Race Mixing in ‘Absalom’s Daughters’
This is not an attempt to rewrite Faulkner as much as it's a cogent effort at bringing women and people of color to the forefront of a Faulkner-inspired work.
Shyam K. Sriram
Shyam K. Sriram is an assistant professor of political science at Canisius University in Buffalo, NY. He is the recent author of the textbook "Refugee Resettlement in the United States" from Cognella Publishing, Inc. He has visited 48 states, but feels most at home in Chicago and Atlanta.
Thomas-Christopher-Greene’s Well-Crafted Vignettes in ‘If I Forget You’
Green’s new novel takes about 30 pages to get used to, but once our seatbelts are securely fastened and we have attained cruising altitude, it's difficult to put down.
Ottaviani and Purvis’s ‘The Imitation Game’ Is an Extraordinary Achievement
I thought of the notion of purity of the mind, of a kind of almost frustrating innocence, as I read this new biographical graphic novel about Alan Turing.
Charles Bukowski’s ‘On Love’ and ‘On Cats’
Bukowski's voice and style swung wildly over his lifetime, and collections varied considerably in quality depending on the whims of editors
Sarah Vowell Explores American History With One Foot Firmly in the Land of Humor
Part travelogue, part historical narrative, and every bit a statement on post-Obama politics, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is an interesting work that serves multiple purposes.
Emma: 200th Anniversary Annotated Edition by Jane Austen
From Downton Abbey to Doctor Who, from BBC America to Sir Ian McKellen reciting Shakespeare in Marc Maron’s garage, America seems to have never fully disengaged itself from British popular culture.
What Happens When Public Health Becomes a Battleground for the “Moral Language of Health”
After the Wrath is an amazing read and full of thought-provoking ideas and theories about how religion – leaders, institutions, and policy – frames responses to disease.
What Is the Line Between Cultural Respect and (Mis)appropriation?
The Goddess Pose is fascinating story of how an Eastern European woman became a global chameleon and the most recognizable face of yoga in the world.
‘The Household Spirit’ Is a Strange Book
This is the kind of book Erma Bombeck would have written if she was on heroin or had just watched The Grave of the Fireflies while listening to Jeff Buckley.
‘Times Beach’ Gives Us Theater, Free-form Jazz, Art Cinema, and Southern Gothic Literature
Times Beach is less a collection of poetry as it is an anthology of performance art presented under the guise of poetry.
Coming Full Circle as the Children of Immigrants
The Blind Writer is less about South Asians and the Indian-American experience as it is about Indian-American men and their (in)abilities to navigate life.
‘A Bad Character’ Is Courageous in Its Realism and the Many Chances Its Author Has Taken
This is Deepti Kapoor’s time to paint a picture of India that no one has the nerve to do anymore.