Books
Chronicling Stankonia is an engaging read, one that adroitly balances rigorous academic research with a deeply personal narrative about Black life and art in the post-Civil Rights Era in the South.
“I don’t work the system anymore, except as a last resort: I aim instead to bypass it. The better I have gotten at circumventing gatekeepers, the more successful my writing career has been.”
In the process of exploring the ideas that shaped Lorraine Hansberry’s understanding of her art and the world, the volume confirms the writer’s relevance during these troubled but potentially transformative times.
The current rage for inserting the personal/confessional in everything from cookbooks to literary criticism can go too far.
A singular muscularity infuses these short stories, a confidence that astonishes.
Richard Thompson’s memoir displays flashes of his writerly talents, but the volume feels a bit less immediate than one might hope.
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
In her search for John Lennon, the author follows her fancy and picks and chooses which rocks she wants to look under, all the while giving herself the space to wax poetic on whatever theme moves her. It’s an appealing approach. Too bad then that the book is a let down.
This is a great work, more linear than Tom Stoppard’s earlier dramas, yet filled with such intelligence and compassion that it will be read and seen for years and years and, perhaps, over time be regarded as his richest, most haunting play.
Book Commentary: Literary Legacies — Children’s Literature
2020 and 2021 saw the deaths of five titans of children’s and young adult literature. Here’s to revisiting old “classics” and discovering new ones.
Read More about Book Commentary: Literary Legacies — Children’s Literature