Max Havelaar or, The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company – Multatuli
No anti-colonial tract more effectively debunked the, by then, three-century-old system which—tweaked and window-dressed to pacify the progressives of each generation—had enriched Europe while shredding colonized societies everywhere.
Binstead’s Safari – Rachel Ingalls
In many novels, the survival of a marriage symbolizes a return to normalcy, but Ingalls twists that convention by rendering marriage as a stricture on each individual’s autonomy.
Juliet the Maniac – Juliet Escoria
JULIET THE MANIAC displaces survival from its preferred position of totality i.e. restitution, and reframes recovery as a messy and unpredictable process of fragmentary retrieval.
I’ve come to read the book as an alternate proximity to conflict: the paradox of Luisa’s sense of self collapsing and rebuilding without an obvious enemy to focus on amidst the uncertainty of incipient adulthood.
In every trip to get punk t-shirts on Melrose or listen to Pink Floyd at Griffith Observatory she is not merely coming of age; she is coming of culture, of heritage, of community.
A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past – Lewis Hyde
Pledging allegiance to memory makes you feel part of something bigger; that’s the lie, at least.
Buddhism for Western Children – Kirstin Allio
There’s something odd, on the face of it, about a novel sending its protagonist into a therapist’s office.
The Skin is the Elastic Covering that Encases the Entire Body – Bjørn Rasmussen
Rasmussen has managed to stretch the soul in the way a butcher might stretch flesh, asking us to consider the roots of our desires and the depths of our longings.
O! The Scarcity of Gore – Evan Isoline
O! THE SCARCITY OF GORE is cinematic because it acts as if it is already a film. Language is repurposed for new solutions.
The Book of Collateral Damage – Sinan Antoon
Paper is flammable, after all, and to count the dead would take a lifetime.