have brought them there. Croley uses his absorbing prose to uncover his characters' hidden disquiet and to bring us a remarkable and unique collection that expands the scope of modern American literature.
Appalachia (print) by Mike E. Maloney
Appalachia: Social Context, Past and Present, Fifth Edition, provides a new perspective on Appalachia. The essays reflect thoughtful definitions and analyses by scholars, activists, service providers, and community leaders who have joined the growing public dialogue about the region. It also contains sophisticated theoretical analyses of the region and of similar places worldwide that have emerged from that public discourse. These essays show not an isolated region and insular people, but rather Appalachia as a part of the global order. This widely used reader is now available in a fifth edition featuring new entries in the areas of migration, politics, health, poverty, welfare reform, and participatory research. The new edition continues a tradition of presenting "a new look at an old region" and is designed to serve as a textbook for Appalachian studies courses.
Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place (print) by bell hooks
Call Number: Request from OhioLINK
Author, activist, feminist, teacher, and artist bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks drew her unique pseudonym from the name of her grandmother, an intelligent and strong-willed African American woman who inspired her to stand up against a dominating and repressive society. Her poetry, novels, memoirs, and children's books reflect her Appalachian upbringing and feature her struggles with racially integrated schools and unwelcome authority figures. In Appalachian Elegy, bell hooks continues her work as an imagist of life's harsh realities in a collection of poems inspired by her childhood in the isolated hills and hidden hollows of Kentucky. At once meditative, confessional, and political, this poignant volume draws the reader deep into the experience of living in Appalachia. Touching on such topics as the marginalization of its people and the environmental degradation it has suffered over the years, hooks's poetry quietly elegizes the slow loss of an identity while also celebrating that which is constant, firmly rooted in a place that is no longer whole.
Appalachian Reckoning: a region responds to Hillbilly Elegy (print) by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll (Editors)
Call Number: Request from OhioLINK
With hundreds of thousands of copies sold, a Ron Howard movie, and the rise of its author as a media personality, J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. What about Hillbilly Elegy accounts for this explosion of interest during this period of political turmoil? Why have its ideas raised so much controversy? And how can debates about the book catalyze new, more inclusive political agendas for the region's future? Appalachian Reckoning is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow Hillbilly Elegy has cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Hillbilly Elegy to allow Appalachians from varied backgrounds to tell their own diverse and complex stories through an imaginative blend of scholarship, prose, poetry, and photography. The essays and creative work collected in Appalachian Reckoning provide a deeply personal portrait of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. Complicating simplistic visions that associate the region almost exclusively with death and decay, Appalachian Reckoning makes clear Appalachia's intellectual vitality, spiritual richness, and progressive possibilities.
Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis (print) by J. D. Vance
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a look at the struggles of America's white working-class. Vance’s memoir tells the story of a social, regional, and class decline. It begins with the Vance family story in postwar America when Vance's grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. A memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy, is the story of how upward mobility feels, and it is a meditation on the loss of the American dream.
What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia (print) by Elizabeth Catte
In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America's "forgotten tribe" of white working class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America's recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking Appalachian stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians. The book offers a must-needed insider's perspective on the region.
The Appalachians: America's first and last frontier (print) by Mari-Lynn Evans, et al
In a time when the world has become a global village and America a global nation, there is one place where things are largely as they used to be. Protected by mountains, largely ignored by modern industry and developers, Appalachia is America’s first and last frontier. Encom-passing more than 195,000 square miles in thirteen states, it possesses the least understood and most underappreciated culture in the United States. A beautifully produced companion volume to the PBS documentary narrated by Naomi Judd, The Appalachians fills the void in information about the region, offering a rich portrait of its history and its legacy in music, literature, and film. The text includes essays by some of Appalachia’s most respected scholars and journalists; excerpts from never-before-published diaries and journals; firsthand recollections from native Appalachians including Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, and Ralph Stanley; indigenous song lyrics and poetry; and oral histories from common folk whose roots run strong and deep. The book also includes more than one hundred illustrations, both archival and newly created. Here is a wondrous book celebrating a unique and invaluable cultural heritage.
Black Mountain Breakdown (print) by Lee Smith
Crystal Spangler lives in rural Appalachia. She's the apple of her mother's eye -- not yet beautiful, but she will be. She's the most popular girl at Black Rock High. She makes cheerleader, gets good grades, and is elected beauty queen. Crystal discovers God, goes to college, and falls in love. When she comes home, she's disheveled and confused. Crystal becomes a wealthy politician's wife. But there's something calling her, drawing her back to where it all began, in the shadow of Black Mountain.
The Dollmaker (print) by Harriette Arnow
The Dollmaker was originally published in 1954 to immediate success and critical acclaim. In unadorned and powerful prose, Harriette Arnow tells the unforgettable and heartbreaking story of the Nevels family and their quest to preserve their deep-rooted values amidst the turmoil of war and industrialization. When Gertie Nevels, a strong and self-reliant matriarch, follows her husband to Detroit from their countryside home in Kentucky, she learns she will have to fight desperately to keep her family together. A sprawling book full of vividly drawn characters and masterful scenes, The Dollmaker is a passionate tribute to a woman's love for her children and the land.
Even As We Breathe (print) by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
Call Number: Request from OhioLINK
Nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah yearns to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. When a summer job at Asheville's luxurious Grove Park Inn and Resort brings him one step closer to escaping the hills that both cradle and suffocate him, he sees it as an opportunity. The experience introduces him to the beautiful and enigmatic Essie Stamper--a young Cherokee woman who is also working at the inn and dreaming of a better life. With World War II raging in Europe, the resort is the temporary home of Axis diplomats and their families, who are being held as prisoners of war. A secret room becomes a place where Cowney and Essie can escape the white world of the inn and imagine their futures free of the shadows of their families' pasts. Outside of this refuge, however, racism and prejudice are never far behind, and when the daughter of one of the residents goes missing, Cowney finds himself accused of abduction and murder. Even As We Breathe invokes the elements of bone, blood, and flesh as Cowney navigates difficult social, cultural, and ethnic divides. Betrayed by the friends he trusted, he begins to unearth deeper mysteries as he works to prove his innocence and clear his name. This richly written debut novel explores the immutable nature of the human spirit and the idea that physical existence, with all its strife and injustice, will not be humanity's lasting legacy.
River of Earth (print) by James Still
First published in 1940, James Still's masterful novel has become a classic. It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In his world privation, violence, and death are part of everyday life, accepted and endured. Yet it is a world of dignity, love, and humor, of natural beauty which Still evokes in sharp, poetic images. No writer has caught more effectively the vividness of mountain speech or shown more honestly the trials and joys of mountain life.
The Foxfire 40th Anniversary Book (print) by Foxfire Fund, Inc.
An anthology of Appalachian crafts, culture, and wisdom of simple living. In 1966, an English teacher and students in Northeast Georgia founded a quarterly magazine, not only as a vehicle to learn the required English curriculum, but also to teach others about the customs, crafts, traditions, and lifestyle of their Appalachian culture. Named Foxfire after a local phosphorescent lichen, the magazine became one of the most beloved publications in American culture. For four decades, Foxfire has brought the philosophy of simple living to readers, teaching creative self-sufficiency, home crafts, and the art of natural remedies, and preserving the stories of Appalachia. This anniversary edition brings us generations of voices and lessons about the three essential Appalachian values of faith, family, and the land. We listen to elders share their own memories of how things used to be, and to the new generations eager to preserve traditional values in a more complicated world. There are descriptions of old church services, of popular Appalachian games and pastimes, and of family recipes. Rich with memories and useful lessons, this is a fitting tribute to this inspiring and practical publication that has become a classic American institution.
From Mountain to Metropolis: Appalachian migrants in American cities (print) by Kathryn M. Borman; Phillip Obermiller
This volume focuses on Appalachians as a case study of internal migration in developed countries. Since World War II, Appalachian miners have left the coal towns of their mountain region for the car towns of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Migrations have ebbed and flowed with economic expansion and recession. Some descendants who are several generations removed from the migration experience do not identify with their mountainous background, but many urban Appalachians have maintained their cultural ties to the region and its values. This collection of essays is the fourth in a series of studies of Appalachian society in relation to mainstream America. While earlier works have concentrated on the migration process, jobs, housing, and ethnic group formation in urban settings, this volume addresses the important issues of health, environment, and education in the urban Appalachian context. As such, it is the only resource available for educators and health and human service professionals involved with this social sector.
The Harlan Renaissance (ebook) by William H. Turner
Weatherford Award Winner, Nonfiction A personal remembrance from the preeminent chronicler of Black life in Appalachia. The Harlan Renaissance is an intimate remembrance of kinship and community in eastern Kentucky's coal towns written by one of the luminaries of Appalachian studies, William Turner. Turner reconstructs Black life in the company towns in and around Harlan County during coal's final postwar boom years, which built toward an enduring bust as the children of Black miners, like the author, left the region in search of better opportunities. The Harlan Renaissance invites readers into what might be an unfamiliar Appalachia: one studded by large and vibrant Black communities, where families took the pulse of the nation through magazines like Jet and Ebony and through the news that traveled within Black churches, schools, and restaurants. Difficult choices for the future were made as parents considered the unpredictable nature of Appalachia's economic realities alongside the unpredictable nature of a national movement toward civil rights. Unfolding through layers of sociological insight and oral history, The Harlan Renaissance centers the sympathetic perspectives and critical eye of a master narrator of Black life.
High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in time and place (print) by Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen
This collection is the first comprehensive, cohesive volume to unite Appalachian history with its culture. Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen's High Mountains Rising provides a clear, systematic, and engaging overview of the Appalachian timeline, its people, and the most significant aspects of life in the region. The first half of the fourteen essays deal with historical issues including Native Americans, pioneer settlement, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, industrialization, the Great Depression, migration, and finally, modernization. The remaining essays take a more cultural focus, addressing stereotypes, music, folklife, language, literature, and religion. Bringing together many of the most prestigious scholars in Appalachian studies, this volume has been designed for general and classroom use, and includes suggestions for further reading.
Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (print) by Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson (Editors)
Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia is a landmark anthology that brings together the work of 105 Appalachian women writers, including Dorothy Allison, Harriette Simpson Arnow, Annie Dillard, Nikki Giovanni, Denise Giardina, Barbara Kingsolver, Jayne Anne Phillips, Janice Holt Giles, George Ella Lyon, Sharyn McCrumb, and Lee Smith. Editors Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson offer a diverse sampling of time periods and genres, established authors and emerging voices. From regional favorites to national bestsellers, this unprecedented gathering of Appalachian voices displays the remarkable talent of the region's women writers who've made their mark at home and across the globe.
Making Our Future: visionary folklore and everyday culture in Appalachia (ebook) by Emily Hilliard
Drawing from her work as state folklorist, Emily Hilliard explores contemporary folklife in West Virginia and challenges the common perception of both folklore and Appalachian culture as static, antiquated forms, offering instead the concept of "visionary folklore" as a future-focused, materialist, and collaborative approach to cultural work. With chapters on the expressive culture of the West Virginia teachers' strike, the cultural significance of the West Virginia hot dog, the tradition of independent pro wrestling in Appalachia, the practice of nonprofessional women songwriters, the collective counternarrative of a multiracial coal camp community, the invisible landscape of writer Breece D'J Pancake's hometown, the foodways of an Appalachian Swiss community, the postapocalyptic vision presented in the video game Fallout 76, and more, the book centers the collective nature of folklife and examines the role of the public folklorist in collaborative engagements with communities and culture. Hilliard argues that folklore is a unifying concept that puts diverse cultural forms in conversation, as well as a framework that helps us reckon with the past, understand the present, and collectively shape the future.
The Prettiest Star (print) by Carter Sickels
Call Number: Request from OhioLINK
The story of Brian's return to small-town Ohio is told in a chorus of voices: Brian's mother Sharon; his fourteen-year-old sister, Jess, as she grapples with her brother's mysterious return; and the video diaries Brian makes to document his final summer. Written in prose that seeks "to answer without flinching away from ugliness and without demonizing the ignorant" (Salon), The Prettiest Star offers an urgent portrait of a family in the center of a national crisis, in order to tell a unique story about the politics and fragility of the body, and to explore the bounds of family and redemption.
Yesterday's People: life in contemporary Appalachia (print) by Jack E. Weller
The distinctive way of life of the Southern Appalachian people has often been criticized, romanticized or derided, but rarely has it been understood. Yesterday's People, the fruit of many years' labor in the mountains, reveals the fears, anxieties, and hopes that underlie the mountaineers' way of thinking and acting, and thereby shape their relationships in family and community. First published in 1965, this book has been an indispensable guide for all who seek to study, work or live within the Appalachian culture.
A Handbook to Appalachia: an introduction to the region (print) by Grace Toney Edwards, et al
Scholars who teach, write, or speak on the history and culture of the Appalachian region are frequently asked by students, administrators, or colleagues to recommend a relatively short, comprehensive book about Appalachia. Until now, there has been no interdisciplinary introductory text in Appalachian studies.A Handbook to Appalachia comprises a collection of concise, accessible overviews of the region written by top academics in a variety of fields, all directed at a general audience. Accompanied by dozens of inviting photographs, the essays offer information to those becoming acquainted with Appalachia for the first time as well as to more experienced observers of the region. The essays are arranged to show how various features of Appalachia are related. Each essay is followed by a list of suggested readings for further study.
Thread That Runs So True (print) by Jesse Stuart
First published in 1949, Jesse Stuart's now classic personal account of his twenty years of teaching in the mountain region of Kentucky has enchanted and inspired generations of students and teachers. With eloquence and wit, Stuart traces his twenty-year career in education, which began, when he was only seventeen years old, with teaching grades one through eight in a one-room schoolhouse. Before long Stuart was on a path that made him principal and finally superintendent of city and county schools. The road was not smooth, however, and Stuart faced many challenges, from students who were considerably older--and bigger--than he to well-meaning but distrustful parents, uncooperative administrators and, most daunting, his own fear of failure. Through it all, Stuart never lost his abiding faith in the power of education. A graceful ode to what he considered the greatest profession there is, Jesse Stuart's The Thread That Runs So True is timeless proof that "good teaching is forever and the teacher is immortal."
Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945 (print) by Ronald D. Eller
Appalachia has played a complex and often contradictory role in the unfolding of American history. Created by urban journalists in the years following the Civil War, the idea of Appalachia provided a counterpoint to emerging definitions of progress. Early-twentieth-century critics of modernity saw the region as a remnant of frontier life, a reflection of simpler times that should be preserved and protected. However, supporters of development and of the growth of material production, consumption, and technology decried what they perceived as the isolation and backwardness of the place and sought to "uplift" the mountain people through education and industrialization. Ronald D Eller has worked with local leaders, state policymakers, and national planners to translate the lessons of private industrial-development history into public policy affecting the region. In Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945, Eller examines the politics of development in Appalachia since World War II with an eye toward exploring the idea of progress as it has evolved in modern America. Appalachia's struggle to overcome poverty, to live in harmony with the land, and to respect the diversity of cultures and the value of community is also an American story. In the end, Eller concludes, "Appalachia was not different from the rest of America; it was in fact a mirror of what the nation was becoming."
Doubly Erased: LGBTQ literature in Appalachia (print) by Allison E. Carey
Call Number: Request from OhioLINK
The first book of its kind, Doubly Erased is a comprehensive study of the rich tradition of LGBTQ themes and characters in Appalachian novels, memoirs, poetry, drama, and film. Appalachia has long been seen as homogenous and tradition-bound. Allison E. Carey helps to remedy this misunderstanding, arguing that it has led to LGBTQ Appalachian authors being doubly erased--routinely overlooked both within United States literature because they are Appalachian and within the Appalachian literary tradition because they are queer. In exploring motifs of visibility, silence, storytelling, home, food, and more, Carey brings the full significance and range of LGBTQ Appalachian literature into relief. Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home are considered alongside works by Maggie Anderson, doris davenport, Jeff Mann, Lisa Alther, Julia Watts, Fenton Johnson, and Silas House, as well as filmmaker Beth Stephens. While primarily focused on 1976 to 2020, Doubly Erased also looks back to the region's literary "elders," thoughtfully mapping the place of sexuality in the lives and works of George Scarbrough, Byron Herbert Reece, and James Still.
Another Appalachia: coming up queer and Indian in a mountain place (ebook) by Neema Avashia
When Neema Avashia tells people where she's from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving "There are Indian people in West Virginia?" A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, how she struggles. Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia's identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, gun culture, and more, Another Appalachia mixes nostalgia and humor, sadness and sweetness, personal reflection and universal questions.
Belonging: a culture of place (print) by bell hooks
What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic bell hooks examines in her new book, Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link of the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky. With characteristic insight and honesty, Belonging offers a remarkable vision of a world where all people--wherever they may call home--can live fully and well, where everyone can belong.

Back to School Reads 2024

August's “Leisure Reads” is all about back to school! See below for classic school fiction, as well as nonfiction works on college success.

FICTION:

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
“This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that ‘there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.’ Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy….More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh.”—Publisher’s Summary
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows observant 'wallflower' Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.”—Publisher’s Summary
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
“As a senior in high school Quentin Coldwater became preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. After graduating from college and being admitted into a highly exclusive, secret society of magic in upstate New York, he makes a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined for his childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.”—Publisher’s Summary
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
“Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.”—Publisher’s Summary
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
“On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it.
A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extras. But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent."—Publisher’s Summary
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
"In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran: of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life and of the enormous toll repressive regimes exact on the individual spirit. Marjane's child's-eye-view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a stunning reminder of the human cost of war and political repression." --Publisher's Summary
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
“Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists. Faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Or the encore. Then Jerome, Howard's older son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps, and the two families find themselves thrown together in a beautiful corner of America, enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register.”—Publisher’s Summary

NON-FICTION:

The Secrets of College Success: Over 800 Tips, Techniques, and Strategies Revealed by Lynn F. Jacobs & Jeremy S. Hyman
“Are you among the 22 million students now enrolled in college? Or a high school student thinking of joining them shortly? Or perhaps a parent of a college-bound junior or senior? Then this book is just for you. Written by college professors and successfully used by tens of thousands of students, The Secrets of College Success combines easy-to-use tips, techniques, and strategies with insider information that few professors are willing to reveal. The over 800 tips in this book will show you how to: pick courses and choose a major; manage your time and develop college-level study skills; get good grades and manage the ‘core’ requirements; get motivated and avoid stress; interact effectively with the professor or TA; and prepare for a productive and lucrative career.”– Publisher’s Summary
U Thrive: How to Succeed in College (and Life) by Daniel Lerner & Alan Schlecter
“Every year, almost 4,000,000 students begin their freshman year at colleges and universities nationwide. Most of them will sleep less and stress out a whole lot more. By the end of the year, 30% of those freshmen will have dropped out. For many, the unforeseen demands of college life are so overwhelming that ‘the best four years of your life’ can start to feel like the worst. Enter Daniel Lerner and Dr. Alan Schlechter, ready to teach students how to not only survive college, but flourish in it. Filled with fascinating science, real-life stories, and tips for building positive lifelong habits, U Thrive addresses the opportunities and challenges every undergrad will face—from finding a passion to dealing with nightmarish roommates and surviving finals week. Engaging and hilarious, U Thrive will help students grow into the happy, successful alums they all deserve to be.”– Publisher’s Summary
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
“In this must-read book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, educators, athletes, students, and business people—both seasoned and new—that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called 'grit.' Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, MacArthur 'genius' Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments. Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not 'genius' but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance." – Publisher’s Summary

Pride Month 2024

Our June “Leisure Reads” post celebrates Pride Month with fiction and nonfiction by authors in the LGBTQIA+ community. Featured below are Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Ocean Vuong, and more!

Alexander’s Bridge by Willa Cather
“Alexander’s Bridge, Willa Cather’s first novel, is a taut psychological drama about the fragility of human connections. Published in 1912, just a year before O Pioneers! made Cather’s name, it features high society on an international stage rather than the immigrant prairie characters she later became known for. The successful and glamorous life of Bartley Alexander, a world-renowned engineer and bridge builder, begins to unravel when he encounters a former lover in London. As he shuttles among his wife in Boston, his old flame in London, and a massive bridge he is building in Canada, Alexander finds himself increasingly tormented. But the threatened collapse of his marriage presages a more fatal catastrophe, one he will risk his life to try to prevent.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist by Ben Barres
“Ben Barres was known for his groundbreaking scientific work and for his groundbreaking advocacy for gender equality in science. In this book, completed shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in December 2017, Barres describes a life full of remarkable accomplishments—from his childhood as a precocious math and science whiz to his experiences as a female student at MIT in the 1970s to his female-to-male transition in his forties, to his scientific work and role as teacher and mentor at Stanford....At Stanford, Barres made important discoveries about glia, the most numerous cells in the brain, and he describes some of his work. ‘The most rewarding part of his job,’ however, was mentoring young scientists. That, and his advocacy for women and transgender scientists, ensures his legacy.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
“This is the story of two sisters—one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in the South—who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic novel of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.” – Publisher’s Summary
Coming on Home Soon by Jacqueline Woodson
“Ada Ruth's mama must go away to Chicago to work, leaving Ada Ruth and Grandma behind. It's war time, and women are needed to fill the men's jobs. As winter sets in, Ada Ruth and her grandma keep up their daily routine, missing Mama all the time. They find strength in each other, and a stray kitten even arrives one day to keep them company, but nothing can fill the hole Mama left. Every day they wait, watching for the letter that says Mama will be coming on home soon. Set during World War II, Coming On Home Soon has a timeless quality that will appeal to all who wait and hope.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Death of King Arthur: Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: A Retelling by Peter Ackroyd
“In this modern adaptation of the story of King Arthur, the author resurrects the legendary epic of Camelot. The names of Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad, the sword of Excalibur, and the court of Camelot are as recognizable as any from the world of myth. Although many versions exist of the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory endures as the most moving and richly inventive. In this abridged retelling the author transforms Malory's fifteenth-century work into a dramatic modern story, vividly bringing to life a world of courage and chivalry, magic, and majesty. The golden age of Camelot, the perilous search for the Holy Grail, the love of Guinevere and Lancelot, and the treachery of Arthur's son Mordred are all rendered into contemporary prose.” – Publisher’s Summary
Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
“In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be non-binary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde
“In these delightful tales, Oscar Wilde employs all his grace, artistry and wit. “The Happy Prince” tells of the statue of a once pleasure-loving Prince which, with the help of a selfless Swallow helps people in distress. As well as “The Nightingale and the Rose,” “The Devoted Friend” and “The Remarkable Rocket,” this collection contains “The Selfish Giant,” a remarkable story of the redemptive power of love.” – Publisher’s Summary
Invisible Life by E. Lynn Harris
“Invisible Life is the story of a young man's coming of age. Law school, girlfriends, and career choices were all part of Raymond Tyler's life, but there were other, more terrifying issues for him to confront. Being black was tough enough, but Raymond was becoming more and more conscious of sexual feelings that he knew weren't ‘right.’ He was completely committed to Sela, his longtime girlfriend, but his attraction to Kelvin, whom he had met during his last year in law school, had become more than just a friendship. No matter how much he tried to suppress them, his feelings were deeply sexual.” – Publisher’s Summary
The King Must Die by Mary Renault
The King Must Die / by Mary Renault
“In this ambitious, ingenious narrative, celebrated historical novelist Mary Renault take legendary hero Theseus and spins his myth into a fast-paced and exciting story. Renault starts with Theseus' early years, showing how the mystery of his father's identity and his small stature breed the insecurities that spur his youthful hijinx. As he moves on to Eleusis, Athens, and Crete, his playfulness and fondness for pranks matures into the courage to attempt singular heroic feats, the gallantry and leadership he was known for on the battlefield, and the bold-hearted ingenuity he shows in navigating the labyrinth and slaying the Minotaur. In what is perhaps the most inventive of all her novels of Ancient Greece, Renault casts Theseus in a surprisingly original pose; she teases the flawed human out of the bronze hero, and draws the plausible out of the fantastic.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality by Lorraine Hansberry
This photographic record of the Civil Rights Movement was published in 1964. That was the year the Civil Rights Act was passed, and it may be viewed as the very height of the struggle for equality. Accompanying photographs by Danny Lyon, Norris McNamara, Roy de Carava, and others is text by the acclaimed playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who is best known for A Raisin in the Sun.
Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin
“From one of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of the twentieth century comes a collection of ‘passionate, probing, controversial’ essays (The Atlantic) on topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society. Told with Baldwin's characteristically unflinching honesty, this ‘splendid book’ (The New York Times) offers illuminating, deeply felt essays along with personal accounts of Richard Wright, Norman Mailer and other writers. ‘James Baldwin is a skillful writer, a man of fine intelligence and a true companion in the desire to make life human. To take a cue from his title, we had better learn his name’ (The New York Times).” – Publisher’s Summary
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
“Brilliant, heartbreaking, tender, and highly original—poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born—a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam—and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.” – Publisher’s Summary
A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski
“A Queer History of the United States is groundbreaking and accessible. It looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski's book takes the reader through the centuries--from Columbus' arrival and the brutal treatment the Native peoples received, through the American Revolution's radical challenging of sex and gender roles--to the violent, and liberating, 19th century--and the transformative social justice movements of the 20th. Bronski's book is filled with startling examples of often ignored or unknown aspects of American history: the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War, the effect of new technologies on LGBT life in the 19th century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the great backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. More than anything, A Queer History of the United States is not so much about queer history as it is about all American history—and why it should matter to both LGBT people and heterosexuals alike.” – Publisher’s Summary
A Stein Reader by Gertrude Stein
“This important collection presents Gertrude Stein for the first time in her brilliant modernity. Ulla E. Dydo's textual scholarship demonstrates Stein's constant questioning of convention, and A Stein Reader changes the balance of work in print, concentrating on Stein's experimental work and including many key works that are virtually unknown or unavailable. A Stein Reader includes unpublished work, such as the portrait "Article"; shows the astonishing stylistic change in the neglected "A Long Gay Book"; draws attention to the many unknown plays such as "Reread Another;" and offers fascinating portraits of Matisse, Picasso, and Sitwell. Illuminating headnotes bring out connections between pieces and provide invaluable keys to Stein's motifs and thought patterns.” – Publisher’s Summary
Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee
From the author of Lucky Few comes a 'refreshing' (Booklist, starred review) teen novel about Internet fame, peer pressure, and remembering not to step on the little people on your way to the top! After a shout-out from one of the internet's superstar vloggers, Natasha 'tash' Zelenka suddenly finds herself and her obscure, amateur web series, Unhappy Families, thrust in the limelight: she's gone viral. Her show is a modern adaptation of Anna Karenina, written by Tash's literary love Count Lev Nikolayevich 'Leo' Tolstoy. Tash is a fan of the 40,000 new subscribers, their gushing tweets, and flashy Tumblr gifs. Not so much the pressure to deliver the best web series ever. And when Unhappy Families is nominated for a Golden Tuba award, Tash's cyber-flirtation with a fellow award nominee suddenly has the potential to become something IRL, if she can figure out how to tell said crush that she's romantic asexual. Tash wants to enjoy her newfound fame, but will she lose her friends in her rise to the top? What would Tolstoy do?” – Publisher’s Summary
Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride
“Before she became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention in 2016 at the age of twenty-six, Sarah McBride struggled with the decision to come out—not just to her family but to the students of American University, where she was serving as student body president. She’d known she was a girl from her earliest memories, but it wasn’t until the Facebook post announcing her truth went viral that she realized just how much impact her story could have on the country. Four years later, McBride was one of the nation’s most prominent transgender activists, walking the halls of the White House, advocating inclusive legislation, and addressing the country in the midst of a heated presidential election. She had also found her first love and future husband, Andy, a trans man and fellow activist, who complemented her in every way . . . until cancer tragically intervened. Informative, heartbreaking, and profoundly empowering, Tomorrow Will Be Different is McBride’s story of love and loss and a powerful entry point into the LGBTQ community’s battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to health care to gender in America, McBride weaves the important political and cultural milestones into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds.” – Publisher’s Summary
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: A Play by Edward Albee
“’Twelve times a week,’ answered Uta Hagen when asked how often she’d like to play Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee’s masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evening’s end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years. With the play’s razor-sharp dialogue and the stripping away of social pretense, Newsweek rightly foresaw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as ‘a brilliantly original work of art—an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire [that] will be igniting Broadway for some time to come.’” – Publisher’s Summary

AA&PI Heritage Month 2024

May’s “Leisure Reads” features fiction, nonfiction, and poetry selected in honor of Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Featured below you will find Ocean Vuong, Bharati Mukherjee, Khaled Hosseini, and more.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
“The poems in Mr. Vuong’s new collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds…possess a tensile precision reminiscent of Emily Dickinson’s work, combined with a Gerard Manley Hopkins-like appreciation for the sound and rhythms of words. Mr. Vuong can create startling images (a black piano in a field, a wedding-cake couple preserved under glass, a shepherd stepping out of a Caravaggio painting) and make the silences and elisions in his verse speak as potently as his words…There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuong’s sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things.” – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
The Firekeeper’s Son by Linda Sue Park
“In Korea in the early 1800s, news from the countryside reached the king by means of signal fires. On one mountaintop after another, a fire was lit when all was well. If the king did not see a fire, that meant trouble, and he would send out his army. Linda Sue Park's first picture book for Clarion is about Sang-hee, son of the village firekeeper. When his father is unable to light the fire one night, young Sang-hee must take his place. Sang-hee knows how important it is for the fire to be lit-but he wishes that he could see soldiers . . . just once. Mountains, firelight and shadow, and Sunhee's struggle with a hard choice are rendered in radiant paintings, which tell their own story of a turning point in a child's life.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Bicycle Man by Allen Say
“Shortly after the end of World War II, two American soldiers come to sports day at a school on a southern island of Japan. The amazing tricks two American soldiers perform on a borrowed bicycle are a fitting finale for the school sports day festivities in a small village in occupied Japan.” – Publisher’s Summary
Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
“kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining. Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering—kira-kira—in the future.” – Publisher’s Summary
English Lessons and Other Stories by Shauna Singh Baldwin
“Shauna Singh Baldwin’s passionate stories dramatize the lives of Indian women from 1919 to today, from India to Canada to the US. Through the eyes of these women adjusting to change, we see a world whose familiar rhythms mask dissonance and discordance. More overt is the ongoing struggle for the Sikh women in these stories to keep their identity and assert it—the massacres of Partition and 1984 are never far away. More subtle is the cost of integration into the new world, how colonialism survives in the minds of the colonized, and how these women confront the twin fear of freedom and fear of ‘the other.’ Moving from the inner sanctums of the family to the world of the office, subway and university, Baldwin lingers sensuously on the mundane surface of her characters’ lives: the jewel-like colours of turbans in the wash water, the shimmering bowls of cashews and almonds on a table, the worn magic of an abandoned house in Shimla. Slowly, almost innocuously, Baldwin reveals the unseen country her characters inhabit, only to allow this world to withdraw and emerge once again....” – Publisher’s Summary
Song of the Exile by Kiana Davenport
“In this epic, original novel in which Hawaii's fierce, sweeping past springs to life, Kiana Davenport, author of the acclaimed Shark Dialogues, draws upon the remarkable stories of her people to create a timeless, passionate tale of love and survival, tragedy and triumph, survival and transcendence. In spellbinding, sensual prose, Song of the Exile follows the fortunes of the Meahuna family—and the odyssey of one resilient man searching for his soul mate after she is torn from his side by the forces of war. From the turbulent years of World War II through Hawaii's complex journey to statehood, this mesmerizing story presents a cast of richly imagined characters who rise up magnificent and forceful, redeemed by the spiritual power and the awesome beauty of their islands.” – Publisher’s Summary
Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
“When Jasmine was first published The New York Times called it “one of the most suggestive novels we have about what it is to become an American.” Thirty years later, Jasmine has only grown in its significance. Following one woman through her numerous identities―from Jyoti in a small village in Punjab, to Jasmine in Jalandhar, to Jase in Manhattan, to Jane in Iowa―Mukherjee gives us an iconic character whose journey through shifting landscapes necessitates her shifting selves. What she encounters on this path, from India to America and from girlhood to womanhood, shows the beauty and darkness and revelation inherent in the journeys of all those who not only want to survive, but to grow.” – Publisher’s Summary
Book of Cord by Leona Chen
“In her debut collection Book of Cord, Leona Chen confronts the loss of Taiwanese identity through colonization and emigration. As she acknowledges her heritage and claims herself as Taiwanese American, ‘a radical act’ with ‘profound implications,’ her poems explore histories both recognized and erased. She composes her narrative by way of a series of fragmentary lyric poems in English that is interspersed with Taiwanese Hokkien. Book of Cord is Chen's protest, journey of self-discovery, and rallying cry for the Taiwanese American community. Or, as novelist Shawna Yang Ryan writes in her comprehensive introduction: ‘The history she depicts is implied and embodied, making it emotionally accessible to readers unfamiliar with Taiwan's history and deeply affecting to those who are familiar. This is a powerful inscription of an effaced history.’” – Publisher’s Summary
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
“Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them—in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul—they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.” – Publisher’s Summary
Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel
“Figiel uses the traditional Samoan storytelling form of su'ifefiloi to talk back to Western anthropological studies on Samoan women and culture. In doing so, she weaves an honest—and sometimes brutal—coming-of-age story that combines poetry with an unflinching humor to describe the ambiguities of adolescent desire. Told in a series of linked episodes that recall the work of V.S. Naipaul and Sandra Cisneros, this powerful and highly original narrative follows thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga as she navigates the mores and restrictions of her village, Malaefou, and comes to terms with her own womanhood and search for identity.” – Publisher’s Summary
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace by Le Ly Hayslip
“In these pages, Le Ly Hayslip—just twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her tiny village of Ky La—shows us the Vietnam War as she lived it. Initially pressed into service by the Vietcong, Le Ly was captured and imprisoned by government forces. She found sanctuary at last with an American contractor and ultimately fled to the United States. Almost twenty years after her escape, Le Ly found herself inexorably drawn back to the devastated country and loved ones she’d left behind, and returned to Vietnam in 1986. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years, creating an extraordinary portrait of the nation, then and now—and of one courageous woman who held fast to her faith in humanity.” – Publisher’s Summary

Mental Health Awareness Month 2024

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This special edition of “Leisure Reads” features nature writing, including a special focus on the connection of nature to mental health and wellness. Below you will find ebooks, print books, and books that can be requested from other university libraries via OhioLINK. Many thanks to MSJ Librarian Cynthia Gregory for this list of books, as well as for her assistance formatting the post!

Ebooks:

Forest as a Health Resource by Joachim Rathmann
“Joachim Rathmann presents the interdisciplinary links between forests and human health. Forests provide numerous ecosystem services for the survival, well-being, and maintenance and enhancement of human health. Forests provide multisensory recreational spaces and can therefore be considered a resource that positively impacts both physical, mental, and social aspects of health. The author presents natural science, social science, and humanities research in an understandable, clear, and concise manner for a diverse readership.” – Publisher’s Summary
Forest Therapy: The Potential of the Forest for Your Health by Angela Schuh & Gisela Immich
Forest Therapy: The Potential of the Forest for Your Health / Angela Schuh & Gisela Immich
“In fast-paced everyday life, it is becoming increasingly important to find an antipole. The forest seems to be the perfect place for this—it offers balancing stimuli, health-promoting effects and its climate is proven to be effective on human health. This non-fiction book explains the background and facts about the effect of forest visits on a scientifically sound basis and sensitizes readers to the great health benefits of forest bathing (Shinrin-Yoku) and forest therapy. As an oasis of tranquility, the forest invites you to slow down, regenerate and draw new energy. Written for interested lay people—psychotherapists, doctors and other health professionals can read along.” – Publisher’s Summary
A Voice in the Wilderness: Conversations with Terry Tempest Williams by Michael Austin
“With her distinctive, impassioned voice and familiar felicity of language, Terry Tempest Williams talks about wilderness and wildlife, place and eroticism, art and literature, democracy and politics, family and heritage, Mormonism and religion, writing and creativity, and other subjects that engage her agile mind—in a set of interviews gathered and introduced by Michael Austin to represent the span of her career as a naturalist, author, and activist.” – Publisher’s Summary

Print Books:

The Annie Dillard Reader by Annie Dillard
“’One of the most distinctive voices in American letters today’ (Boston Globe) collects her favorite writing selections in The Annie Dillard Reader. This collection of stories, novel excerpts, essays, poetry and more demonstrates the depth and resonance of the writing of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard. Includes chapters from the novel Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and An American Childhood, the revised Holy the Firm in its entirety, the revised short story ‘The Living,’ essays from Teaching a Stone to Talk and more. ‘She has a strange and wonderful mind, and the ability to speak it with enduring grace’ (The New Yorker).” – Publisher’s Summary
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000 by D. Quammen & B. Bilger
“With the inaugural volume of The Best American Science & Nature Writing, Houghton Mifflin showcases the finest writing of the [year 2000] on subjects of ever-increasing interest to readers. Guest editor David Quammen and series editor Burkhard Bilger have assembled a remarkable group of essays that originally appeared in periodicals from National Geographic, Science, and The New Yorker to Puerto del Sol and DoubleTake. Among the acclaimed writers represented are Natalie Angier on "Men, Women, Sex, and Darwin," Peter Matthiessen exploring "The Island at the End of the Earth," Richard Preston considering "The Demon in the Freezer," and Oliver Sacks remembering the "Brilliant Light" of his boyhood. Also including work by such literary lights as Anne Fadiman, Edward Hoagland, and Cullen Murphy, this volume presents selections bound together by their timelessness.” – Publisher’s Summary
House of Light by Mary Oliver
“This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity. ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?’ (from ‘The Summer Day’—one of the poems in this volume). Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award and winner of the 1991 Boston Globe Lawrence L. Winship Book Award.” – Publisher’s Summary
Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing: Henry Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez by S. Slovic
A scholarly analysis of American nature writing, including the poetical works of Thoreau, Dillard, and others. It specifically addresses the psychology of nature writing, the juxtaposition of the inner and outer world, and particularities about aestheticism and awareness. ‘We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. The body, the senses, must conspire with the mind. Expression is the act of the whole man, that our speech may be vascular. The intellect is powerless to express thought without the aid of the heart and liver and of every member’ (Thoreau).
The Norton Book of Nature Writing by R. Finch & J. Elder
“A collection of 125 selections by 94 writers (each introduced with a short biographical essay). Classic and contemporary pieces from England and America are included as are works both from clearly identified nature writers and those with more general reputations (among them: Updike, Le Guin, Woolf).” – Publisher’s Summary
Writing Natural History: Dialogues with Authors by E. Lueders
“Writing Natural History is the edited record of four public dialogues held at the University of Utah in 1988 between eminent writers in the fields of natural history. In these interchanges the writers discussed their traditions, perspectives, values, purposes, techniques, and personal insights. Their conversations, like their work, link the sciences with the humanities in surprising ways, enhancing our understanding and appreciation of both. This volume maintains the vitality of the spoken dialogues and conveys a lively sense of each speaker’s concern with the processes of the natural world and our human position in it.... Authors dialogues feature Barry Lopez and Edward O. Wilson, Robert Finch and Terry Tempest Williams, Gary Paul Nabhan and Ann Zwinger, Paul Brooks and Edward Lueders.” – Publisher’s Summary
National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry by J.P. Lewis
“When words in verse are paired with the awesomeness of nature, something magical happens! Beloved former U.S. Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis curates an exuberant poetic celebration of the natural world in this stellar collection of nature poems. From trickling streams to deafening thunderstorms to soaring mountains, discover majestic photography perfectly paired with contemporary (such as Billy Collins), classics (such as Robert Frost), and never-before-published works.” – Publisher’s Summary

Books from OhioLINK's Catalog:

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
“Never before in history have children been so plugged in—and so out of touch with the natural world. In this groundbreaking new work, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as rises in obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and depression.... Nature-deficit disorder is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature. This alienation damages children and shapes adults, families, and communities. There are solutions, though, and they're right in our own backyards. Last Child in the Woods is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research showing that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development—physical, emotional, and spiritual.... Parents have the power to ensure that their daughter or son will not be the ‘last child in the woods,’ and this book is the first step toward that nature-child reunion.” – Publisher’s Summary
Return to Nature: The New Science of How Natural Landscapes Restore Us by Emma Loewe
“For centuries, we have known that getting outside is good for us. Yet we have become increasingly disconnected from the earth that nourishes us, with most of us spending 87% of our days indoors. In response, writer and environmentalist Emma Loewe demonstrates the power of nature’s healing properties in a guidebook organized by eight landscapes. In each chapter, you'll find research-backed ways to explore that landscape right now and protect it in the future, so that it can be healthy and nurturing for generations to come.... Alongside beautiful four-color illustrations that inspire us all to get outside in big and small ways, this stunning book—more urgent than ever—will appeal to anyone looking to connect with the world around them, whether in their neighborhood park or on a backpacking getaway.” – Publisher’s Summary
Losing Eden: Our fundamental Need for the Natural World and its Ability to Heal Body and Soul by Lucy Jones
“Why human beings have a powerful and fundamental need—mental, spiritual, and physical—for the natural world; the profound impact it has on our consciousness and ability to heal our soul and bring solace to the heart, and the new cutting-edge scientific evidence proving nature as nurturer. In Losing Eden, Lucy Jones interweaves her deeply personal story of recovery from addiction and depression, with that of discovering the natural world and how it aided and enlivened her progress, giving her a renewed sense of belonging and purpose. Jones writes of the intersection of science, wellness, and the environment, and reveals that in the last decade, scientists have begun to formulate theories of why people feel better after a walk in the woods and an experience with the natural world....” – Publisher’s Summary
Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness by Dr. Qing Li
“The definitive guide to the therapeutic Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, or the art and science of how trees can promote health and happiness. Notice how a tree sways in the wind. Run your hands over its bark. Take in its citrusy scent. As a society we suffer from nature deficit disorder, but studies have shown that spending mindful, intentional time around trees—what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing—can promote health and happiness. In this beautiful book—featuring more than 100 color photographs from forests around the world, including the forest therapy trails that criss-cross Japan—Dr. Qing Li, the world's foremost expert in forest medicine, shows how forest bathing can reduce your stress levels and blood pressure, strengthen your immune and cardiovascular systems, boost your energy, mood, creativity, and concentration, and even help you lose weight and live longer. Once you've discovered the healing power of trees, you can lose yourself in the beauty of your surroundings, leave everyday stress behind, and reach a place of greater calm and wellness.” – Publisher’s Summary

National Poetry Month 2024

This month’s “Leisure Reads” post celebrates National Poetry Month with more selections from the Levine Poetry Collection, including Etheridge Knight, June Jordan, and Anne Carson. Check out the entire collection in the Library Lobby!

Byrne by Anthony Burgess
“When Anthony Burgess died in 1993 he left the complete Byrne, a novel in epic verse. This is the first American publication. Byrne tells the astonishing story of an Irish artist who, in the early years of this century, goes rapidly to the bad, bedding and abandoning women everywhere, debasing his talents as a composer and painter, and finally ending up within Hitler's Third Reich, at which point he vanishes. After his disappearance, the story passes to his twin sons, one a doubting priest, the other suffering from a debilitating disease, who move across the troubled face of contemporary Europe before encountering their father in one final apocalyptic confrontation.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Essential Etheridge Knight by Etheridge Knight
“Seminal African American poet Etheridge Knight did not begin writing poetry until a robbery conviction sent him to prison in 1960. A Korean War veteran who suffered a shrapnel wound that led to drug addiction, Knight published his first collection in 1968, Poems from Prison, which set him apart as an important new voice in the Black Arts Movement. His second collection, Belly Songs and Other Poems (1973), earned him Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations, and his third collection, Born of a Woman: New and Selected (1980), was also critically acclaimed. The Essential Etheridge Knight is a selection of the best work by one of the country’s most prominent and still-relevant poets, decades after his death. It brings together poems from Knight’s three previously published books and a section of later poems available only in this collection, which features a striking new cover.” – Publisher’s Summary
Fernando Pessoa & Co by R. Zenith
“A comprehensive edition of works by this renowned Portuguese poet includes pieces written by the author as himself, as well as his numerous literary alter egos, which he called ‘heteronyms.’” – Publisher’s Summary

“The amazing Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa...as a fantastic invention surpasses any creation by Borges....Pessoa was neither mad nor a mere ironist; he is Whitman reborn, but a Whitman who gives separate names to ‘my self,’ the ‘real me’ or ‘me myself,’ and ‘my soul,’ and writes wonderful books of poetry for all of them.” – Harold Bloom, The Western Canon
Ghost Volcano by Sandra M. Gilbert
“Here in her beautiful and brilliant new collection, Sandra Gilbert collects the poems she wrote in memory of her husband's unexpected and inexplicable death. ‘Widow's Walk,’ the book's centerpiece, charts the poet's journey through the stages of grief, from the bleak moments when her lost love seems massive as a ghost volcano...to the tenuous instant when she realizes that she must ‘send you forth ... musing and lit with your own past toward the unimaginable ice cliffs, / south of the south.’
At the same time, in longer and more formal works...Gilbert seeks both to elegize her husband and to understand his death in public, political, and philosophical contexts. Ghost Volcano is a tender, courageous, loving, and ultimately universal account of how we endure grief.” – Publisher’s Summary
Kissing God Goodbye by June Jordan
With the same pithy but eloquent observations characteristic of Jordan's classic poetry collections...and her notable essay collections...Kissing God Goodbye will strike a universal chord as it witnesses the pain, confusion, and passion of what it's like to live in our society at the twilight of the twentieth century. June Jordan's many selves, as poet, essayist, feminist, and activist come together here in a collection of poetry that is alternately lyrical, magical, shockingly spare, pungently political, yet universally resonate. Beautiful love poems are interspersed with poems about Bosnia, Africa, urban America, Clarence Thomas, affirmative action, her mother's suicide, and Jordan's bout with breast cancer.” – Publisher’s Summary
Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson
“The author of Autobiography of Red sheds poetic light on Oedipus, Emily Dickinson, Audubon, Sappho, St. Augustine, and many others, in a new collection of poetry and prose.” - Publisher’s Summary
New and Selected Poems by Gary Soto
“For over two decades, the award-winning poet and author Gary Soto has been offering his readers a vision that transcends the ordinary, making him one of today's most celebrated Chicano writers. New and Selected Poems includes the best of his seven full-length collections, plus over 23 new poems previously unpublished in book form. From the charged, short-lined poems of Soto's early writing to an unflinching look at poverty and hard labor in California's Central Valley to the off-beat humor in his longer, more recent work, New and Selected Poems is a timely tribute to a brilliant writer whose work confirms the power of the human spirit to survive and soar.” – Publisher’s Summary
Ordinary Words by Ruth Stone
“Ordinary Words is the luminous, wild, and lyrical collection of poetry that brought Ruth Stone the critical acclaim she long deserved with the National Book Critics Circle Award, and it paved the way to the National Book Award and long-deserved critical attention. Ordinary Words captures a unique vision of Americana, marked by Stone's characteristic wit, poignancy, and lyricism. The poet addresses the environment, poverty, and aging with fearless candor and surprising humor....Her heroes are dead husbands, wild grandmothers, struggling daughters: ordinary Americans leading simple and extraordinary lives.” – Publisher’s Summary
Playlist for the Apocalypse by Rita Dove
“In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America’s, and the world’s, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or the contemporary efforts of Black Lives Matter, a girls’ night clubbing in the shadow of World War II or the doomed nobility of Muhammad Ali’s conscious objector stance, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history’s grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives.” – Publisher’s Summary
Pleasure Dome by Yusef Komunyakaa
“Best known for Neon Vernacular, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994, and for Dien Cai Dau, a collection of poems chronicling his experiences as a journalist in Vietnam, Yusef Komunyakaa has become one of America's most compelling poets. Pleasure Dome gathers the poems in these two distinguished books and five others—over two and a half decades of Komunyakaa's work. In addition, Pleasure Dome includes 25 early, uncollected poems and a rich selection of 18 new poems.” – Publisher’s Summary
Poems of New York by Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets
“All the icons of this greatest of cities swirl and flash through these pages: taxis and subways, bridges and skyscrapers, ghettos and roof gardens and fire escapes, from the South Bronx to Coney Island to Broadway to Central Park, and from Langston Hughes’s Harlem to James Merrill’s Upper East Side. Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings, W. H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, and Audre Lorde are just a few of the poets gathered here, alongside a host of new young voices.” – Publisher’s Summary
Restless Messengers by Norman Finkelstein
“From the chamber music of Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms, to the children's literature of the Arabian Nights, Grimm's fairy tales, and Kenneth Grahame, to the 'high Jewish modernism' of Kafka, Isaac Babel, and Bruno Schulz, the poems in Restless Messengers wander, discovering the lyric moment. Cast in a form reminiscent of the Romantic ode, these poems are passionate engagements with other works through which the poet seeks a voice that encompasses but transcends the personal. A braiding of remembrance and forgetting, these poems revive both childhood memories and the ideals of the poet's Jewish heritage. – Publisher’s Summary
Scattered Thoughts: Song of the Soul by Harajindara Sigha Dilagra
“Mr. [Dilagra] is a profound student of communication, who calmly but firmly probes the complex skein of human emotions with diligence and true charitas. Those who read his Scattered Thoughts will be replenished, like a weary traveler who finds a pure stream after a long trip through an arid land.” – David Manning White, Ph.D., Chairman, Division of Journalism, Boston University

Women’s History Month 2024

Our March “Leisure Reads” post features an assortment of fiction and nonfiction by diverse women authors in celebration of Women’s History Month, which will be celebrated throughout March in the United States. This includes a children’s book by Maya Angelou, a classic Gothic potboiler by Eliza Parsons, and creative nonfiction about the nation of Antigua by Jamaica Kincaid.

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
“Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement. He is tormented by his melancholic sister, who has decided to come live with him; his ex-wife, who has infuriating hopes of redeeming the past; her delinquent brother, who wants money and emotional confrontations; and Bradley's friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a younger, deplorably more successful author of commercial fiction. The ever-mounting action includes marital cross-purposes, seduction, suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law. Bradley tries to escape from it all but fails, leading to a violent climax and a coda that casts shifting perspectives on all that has preceded.” – Publisher’s Summary
Crimes of Conscience by Nadine Gordimer
“This powerful collection of short stories, set in Gordimer's native South Africa, reveals her outstanding ability to pierce the core of the human condition.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Gossamer Years by Michitsuna no Haha
“This frank autobiographical diary reveals two tempestuous decades of the author's unhappy marriage and her growing indignation at rival wives and mistresses. Too impetuous to be satisfied as a subsidiary wife, this beautiful noblewoman of the Heian dynasty protests the marriage system of her time in one of Japanese literature's earliest attempts to portray difficult elements of the predominant social hierarchy. A classic work of early Japanese prose.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
“Set in San Francisco and in a remote village of Southwestern China, Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses is a tale of American assumptions shaken by Chinese ghosts and broadened with hope. In 1962, five-year-old Olivia meets the half-sister she never knew existed, eighteen-year-old Kwan from China, who sees ghosts with her "yin eyes." Decades later, Olivia describes her complicated relationship with her sister and her failing marriage, as Kwan reveals her story, sweeping the reader into the splendor and violence of mid-nineteenth century China. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humor, Tan conjures up a story of the inheritance of love, its secrets and senses, its illusions and truths.” – Publisher’s Summary
Inanna, queen of heaven and earth : her stories and hymns from Sumer by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer
“With the publication of this book, we have for the first time in any modern literary form one of the most vital of ancient myths—that of Inanna (known to the Semites as Ishtar), the world's first goddess of recorded history and the beloved deity of the ancient Sumerians. In this groundbreaking work, Samuel Noah Kramer, the preeminent living expert on Sumer, and Diane Wolkstein have retranslated, ordered, and combined the fragmented cuneiform tablets comprising the Cycle of Inanna to create an authentic portrait of the goddess from her adolescence to her completed womanhood and ‘godship.’” – Publisher’s Summary
My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, & Me by Maya Angelou
“The world of South Africa's Ndebele people and the extraordinary mural art produced by the Ndebele women come to life through the eyes of eight-year-old Thandi and her account of her family, best friend, a chicken, and Ndebele life.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Mysterious Warning by Eliza Parsons
Not long after Ferdinand returns from military service, his wife removes herself to a secluded convent with very little explanation to anyone. Could it be that Claudina carried on an affair with his bachelor brother Rodophil while he was away, and that she is with child by her brother-in-law? Whatever the reason, she will not say, nor will she see Ferdinand. Nevertheless, he keeps trying, and meanwhile stays at the dilapidated mansion of a curious solitary gentleman who will reveal little of his past, while urging the young husband to take revenge on his wife in the present. When attempting to rest at night, Ferdinand swears he hears screams—human screams. But it’s probably just the wind....
Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
“Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn’t bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new and spare condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged. His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is . . . well, something quite different.” – Publisher’s Summary
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“In the city of Egunu, Nigeria, fifteen year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a somewhat cloistered life. Their father is a wealthy businessman, they live in a beautiful home, and attend private school. But, through Kambili's eyes, we see that their home life is anything but harmonious. Her father, a fanatically religious man has impossible expectations of his children and his wife, and if things don't go his way he becomes physically abusive. Not until Kambili and Jaja are sent away from home for the very first time to visit their loving aunt, does Kambili's world begin to blossom. But when a military coup threatens to destroy the country, the tension in her family's home escalates, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.” – Publisher’s Summary
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
“Antigua—a ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies and the author's birthplace—is the setting of a lyrical, sardonic, and forthright essay that offers an insider's eye-opening view of the lives and ways of her people.” – Publisher’s Summary

Black History Month 2024

This month’s post in honor of Black History Month features short fiction by Black writers from America and around the world. The selections presented here are featured in Kenneth C. Davis’ book Great Short Books: A Year of Reading—Briefly. Many thanks to MSJ librarian Cynthia Gregory for bringing this work to the attention of the Library!

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
“Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.” – Publisher’s Summary
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
“This novel is a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, the story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions: affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, the author has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.” – Publisher’s Summary
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
“When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. She discovers that the Oankali—a seemingly benevolent alien race—intervened in the fate of the humanity hundreds of years ago, saving everyone who survived a nuclear war from a dying, ruined Earth and then putting them into a deep sleep. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength, and they now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earth—but salvation comes at a price. Hopeful and thought-provoking, this post-apocalyptic narrative deftly explores gender and race through the eyes of characters struggling to adapt during a pivotal time of crisis and change.” – Publisher’s Summary
A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines
“A powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man--set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s. The Village Voice called A Gathering of Old Men ‘the best-written novel on Southern race relations in over a decade.’” – Publisher’s Summary
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
“For love of fine, wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson surrenders his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds—and then he steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a craps table. Luckily for him, he can turn to his savvy twin brother, Goldy, who earns a living—disguised as a Sister of Mercy—by selling tickets to Heaven in Harlem. With Goldy on his side, Jackson is ready for payback.” – Publisher’s Summary
Corregidora by Gayl Jones
“A literary classic that remains vital to our understanding of the past, Corregidora is Gayl Jones’s powerful debut novel, examining womanhood, sexuality, and the psychological residue of slavery. Jones masterfully tells the story of Ursa, a Kentucky blues singer, who, in the wake of a tragic loss, confronts her maternal history and the legacy of Corregidora, the Brazilian slave master who fathered both her mother and grandmother. Consumed and haunted by her hatred of the man who irrevocably shaped her life and the lives of her family, Ursa Corregidora must come to terms with a past that is never too distant from the present.” – Publisher’s Summary
Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
“Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple—handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, almost at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful façade. With mingled anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the assumptions and verities of her employers' world and compares them with the vivid realities of her native place. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is. At the same time that Lucy is coming to terms with Lewis's and Mariah's lives, she is also unravelling the mysteries of her own sexuality. Gradually a new person unfolds: passionate, forthright, and disarmingly honest. In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new character possessed with adamantine clearsightedness and ferocious integrity--a captivating heroine for our time.” – Publisher’s Summary
Middle Passage by Charles R. Johnson
“Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave and irrepressible rogue, is lost in the underworld of 1830s New Orleans. Desperate to escape the city’s unscrupulous bill collectors and the pawing hands of a schoolteacher hellbent on marrying him, he jumps aboard the Republic, a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe, the Allmuseri. Thus begins a voyage of metaphysical horror and human atrocity, a journey which challenges our notions of freedom, fate and how we live together. Peopled with vivid and unforgettable characters, nimble in its interplay of comedy and serious ideas, this dazzling modern classic is a perfect blend of the picaresque tale, historical romance, sea yarn, slave narrative and philosophical allegory.” – Publisher’s Summary
Cane by Jean Toomer
“Jean Toomer's Cane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, Cane uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period. Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane's lack of a wider readership was because it didn't reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature....” – Publisher’s Summary
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
“As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is ‘as good as anyone.’ Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides ‘physical, intellectual and moral training’ so the delinquent boys in their charge can become ‘honorable and honest men.’ In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear ‘out back.’ Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion ‘Throw us in jail and we will still love you.’ His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.” – Publisher’s Summary
Uncle Tom’s Children: Novellas by Richard Wright
“Each of the poignant and devastating stories in Uncle Tom's Children concerns an aspect of the lives of Black people in the post-slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. This extraordinary collection also includes a personal essay by Wright titled “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children was the first book from Wright, who would go on to win international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the Black experience....” – Publisher’s Summary

MLK Day 2024

In celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., we present a list of works written by great civil rights leader and minister, as well as several biographical works about him and his equally prominent contemporaries. Also included are several nonfiction works on the history of civil rights, race relations, and the struggle for equality in America.

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, volume 1 (print) by Taylor Branch
“In Parting the Waters, the first volume of his essential America in the King Years series, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a ‘compelling…masterfully told’ (The Wall Street Journal) account of Martin Luther King’s early years and rise to greatness....Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War. Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness and illuminates the stunning courage and private conflict, the deals, maneuvers, betrayals, and rivalries that determined history behind closed doors, at boycotts and sit-ins, on bloody freedom rides, and through siege and murder....” – Publisher’s Summary
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65, volume 2 (print)
“Pillar of Fire covers the far-flung upheavals of the years 1963 to 1965—Dallas, St. Augustine, Mississippi Freedom Summer, LBJ's Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Vietnam, Selma. And it provides a frank, revealing portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.—haunted by blackmail, factionalism, and hatred while he tried to hold the nonviolent movement together as a dramatic force in history. Allies, rivals, and opponents addressed racial issues that went deeper than fair treatment at bus stops or lunch counters. Participants on all sides stretched themselves and their country to the breaking point over the meaning of simple words: dignity, equal votes, equal souls.” – Publisher’s Summary
At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, volume 3, 1965-68 (print)
“This book concludes a 3-volume history of American race, violence, and democracy. As the book begins, King and his movement are one decade into an epic struggle for the promises of democracy. The quest to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965 engages the conscience of the world, strains the civil rights coalition, and embroils King with the U.S. government. After Selma, freedom workers are murdered, but sharecroppers learn to read, dare to vote, and build their own political party, while Stokely Carmichael leaves the movement in frustration to proclaim his famous Black Power doctrine. King takes nonviolence into Northern urban ghettoes, exposing hatreds and fears no less virulent than those in the South. We watch King bring all his eloquence into dissent from the Vietnam War, and make an embattled decision to concentrate on poverty; we reach Memphis, the garbage workers' strike, and King's assassination.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Drawing on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s unpublished writings and other materials housed in Stanford University's archives, a civil rights scholar assembles a continuous first-person narrative of King's life....It begins with his boyhood as the son of a preacher, his education as a minister, his ascendancy as a leader of civil rights, and his complex relationships with leading political and social figures of the day.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (print) by Randall Robinson
“Arguing that the United States must be prepared to make restitution for its long history of slavery and discrimination, the author details his plan for evening the scales between whites and blacks in America.” – Publisher’s Summary
Civil Rights in American and the Caribbean, 1950s-2010s (ebook) by Jerome Teelucksingh
“This book illustrates the parallel struggles among Blacks in the US and the Caribbean for equality and greater political participation and equal treatment during the 1960s and 1970s. In recounting the historical evolution of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement, this book focuses on lesser-known individuals and groups such as the Students for Racial Equality. Jerome Teelucksingh argues that these personalities and smaller organizations made valid contributions to the betterment their respective societies, connecting their work to both the cultural and social justice history of Civil Rights and to the contemporary struggles of cultural and political experience of Blacks in American and Caribbean society. The book also distinctively illustrates the contributions of Whites, ethnic minorities and non-Christians in a diverse campaign for greater political participation, better governance, poverty reduction, equality and tolerance.” – Publisher’s Summary
Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (print) by James T. Patterson
“Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, ‘I was so happy, I was numb.’ The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!’ Here, in a concise, compelling narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath....Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case....” – Publisher’s Summary
I Have a Dream (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“On August 28, 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his most memorable and inspiring speech to a country divided by riots over racial injustice. With the words "I have a dream," King invoked his vision of a racially harmonious America, where "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." This edition features the complete text and a foreword by King's daughter, the Reverend Bernice A. King. I Have a Dream presents a moving portrait of a visionary at the peak of his influence.” – Publisher’s Summary
Faces at the Bottom of the Well (print) by Derrick A. Bell
The noted civil rights activist uses allegory and historical example to present a radical vision of the persistence of racism in America. These essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law and reality, the "racist outbursts” of some black leaders, the temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more.
Faces at the Bottom of the Well (ebook) by Derrick Bell
“The message of Bell's book is that ‘racism is an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society.’ He contends that blacks ‘are doomed to fail as long as the majority of whites do not see their own well-being threatened by the status quo.’ – Publisher’s Summary
How to Analyze the Works of Martin Luther King, Jr. (ebook) by Rosa Boshier
“Presents critiques of four works of the Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader and guides readers through the process of analyzing them from different critical angles, including moral theory and historical, racial, and rhetorical viewpoints.” – Publisher’s Summary
If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance (print) by Angela Y. Davis et al.
“One of America’s most historic political trials is undoubtedly that of Angela Davis. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Davis, and including contributions from numerous radicals such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis’s incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States. Since the book was written, the carceral system in the U.S. has seen unprecedented growth, with more of America’s black population behind bars than ever before. The scathing analysis of the role of prison and the policing of black populations offered by Davis and her comrades in this astonishing volume remains as pertinent today as the day it was first published.” – Publisher’s Summary
I’ve Been to the Mountaintop (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“‘We want to be free.’ So begins the remarkable last speech given by our century's greatest civil rights leader and orator, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King spoke those words to a cheering crowd on April 3, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day, as he stood on a motel balcony, the thirty-nine-year-old minister was shot and killed. Eloquently revealing the courage, conviction, and faith that roused the conscience of a nation and the world, I've Been to the Mountaintop offers a determined vision of justice, a timeless message of faith, and, in retrospect, a poignantly prophetic portrait of a brave man at peace with himself.” – Publisher’s Summary
Letter from the Birmingham Jail (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Martin Luther King, Jr. rarely had time to answer his critics. But on April 16, 1963, he was confined to the Birmingham jail, serving a sentence for participating in civil rights demonstrations. ‘Alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell,’ King pondered a letter that fellow clergymen had published urging him to drop his campaign of nonviolent resistance and to leave the battle for racial equality to the courts. In response, King drafted his most extensive and forceful written statement against social injustice—a remarkable essay that focused the world's attention on Birmingham and spurred the famous March on Washington. Bristling with the energy and resonance of his great speeches, Letter from the Birmingham Jail is both a compelling defense of nonviolent demonstration and a rallying cry for an end to social discrimination that is just as powerful today as it was more than twenty years ago.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Life and Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. (print) by Ira Peck
“From his early days in Alabama to his rise as a celebrated civil rights speaker, this biography provides a factual and informative look at Martin Luther King's life through its many stages.” – Publisher’s Summary
Notes of a Native Son (print) by James Baldwin
“Since its original publication in 1955, this first nonfiction collection of essays by James Baldwin remains an American classic. His impassioned essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. ‘He named for me the things you feel but couldn't utter. . . . Jimmy's essays articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time.’ -Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” – Publisher’s Summary
Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866 (print) by LaWanda C. Fenlason
This 1963 monograph examines the time immediately following the end of the Civil War, when the re-united America began its Reconstruction era. Fenlason examines the pivotal events of 1865-1866 in detail, from the Seward Lobby and the Thirteenth Amendment (which abolished slavery in the United States, an amendment which was successfully ratified by Congress in part through the efforts of Secretary of State William H. Seward) to the major issue of civil rights for newly freed Blacks.
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (print) by Jeanne Theoharis
“Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks’s politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought—for more than a half a century—to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.” – Publisher’s Summary
Strength to Love (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In these short meditative and sermonic pieces, some of them composed in jails and all of them crafted during the tumultuous years of the civil rights struggle, Dr. King articulated and espoused in a deeply personal compelling way his commitment to justice and to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual conversion that makes his work as much a blueprint today for Christian discipleship as it was then.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992 (print) by Harvard Sitkoff
“An arresting history of the civil-rights movement--from the path-breaking Supreme Court decision of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, through the growth of strife and conflict in the 1960s to the major issues of the 1990s. harvard Sitkoff offers not only a brilliant interpretation of the personalities and dynamics of the civil-rights organization--SNCC, CORE, NAACP, SCLC, and others--but a superb study of the continuing problems plaguing the African-American population: the future that in 1980 seemed to hold much promise for a better way of life has by the early1990s hardly lived up to expectations. Jim Crow has gone, but, forty years after Brown, poverty, big-city slums, white backlash, politically and socially conservative policies, and prolonged recession have made economic progress for the vast majority of blacks an elusive, perhaps ever more distant goal.
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (print) by (editor) James Melvin Washington
“‘We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter to me now because I've been to the mountaintop. . . . And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.’ These prophetic words, uttered the day before his assassination, challenged those he left behind to see that his ‘promised land’ of racial equality became a reality; a reality to which King devoted the last twelve years of his life. These words and others are commemorated here in the only major one-volume collection of this seminal twentieth-century American prophet's writings, speeches, interviews, and autobiographical reflections. A Testament of Hope contains Martin Luther King, Jr.'s essential thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, the ethics of love and hope, and more.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Trumpet of Conscience (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In November and December 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered five lectures for the renowned Massey Lecture Series of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Immediately released under the title Conscience for Change after King’s assassination, it was republished as The Trumpet of Conscience. Each oration speaks prophetically to today’s perils, addressing issues of equality, conscience and war, the mobilization of young people, and nonviolence. The book concludes with “A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” a powerful lecture about nonviolence as a path to world peace that was broadcast live from Ebenezer Baptist Church on Christmas Eve in 1967.” – Publisher’s Summary
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind—for the first time—has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.” – Publisher’s Summary