A 2011 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Rides. The Rides had involved courageous young Americans traveling by bus to the Deep South in order to protest racism and fight for equality. Oprah gathered 178 of the living riders, plus other guests. These other guests included a former…
Category: book review
“WAKE – The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts” by Rebecca Hall, illustrated by Hugo Martínez – review
I desperately wanted to like this book. The title is great, the cover is stunning, and the topic is perfect for Black History Month. What’s more, I like graphic novels and history and I love learning about slave revolts. But the book didn’t quite do it for me. For one thing, the title is misleading….
Review of “Life of Che: An Impressionistic Biography”
The story of this book is almost as extraordinary as the story of Che Guevara’s life. As told in the afterword by Pablo Turnes, Vida del Che was first published in January 1969, two years after Guevara’s death, by Argentinian publisher Jorge Álvarez. At the time, Argentina was ruled by a military junta, so publishing…
“Gila Lost and Found: Search and Rescue in New Mexico” by Marc Levesque
Gila Lost and Found recounts the author’s experiences as a Search and Rescue (SAR) field coordinator in the Gila Wilderness. It’s part a “how to survive” and part an adventure book, although some parts read like entry attempts for the Darwin Awards – an annual prize given posthumously to those who die the stupidest, most…
The End of Hunger? A Great Writer Reviews the Evidence
Humans have been hungry for a long time. The 4,000-year-old tomb of Ankhtifi holds the inscription “All of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children.” The traces of our ancient hunger are left in Paleolithic skeletons: a rough winter or a poor harvest shows…
Review of “Perdido: Sierra San Luis” by Michael P. Berman
When the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V asked Mexico’s conqueror, Hernan Cortes, what Mexico looked like, Cortes crumpled a piece of parchment, threw it on the floor, and said, “Mexico.” Mountains, bluffs, peaks and ridges. Five-hundred years later, Michael Berman, longtime photographer/adventurer and teller of the tale above, is trekking through the mountains of Sierra…
Six Short Pieces for Jimmy Santiago Baca: a review of Baca’s “Laughing in the Light”
(Re)birth: Jimmy finds a new meaning for the word “sentence” When Jimmy Santiago Baca was in his early twenties and serving time in a high-security prison, a Good Samaritan from the outside world—Henry Gould—wrote to him. Gould ran a soup kitchen. His legs had been blown off during World War II, but his heart was…
“How to Pronounce Knife” by Souvankham Thammavongsa
A phoneme is a single sound, the smallest unit of language. But the way a phoneme is pronounced can contain a world of information about a speaker’s race, nationality and social status. The title story of How to Pronounce Knife hinges on the pronunciation of the silent k. It’s an authorial trick that serves as…
“Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall” – by Daniel Chacón
Daniel Chacón begins his latest collection of short stories with a metafictional device. He tells us how to read the book. We can read the stories in order or skip around, following themes. The device is borrowed from Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (translated as Hopscotch), a masterpiece in 155 chapters, the final 99 of which can…
“All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed” by Rus Bradburd
This superb and harrowing book chronicles the life of Shawn Harrington, a charismatic college basketball star who becomes a victim – albeit a survivor – of Chicago’s gun violence. Harrington was recruited in 1995 from Marshall High School, Chicago, by the author, Rus Bradburd, who at the time was coaching at NMSU. When Harrington got…
“The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections” by Eliane Brum, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty
The philosopher Theodor Adorno once stated that the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. Brazilian journalist and novelist Eliane Brum does just that in The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections, a compassionate trek through Brazil’s peripheries, where the poor and the marginalized reside. As she mines favelas…
“When a Woman Rises” by Christine Eber
The cover of Christine Eber’s debut novel tells a tale in itself. A young woman, beautiful and strong, gazes unflinchingly at the onlooker (us). She is dressed in traditional indigenous clothes, but three strands of hair blow loose as if to tell us this woman cannot be tamed; her spirit will run free forever. Behind…
JJ Amaworo Wilson, author 