A New Edition of Sandra Cisneros’s Poetry Looks at the “Girl Grief Decade”
Few of us can wring art from our grief as Sandra Cisneros has, here.
Diane Leach
Diane Leach has a Master's Degree in English Literature from Humboldt State University. She writes for PopMatters.com and blogs at Theinsufficientkitchen.com. She can be reached at [email protected].
‘Thirty Girls’: What We Learned Later
Thirty Girls is an artful fictionalized account of the 1996 kidnapping of the St. Mary’s College schoolgirls of Aboke, Uganda.
War Changes People, Though Not Necessarily for the Better
Predating Suite Française in time and tone The Fires of Autumn is an amazingly prescient look at war and greed.
‘The Light of the World’ Explores How to Cope When a Light Goes Out
In April 2012, Ficremariam Ghebreyseus collapsed on the treadmill in the house he shared with wife Elizabeth Alexander. Yet her memoir stubbornly adheres to joy.
‘Astonish Me’ Raised My Eyebrows, But Not for the Reasons You Might Think
I can only agree with the title. I am astonished.
‘H Is for Hawk’ and for Healing
This book about grief and hawks and T.H. White is so beautifully written that even readers unable to tell robins from parakeets will be entranced.
With ‘Spices & Seasons’ the Pleasure Is in the Results
Today's cookbook buyer expects great writing, tight editing, and museum-level photography. We also expect fantastic food.
The Heart Says Whatever in ‘Hausfrau’
Jill Alexander Essbaum’s first novel bleakly evokes the life of a woman adrift. However well built, it is story constructed over a sinkhole.
‘Ravensbrück’: The Nonfiction of Nightmares
Sarah Helm’s Ravensbrück is a searingly comprehensive look at the sole concentration camp built to house women. It is the nonfiction of nightmares.
This Ain’t Your Grandma’s Challah Bread: New Jewish Cooking & Wine Brewing
The Covenant Kitchen's authors don't expect Jews to renounce their historically abstemious ways, but they wish we'd have a glass.
Marge Piercy and the Geography of Home
In topics ranging from poverty to war’s ravages to environmental collapse, Piercy obeys the poet’s dictum to act as witness with Made in Detroit.
What Some Folks Will Go and Do
Anne Tyler is an avowed fan of Eudora Welty's work, but it's Flannery O’Conner’s old woman down the way that came to mind when I read A Spool of Blue Thread.