❌

Reading view

There are new articles available, click to refresh the page.

Juneteenth small press roundup

✇MetaFilter
joannemerriam
For Juneteenth, a small press roundup (over 50 more below the fold), starting with Library Journal's Juneteenth 2024 | A Reading List which includes these small press books:

Kalamazoo Public Library's Teen Reads Celebrating Juneteenth includes small press titles X: a novel (Malcolm X's daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon, Candlewick Press, a fictionalized account of Malcolm X's childhood and teen years, 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book: Amazon; Bookshop) and Freedom By Force: The History of Slave Rebellions (Therese Harasymiw, Greenhaven Publishing LLC*: Amazon). * Greenhaven is a bit of a stretch as a small press – they're owned by Rosen Publishing Group who are huge, but independent of the Big Five. Milwaukee Community Journal's 13 Books that will remind you of your power this Juneteenth includes these small press books: Temple University Center for Anti-Racism's 5 books reflecting Juneteenth principles includes small press title Being Human Being: Transforming the Race Discourse (Molefi Kete Asante and Nah Dove, Universal Write Publications LLC: Amazon; Bookshop). Universal Write Publications' most recent titles also include: and I have also noticed: Antiblackness and Global Health: A Response to Ebola in the Colonial Wake by Lioba Hirsch (Pluto Press, June 2024): Examines how colonial mentalities and infrastructures shaped the response to the West African Ebola epidemic. (Bookshop) Black Pastoral by Ariana Benson (University of Georgia Press, 2023): Poems that explore Black people's experiences with the natural world. Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner; finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize. (Amazon; Bookshop) Bluff: Poems by Danez Smith (Graywolf, 20 Aug 2024): Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures. (Amazon; Bookshop) Free at Last: A Juneteenth Poem by Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, ill. Alex Bostic (Union Square Kids, 2022): This lyrical celebration of Juneteenth, deeply rooted in Black American history, spans centuries and reverberates loudly and proudly today. (Amazon; Bookshop) The Global History of Black Girlhood eds. Corinne T. Field and LaKisha Michelle Simmons (University of Illinois Press, 2022): How and why we should seek out the Black girls of the past. (Amazon; Bookshop) Japa and Other Stories by Iheoma Nwachukwu (University of Georgia Press, 1 Sept 2024): These eight brutally beautiful stories are struck full of fragmented dreams, with highly developed thieves, misadventurers, and displaced characters all heaving through a human struggle to anchor themselves in a new home or sometimes a new reality. This book is about young Nigerian immigrants who bilocate, trek through the desert, become temporary Mormons, sneak through Russia, and yearn for new life in strange new territories that force them to confront what it means to search for a connection far from home. Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. (Amazon; Bookshop) The History of Juneteenth: A History Book for New Readers by Arlisha Norwood (Rockridge Press, 2022): Chapter book. (Amazon) The Joys of Being a Little Black Boy (Amazon; Bookshop) and The Twirl of Being a Little Black Girl (Amazon; Bookshop), both illustrated hardcover picture books by Valerie Reynolds, ill. Chris Turner (Chicago Review Press, 13 Aug 2024). Juneteenth Rodeo by Sarah Bird (U Texas Press, 4 June 2024): Timeless photos offer a rare portrait of the jubilant, vibrant, vital, nearly hidden, and now all-but-vanished world of small-town Black rodeos. (Amazon; Bookshop) Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership by Brea Baker (One World, 18 June 2024): Why is less than 1% of rural land in the U.S. owned by Black people? An acclaimed writer and activist explores the impact of land theft and violent displacement on racial wealth gaps, arguing that justice stems from the literal roots of the earth. (Amazon; Bookshop) A Seat at the Table: The Life and Times of Shirley Chisholm by Drs. Glenn L. Starks & F. Erik Brooks (Chicago Review Press, Mar 2024): Biography of the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate and how her run shaped the future. (Amazon; Bookshop) Trailblazers: Black Women Who Helped Make America Great, American Firsts/Icons by Gabrielle David (2leaf press) is a six-volume series that examines the lives and careers of over 400 brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way. Volumes 1 (Amazon; Bookshop); 2 (Amazon; Bookshop); 3 (Amazon; Bookshop); 4 (Amazon; Bookshop); 5 (released June 2024); and 6 (released Sept 2024). We Are the Culture: Black Chicago's Influence on Everything by Arionne Nettles (Chicago Review Press/Lawrence Hill Books, Apr 2024): Pop culture expert Arionne Nettles takes us through the history of how Black Chicagoans have led pop culture in America for decades, and gives insight into the ways culture spreads and influences our lives. (Amazon; Bookshop) We're Alone: Essays by Edwidge Danticat (Graywolf, 3 Sept 2024): Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat's childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We're Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience. (Amazon; Bookshop) When I Passed the Statue of Liberty I Became Black by Harry Edward (Yale UP, 20 Feb 2024): The lost memoir of Britain's first Black Olympic medal winner—and the America he discovered. (Amazon; Bookshop) The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due (Akashic Books, 2023): In her first new book in seven years, Tananarive Due further cements her status as a leading innovator in Black horror and Afrofuturism. (Amazon; Bookshop) * Bonus content of non-American African diaspora books! Brittle Paper's 23 African Beach Reads for a Relaxing Summer Vacation includes small press titles:
  • A Kind of Madness (Uche Okonkwo, Tin House Books, 2024, 10 short stories concerned with literal madness but also those private feelings that, when left unspoken, can feel like a type of madness: Amazon; Bookshop)
  • Like Water Like Sea (Olumide Popoola, Cassava Republic, 2024, follows Nia, a queer, bi/pansexual naturopath in London, as her life unfolds across three pivotal moments, spanning from her 28th year to a life-altering realisation at the age of 50: Amazon)
  • Womb City (Tlotlo Tsamaase, Erewhon Books*, 2024, Afrofuturism set in a dark and deadly future Botswana: Amazon; Bookshop)
* Like Greenhaven above, Erewhon is a bit of a stretch as a small press – they're owned by Kensington Publishing Corp who are also huge, but independent of the Big Five. Akashic Books offers the original noir anthologies Accra Noir (Ghana) (Amazon; Bookshop), Addis Ababa Noir (Ethiopia) (Amazon; Bookshop), Nairobi Noir (Kenya) (includes Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o; Amazon; Bookshop). The CBC's 40 books by Black Canadian authors to read includes small press titles: and the poetry collections: And the UK's Black Writers Guild's book release page includes small press titles Monster (Dzifa Benson, Bloodaxe Books, 24 Oct 2024: Amazon; Bookshop) and Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black, Queer Body (Dean Atta, Canongate Books, 4 July 2024: Amazon). Previous roundups: 1 (pride), 2 (no theme), 3 (challenging work), and 4 (no theme).

One of the great performance pieces in Los Angeles history

✇MetaFilter
chavenet
On any reasonably sunny day, the pool would by then be echoing with the names of well-known people being called to the phone, as well as with the names of unknown people being called to the phone by themselves in the forlorn hope that one day this would help them become well known, too. From his vantage in front of his cabana, Irving could not only watch the parade go by but get the parade to sit down with him and play cards. from The Man Who Spent Forty-two Years at the Beverly Hills Hotel Pool [The New Yorker, 1993; ungated]

Irving Link, 90210 [LA Times, 1996] Irving Link obituary [Legacy, 2007] The Beverly Hills Hotel [Wikipedia]

Reconsidering Elaine May (and Ishtar)

✇MetaFilter
kliuless
Could Elaine May Finally Be Getting Her Due? [ungated] - "A new biography gives a compelling sense of a comic and cinematic genius, and also of the forces that derailed her Hollywood career."

Among the many merits of "Miss May Does Not Exist," a deeply researched, psychologically astute new biography of May by Carrie Courogen, is that the author sees continuities and patterns in a career that is unified, above all, by the force of May's character. Courogen also assesses May's fortunes in the light of social history, giving a detailed account of the many obstacles that May, as a woman, faced in the American entertainment industry of the late fifties and early sixties—a time of few female standup comedians or playwrights and no female movie directors working in Hollywood... She offers a vision of a society in which the crudely learned behavior of crudely socialized men brutalizes the women in their orbit even as it leaves the men vulnerable to calamities and catastrophes of their own making. The core of May's work is the horror of romantic relationships as experienced by women—the physical violence and mental cruelty endured by women at the hands of men... May is essentially a social filmmaker, one whose comedy involves more than her distinctive worlds: in their looseness, her movies defy the geometry of the frame and suggest ragged, shredded edges that reach out and tie in to the real world at large. Her next film would do so even more explicitly—and she'd pay the price for her audacity. After the eleven years in movie exile that May endured for "Mikey and Nicky," she made "Ishtar," a film that's far more famous for its negative publicity than its intrinsic qualities. Owing to reports of its out-of-control budget and May's domineering direction, her career was instantly, definitively crushed, and May has, for all intents and purposes, been serving a life sentence. The injustice of a great film being submerged under ignorant disdain is grievous enough; the wickedly punitive aftermath is an outrage... Alongside the film's scathing anti-Reagan politics, it's a tale of earnest grimness on a subject of fundamental importance to May: creative obsession... As discerningly intricate as her movies are about love and friendship, they're never limited to the private sphere but plugged into the wider world of power. She filmed with a bitterly realistic view of what people do to one another for the sake of perceived advantage, necessity, desire, or compulsion. The theme that unites these films is betrayal. Growing up poor and female, as the child of a man who was a desperate failure and a woman who was a desperate survivor, and in a household linked with the Mob, she felt the cold pressure of institutions and families alike, and witnessed the death grip of whoever had the upper hand. She saw the cruel side of show business from childhood, and entering show business, in her early twenties, negotiated its maelstrom of personal demands and implacable financial pressures. Even with no alter ego in her movies, they're filled with the dramatic essence of her experiences—and with their ravaging emotional effects. She revealed the unspeakably painful and the outrageously hostile, unseemly sympathies and scandals from behind antic masks and with the irresistible power of involuntary laughter. It's among the most vital bodies of work in modern cinema. But in 1987 her accomplishments mattered little. She instantly became a pariah and a has-been.
(previously: 1,2,3,4)
❌