Reviews

Kassab presents a full and rich account of life outside of major cities, and, continuing the moral project begun in her debut work, House of Youssef, she draws us into this world to separate myth from reality.

The longer I spent with these essays, the more I enjoyed the connections Berry creates between humans and nonhuman animals in real life, their diffusion into products for human consumption, and their symbolism.

Wild Curious Air finds its material in what has come before, digs into the turbulence and profusion of the present, and propagates the demand that we attend to the reality and urgency of this moment.

In these three books, mothers write back, documenting their personal experience and that of others, from the scientific and the sociological to the artistic. They all beg the question: is it possible to be successful both as a mother and do other things beside childcare and housework? In the act of writing, they answer as one, yes!

The Last One takes us with Fatima as she builds both an individual and collective identity through old and new connections and orientations.

In permitting the reader ample space for introspection, Kofman’s narrator is as good a listener as she is a writer. And like any good listener, her role is not to leap to the rescue with answers or advice.

Lemon begins like a conventional crime novel – there’s a detective interrogating a suspect, trying to pin the murder of a young woman onto an obviously vulnerable young man.

These days, I gravitate to strange writing – or writing, at least, that I perceive as strange. It has become the defining criteria by which I gauge my interest in a book and judge its qualities.

Is it possible to write a collective review of Insurgent Empire across the lines of colour and colonialism in our group? Perhaps, but this is not our agenda here. What we offer instead is a suite of vignettes that reflect on how we, a group of readers interested in understanding place and race, came together to think about the ideas in Insurgent Empire.

Your story is one of defiance and ongoing resistance, Ronnie. Every day you drew breath as a Black woman wearing a blue uniform you were resisting. You may have been required to walk in that world, but your bare Black feet never left our world.