Book Review
Cekpa
Leah Altman’s bold memoir-in-essays is about reclaiming her Native American identity after a transracial adoption and traumatic upbringing. Following the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, the book reports, up to 35% of Native American...
Book Review
Queer Communion
The earnest, spirited essays of "Queer Communion" highlight the contradictions and unexpected blessings of squaring queerness with Christianity in Appalachia. Herein, thirteen authors muse on family ties, shifting identity, and rejecting...
Book Review
Run the World Like a Girl
Noting that only 40 percent of nations have ever had a woman leader, Kate Graham’s plucky biographical essay collection Run the World like a Girl introduces women politicians who beat the odds to work for equality. The book contains...
Book Review
Sugar Bush Babies
Janis A. Fairbanks’s reverential family memoir recounts her Native American childhood in Minnesota, wherein love outweighed poverty. Fairbanks belongs to the Fond du Lac band of the Lake Superior Chippewa people. She grew up the fourth...
Book Review
Other People's Mothers
Julie Marie Wade’s shrewd and winsome memoir Other People’s Mothers is about the gendered conventions of her 1980s and 1990s Seattle girlhood. Nine chapters, covering Wade’s life from the ages of six to thirteen, center...
Book Review
The Wonder of Mushrooms
“When it comes to fungi, art and science often overlap,” Maya Jewell Zeller writes, and that is indeed true of her beautiful, beguiling book "The Wonder of Mushrooms". Fungi are curious: More closely related to animals than plants,...
Book Review
Crush
In his vivacious memoir "Crush", journalist Nicholas O’Connell recounts his recreational winemaking exploits in Washington State. For fifteen years, O’Connell has been making red wine under the label Les Copains (“The Friends”)....
Book Review
Secret Agent Man
The nine intricate essays in Margot Singer’s collection "Secret Agent Man" braid investigations of womanhood, Jewishness, and family memory. The sly title piece contrasts spy movie clichés with the reality of Singer’s Czech-born...
