Review by Abby Orenstein Ash Popular culture flattens the lives of disabled people beyond caricature, reducing the complexity of lived existence to a simplistic narrative that either wallows in pain and exploitation or relies on sports cliches of odds-defiance…
Browsing: Book Reviews
Review by Laura Dennis As I write, it is late June 2022. We are reminded more each day of the perils of living in a female body, of the constant scrutiny. Perhaps that is why it feels fitting that…
Review by Michelle Panik I read DeMisty D. Bellinger’s latest book, New to Liberty, while flying from San Diego with my husband and kids for a month-long stay in Costa Rica. With travel and cultural differences at the top…
Review by Glenis Redmond In We are not Wearing Helmets, Cheryl Boyce Taylor populates the poetic landscape with flowers: Hibiscus. Delphiniums. Morning glories. Petunias. Peonies. Cosmos. Hydrangeas. Moonflowers. The litany goes on and on, proving how this Trinidadian poet not only…
Review by Ellen Miller-Mack Carol Potter, a strong swimmer though language and experience, is an imaginative, far-ranging and often funny poet. What Happens Now is Anyone’s Guess is her sixth collection of poems, awarded the 2021 Pacific Coast Series…
Review by Emily Webber Ways the World Could End, Kim Hooper’s latest novel, is intricately constructed and deals with mourning, sexual identity, developmental disorders, confronting secrets, acts of violence, and the complicated act of forgiveness. There’s a lot…
Review by Julia Lisella Pigeon Soup and Other Stories is a slim volume of interconnected short stories set in the 1970s in Canada that gives us a glimpse into the first-generation post-WWII Italian immigrants and their second-generation Canadian children.…
Review by Katy Carl What is the question in question? We are left to formulate and to pose it ourselves, and yet the poetic texts of Marjorie Maddox’s Begin with a Question leave the reader certain that the endeavor…
Review by Dylan Ward The uncharted territory of parenthood is both wildly unforgiving and rewarding. With Blame It on the Serpent, Susan Vespoli explores the joys, fears, and sorrows of parenting. Traversing time and place, she threads together an…
Review by Celia Jeffries Ellen Meeropol is a fearless writer. When she picks up her pen and follows her characters, she goes to places and situations lesser writers might avoid: a young pregnant woman awaiting trial (House Arrest, 2011); an…