Books
‘Lived experience’ doesn’t automatically confer moral or political insight, argues social critic Ben Burgis, but if we can make others laugh at that assumption we might be getting somewhere.
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These are not persuasive essays; rather, they are thought-provoking juxtapositions of facts, observations, and speculations — with a teleology.
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Biographer June Cummins considers the first All-of-a-Kind Family book, published in 1951, as groundbreaking and Sydney Taylor as “one of the first writers of multicultural literature for children.”
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There is enough candor and humor, along with a handful of bracingly moody characters, to make Mariana Leky’s vision of perpetual love compelling.
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For many dramatists, the label of ‘leftism’ was not pejorative: it was about fighting for human decency and political reform.
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Those who have followed Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh’s career over the past three decades are the target audience for this memoir. But she is a good enough writer to interest people who may never have listened to her music.
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Refugee: A Memoir was not written to entertain but to outrage and activate.
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There is no gainsaying that Hard Like Water is, in English, an important book, if only because of its refreshingly sensual vision of the appeal of the Cultural Revolution.
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
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Visual Arts Interview: The Colonial Elephant in the Room — Talking with Barnaby Phillips, author of “Loot: Britain and The Benin Bronzes”
Last week, just a month after the publication of Loot in the US, the Met in New York announced that it was returning two Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.
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