4 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week
Among the most interesting critical takes of the week, Susan Straight on the power of Akwaeke Emezi’s glittering, lyrical coming-of-age novel; Erin Keane in Salon explains why Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race is not a book “to pass quietly to your slur-spewing uncle in hopes of getting him to stop sharing odious Obama memes on Facebook”; The Wall Street Journal welcomes the appearance of an exhaustive new biography of the “brilliant, complex, flawed, utterly fascinating” Harlem Renaissance writer Alain Locke; and an examination of how Emma Glass’ hyper-visceral Peach channels the great 20th-century modernists to bring readers closer to the trauma of sexual assault.
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“The novel is based in many of the realities of the writer’s life, but the prose is infused with imaginative lyricism and tone. In the end, this coming-of-age novel also has one foot on the other side, held between the open gates — a young woman of many nations and many souls. The journey undertaken in the novel is swirling and vivid, vicious and painful, and rendered by Emezi in shards as sharp and glittering as those with which Ada cuts her forearms and thighs, in blood offering to Asughara … Emezi’s lyrical writing, her alliterative and symmetrical prose, explores the deep questions of otherness, of a single heart and soul hovering between, the gates open, fighting for peace.”
-Susan Straight on Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (The Los Angeles Times)
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“…a vitally important, astonishingly well researched, exhaustive biography of the brilliant, complex, flawed, utterly fascinating man who, if he did not start the movement, served as its curator, intellectual champion, and guiding spirit … His account of Locke’s life is detailed, sometimes astoundingly so, but never descends into tedium. More important, he displays a thorough grasp of the intellectual challenges Locke took on … On his death, in 1954, Locke left behind achievements that deserve to be more widely celebrated, and this biography represents a serious, worthy attempt to get the party started.”
-Clifford Thompson on Jeffrey C. Stewart’s The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (The Wall Street Journal)
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“Accessible and approachable in tone, So You Want to Talk About Race is aimed squarely at those who actually do. In other words, this isn’t a book to pass quietly to your slur-spewing uncle in hopes of getting him to stop sharing odious Obama memes on Facebook, nor is it an instruction manual on how to ‘not see race’ … Oluo weaves stories from her own life through her research to put faces and voices to such fraught topics… As a result, the lessons, while still intellectually rigorous, feel more intimate than those gleaned from academic texts and perhaps more likely to make a meaningful impression on the lay reader … Throughout her book, Oluo emphasizes how difficult these conversations about race will be, but also how necessary and urgent they are for people to have in good faith … She invites the reader to ‘get a little uncomfortable,’ because racial inequality and injustice are real — we can’t ‘wish it away.'”
-Erin Keane on Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race (Salon)
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“The words spin out from the page, into and around your head; they have accepted definitions, but they take on new meanings the more you see of them, in the same way that any word starts to feel strange in your mouth if you say it again and again … Glass’ cunning use of language, reminiscent of the great 20th-century modernists like Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, and her employment of alliteration and repetition, evoke vague feelings of madness while you’re reading… But whereas many accounts of sexual assault — fictional and non — are related in a realistic way, Glass’ formal experimentation serves the purpose of bringing the reader even closer to the trauma. In a sense, this is surprising; it feels dichotomous, as if the strange beauty of the language should offer distance from the familiar horrors on the page … What Glass has done with Peach is offer a look into one woman’s world, as she tries to figure it all out. Whether or not Peach succeeds is beside the point; the point lies in her ability to tell us her story in our own language, and for us to read the words, hear them, and feel them. No matter how strange, no matter how much it hurts.”
