The Best Southern Books of May 2024 https://ift.tt/rpBOXj4
For me, this month has been sparkling with friends and thunderstorms and rollercoasters, but it’s also been heavy with grief and rage over violence and injustice. There hasn’t been a lot of time for books, but when there is, you can be sure I’m diving into one of these new Southern releases!
University of Iowa Press: “The Lengest Neoi embraces and complicates what it means to err — to wander or go astray; a deviation from a code of behavior or truth; a mistake, flaw, or defect. Beginning with the collection’s title, which combines a colloquial Cantonese phrase (Leng Neoi / ‘Pretty Girl’) and the English suffix for the superlative degree (—est), these poems wander, deviate, and flow across bodies, geographies, and languages. In this collection from Stephanie Choi, you’ll find the poet’s ‘tongue writing herself, learning to speak.'”
Hub City: “Narrated by an ensemble cast of uniquely independent outsiders who have chosen counter-culture lives informed by their desires and past traumas, Bomb Island takes a rollicking journey through the weirds and wilds of Coastal Georgia. Stephen Hundley has crafted a spirited, zany novel with a big heart that examines the strength it takes to live freely and without shame.”
Bold Type Books: “The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is a braided story of Julian Randall’s return from the cliff edge of a harrowing depression and his determination to retrace the hustle of a white-passing grandfather to the Mississippi town from which he was driven amid threats of tar and feather. Alternatively wry, lyrical, and heartfelt, Randall transforms pop culture moments into deeply personal explorations of grief, family, and the American way. He envisions his fight to stay alive through a striking medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future. Pulsing with life, sharp, and wickedly funny, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is Randall’s journey to get his ghost story back.”
St. Martin’s Press: “Rednecks is a tour de force, big canvas historical novel that dramatizes the 1920 to 1921 events of the West Virginia Mine Wars — from the Matewan Massacre through the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed conflict on American soil since the Civil War, when some one million rounds were fired, bombs were dropped on Appalachia, and the term ‘redneck’ would come to have an unexpected origin story. Award-winning novelist Taylor Brown brings to life one of the most compelling events in 20th century American history, reminding us of the hard-won origins of today’s unions. Rednecks is a propulsive, character-driven tale that’s both a century old and blisteringly contemporary: a story of unexpected friendship, heroism in the face of injustice, and the power of love and community against all odds.”
Tiny Reparations Books: “In MAGICAL/REALISM, poet and essayist Vanessa Angélica Villarreal intimately and fearlessly explores the many complicated girlhoods of being a working-class, first-generation, Mexican American daughter of a cumbia musician. With MAGICAL/REALISM, Vanessa recovers the truth from the absences and silences of migration, colonialism, and white supremacy. She looks closely at music as a stand-in for the archive of the undocumented and how pop culture leaves objects behind as portals for memory. This is a wise, tender, expansive collection from a dazzling, essential voice.”
Regal House: “Janelle Wolf longs to be the woman she once was — an adored wife, a loving mother, a career woman, a force in her community — before a mysterious car accident stole her memories, ruined her reputation, and upended her life. Written with wry humor, this diabolically entertaining tale of deception, temptation, and love is filled with dark twists, exploring what happens when the transgressions of the past come back with a vengeance.”
Hogarth: “Luciana is the baby of her large Colombian American family. And despite usually being relegated to the sidelines, she now finds herself the voice of reason in the middle of their unexpected crisis. Her older sister, Mari, is away at college and reduced to a mere listening ear on the other end of their many phone calls, so when South Florida residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, it’s up to Luciana to deal with her eccentric grandmother, Abue, who’s refusing to leave. But the storm isn’t the only danger. As Luciana chronicles the events of her upended senior year over the phone, Oye feels like the most entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped on: a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel by an author as original as she is insightful.”
Algonquin: “From ‘a highest-order storyteller of Southern noir’ (Electric Literature), a queer coming-of-age novel about addiction, belonging, and loving a place that doesn’t always love you back. When sixteen-year-old Shae meets Cam, who is new to their small town in West Virginia, she thinks she has found someone who is everything she has ever wanted in a companion. The two become fast friends, and then more. And when Shae ends up pregnant, Cam begins a different transition — trying on clothes that Shae can no longer fit into and using female pronouns. Shae tries to be fully supportive as Cam becomes the person she wants and needs to be. Shae is as much about these two young women as it is about the home they both love despite its limitations. Following the acclaimed Sugar Run and Perpetual West, this is Mesha Maren’s most intense and intimate novel yet.”
BOA Editions: “With a speculative and surreal style, Amy Lee Lillard’s prize-winning collection explores a living museum of women from across time; a life app that forces women to comply with beauty standards; a future internment camp with a literal race for survival; and a band of middle-aged Riot Grrrls, taking vengeance with a new power. With humor, rage, and a razor-sharp eye for detail, Exile in Guyville renders the invisible as seen, and the powerless as empowered.”
Knopf: “Informed by KB Brookins’s personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency — whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people. Here is a memoir (a bildungsroman of sorts) about coming to terms with instantly and always being perceived as ‘other.'”
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