Collected Poems: 1974-2004 by Rita Dove
448 p. (Poetry; African-American)
Rita Dove’s
Collected Poems 1974–2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove’s fresh reflections on adolescence in
The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in
Museum. She sets the moving love story of
Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of
Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in
On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America’s kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in
American Smooth all celebrate Dove’s mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the “precise, singing lines” for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove “has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental”
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The Sky Over Lima by Juan Gómez Bárcena
288 p. (Fiction; South America)
José Gálvez and Carlos Rodríguez are poets. Or, at least, they’d like to be. Sons of Lima’s elite in the early twentieth century, they scribble bad verses and read the greats: Rilke, Rimbaud, and, above all others, Juan Ramón Jímenez, the Spanish Maestro. Desperate for Jímenez’s latest work, unavailable in Lima, they decide to ask him for a copy.
They’re sure Jímenez won’t send two dilettantes his book, but he might favor a beautiful woman. They write to him as the lovely, imaginary Georgina Hübner. Jímenez responds with a letter and a book. Elated, José and Carlos write back. Their correspondence continues, as the Maestro falls in love with Georgina, and the boys abandon poetry for the pages of Jímenez’s life.
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Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back by Janice P. Nimura
352 p. (Non-fiction; Japan)
In 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan.
Raised in traditional samurai households during the turmoil of civil war, three of these unusual ambassadors—Sutematsu Yamakawa, Shige Nagai, and Ume Tsuda—grew up as typical American schoolgirls. Upon their arrival in San Francisco they became celebrities, their travels and traditional clothing exclaimed over by newspapers across the nation. As they learned English and Western customs, their American friends grew to love them for their high spirits and intellectual brilliance.
The passionate relationships they formed reveal an intimate world of cross-cultural fascination and connection. Ten years later, they returned to Japan—a land grown foreign to them—determined to revolutionize women’s education.
Based on in-depth archival research in Japan and in the United States, including decades of letters from between the three women and their American host families,
Daughters of the Samurai is beautifully, cinematically written, a fascinating lens through which to view an extraordinary historical moment.
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Counternarratives by John Keene
320 p. (Fiction; short stories)
Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, and crossing multiple continents, Counternarratives draws upon memoirs, newspaper accounts, detective stories, and interrogation transcripts to create new and strange perspectives on our past and present. “An Outtake” chronicles an escaped slave’s take on liberty and the American Revolution; “The Strange History of Our Lady of the Sorrows” presents a bizarre series of events that unfold in Haiti and a nineteenth-century Kentucky convent; “The Aeronauts” soars between bustling Philadelphia, still-rustic Washington, and the theater of the U. S. Civil War; “Rivers” portrays a free Jim meeting up decades later with his former raftmate Huckleberry Finn; and in “Acrobatique,” the subject of a famous Edgar Degas painting talks back.
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The Gods of Tango by Carolina De Robertis
384 p. (Fiction; South America)
February 1913: When seventeen-year-old Leda, clutching only a suitcase and her father’s cherished violin, arrives in Buenos Aires, she is shocked to find that the husband she has traveled across an ocean to reach has been killed. Unable to return home, alone, and on the brink of destitution, she is seduced by the tango, the dance that underscores life in her new city. Leda knows, however, that she can never play in public as a woman, so she disguises herself as a young man to join a troupe of musicians. In the illicit, scandalous world of brothels and cabarets, the lines between Leda and her disguise begin to blur, and romantic longings that she has long kept suppressed are realized for the first time.
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My Voice: A Memoir by Angie Martinez
288 p. (Biography; Latinx)
In her twenty years behind the mic at New York City’s two biggest hip-hop stations—Hot 97 and Power 105.1—Angie Martinez has become an entertainment legend. From one-time presidential hopeful Barack Obama to Jay-Z and Beyoncé to post-prison Tupac, her intimate and candid interviews with the leading names in the music business, hip-hop culture, and beyond have grabbed headlines and changed the conversation.
In the same no-holds-barred style of her radio show, Angie shares stories from behind-the-scenes of her most controversial interviews, opens up about her personal life, and reflects on her climb to become the Voice of New York.
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