Mass Reviews

The Heart of the Ironbound

The Heart of the Ironbound

A Review of I’ll Give You a Reason by Annell López (The Feminist Press, 2024) Annell López’ short story collection, I’ll Give You a Reason, brings us to the heart of the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. These stories explore race, colorism, Blackness, identity, sex, and gentrification, among other topics. López gives . . .

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Natalia Ginzburg’s Essay “The Jews” and Its Trials

Natalia Ginzburg’s Essay “The Jews” and Its Trials

Editor’s note: The full version of this essay will be published in a new collection of essays: Natalia Ginzburg’s Global Legacies, edited by Stiliana Milkova Rousseva and Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). [1] For a long time Natalia Ginzburg avoided talking openly about her Jewish origins. She interrupted her silence, or rather, her . . .

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Beers for Brrr!

One must have a mind of winter . . . —Wallace Stevens Have a beer in cold weather—just seeHow it counterintuitivelyWarms the blood with cold fireAs the winter transpires.If you try one of these, you’ll agree. 1.Here’s a bottle-fermented delight,For ’tis Trappist and English bedightWith rich, flavorful maltsThat Tynt Meadow exaltsWith a sweetness and spice . . .

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On Balsam Karam’s THE SINGULARITY, tr. Saskia Vogel

On Balsam Karam’s THE SINGULARITY, tr. Saskia Vogel

A Review of The Singularity by Balsam Karam, Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel (Feminist Press, January 2024) Split into three parts, all formally different, Balsam Karam, in The Singularity, writes a lyrical, moving, formally inventive narrative of motherhood in the wake of loss—of child, of home, of self. In the first part, a mother . . .

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Myriam Chancy: Toward Black Liberation

Myriam Chancy: Toward Black Liberation

A Review of Myriam J.A. Chancy, Harvesting Haiti. Reflections on Unnatural Disasters. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023. If I weren’t invariably late with everything, this review would have been posted at 4:53 p.m. yesterday, January 12, 2023. Like most events that break time and begin a new calendar for some portion . . .

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After World: AI and the Act of Writing

After World: AI and the Act of Writing

A Review of After World by Debbie Urbanski (Simon & Schuster, 2023) Artificial Intelligence is the narrator is Debbie Urbanski’s novel After World—a relevant theme since the debut of Chat GPT in late 2022 and the broadening discourse about AI in writing. Urbanski’s consideration of AI predates the controversies over students using . . .

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Wheat Beers for a Fulsome Fall

Like liquid gold the wheat-field lies,A marvel of yellow and russet and green…—Hamlin Garland ‘Twas Demeter that gave the world wheat;And Triptolemus took to his feetTo bring grains to us all.They enrich beers for Fall,As autumnal observance completes. 1.This Floridian Wheat Beer is lightWith a citrusy sweetness that bright-ens refreshing mouthfeel.It’s an ale that’s . . .

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Haunting. . .

Haunting. . .

At long last, I’m finally sitting down to write a piece that I promised ages ago. This will be an admittedly partisan review, responding to the latest book by Tabish Khair, who is both a friend and on the MR masthead. Yet, given that it’s Hallowe’en today, on several levels it does seem the . . .

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Divine Blue Light

Divine Blue Light

A Review of Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane) by Will Alexander (City Lights (Pocket Poets Series, 63), 2022) Some poets, the best among them, make you learn to read their work. Sure, some structures and narratives inform their poems, but these are not familiar ones (the pentameter line, the regular stanza, the myths . . .

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