Joanna, the daughter of a weak, mentally distraught mother and a distant father, tells the story of a 1940s’ childhood in "Calico Jam", a fictionalized version of her life story. Memories flourish at Edgecombe, Joanna’s... Read More

In his speech, “A More Perfect Union,” Barack Obama quoted William Faulkner (“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”) to embody the idea that even though leaders no longer need to list the racial injustices of the... Read More

The death of a spouse is a monumental event, regardless of how good or bad the marital relationship was in life. Divorce provokes many of the same emotions as death, with the added stress of seeing one’s ex after the divorce is... Read More

“The Buddha’s last words to his disciples were, ‘Walk on.’ The first words of Jesus to his were rather different: ‘Follow me.’ Jesus said some other things, too,” author Charles Foster writes, “but as a summary of the... Read More

Latinos are impacting American society in undeniable ways. As the diverse Latino population in the United States grows, the Latino community has increasingly taken on an identity of its own, and social issues are framed according to the... Read More

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Canadian poet and literary critic Kenneth Sherman asked himself what the response of literature to such traumatizing events should be. For guidance, he turned to writers who had... Read More

Two twentieth-century masters of the bildungsroman were James Joyce (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Ernest Hemingway (The Nick Adams Stories). Now the literary world has Joyce and Hemingway’s twenty-first century successor... Read More

Kitchen Craft. A handful of high-quality, petite non-fiction books seek to deliver content in short, pithy, declarative statements believing the technique lends authoritative credibility; the best example being Strunk and Whites The... Read More