The Best Southern Books of the Month https://ift.tt/jd8ekXC
I honestly don’t have words for this moment. I’ve written “times are weird” (or some variation thereof) in the intros of these features so many times over the last few years, but it’s still all I can say. I’m angry and grieving, but I am channeling that into investing in my community. I also believe that books can change the world, so here at the SRB, we’ll continue celebrating the diversity of the South and encouraging everyone to read as a component of their activism as well as a source of joy.
University Press of Kentucky: “In this stunning visual history, photographer and curator Chris Aluka Berry gives voice to the broad spectrum of African Americans who have lived in the Appalachian region over the centuries. His intimate and revealing photographs capture African Americans in various settings — churches, homes, revival services, family gatherings, and homegoing celebrations. Completing this comprehensive collection are powerful narratives from the people who inhabit these places, and contributions from Appalachian writers Kelly Elaine Navies and Maia A. Surdam, whose poignant and powerful poems and essays offer historical perspective and broaden the book’s archival importance.”
Fireside Industries: “The Evolution of the Gospelettes follows the family and their transformation from old-time gospel singers in the 1970s to performers on a televangelist program in the 1980s to founding members of a megachurch in the 1990s. As the new millennium approaches, Jeannie, whose beliefs have evolved and irreversibly departed from her family’s, fears what will happen the more entrenched they become in fundamentalist thinking and finds herself in a fight to save the people she loves from self-destruction. This debut novel is a compelling exploration of family ties and rifts, faith and doubt, and holiness and hypocrisy in a changing world.”
Fireside Industries: “At the intersection of alcoholism and recovery, Kingfisher Blues brings an unflinching eye and raw wit to one man’s battle with addiction… These intensely personal yet universal poems boldly confront demons and deities while remaining skeptical about either’s existence. By conveying the despair—and serenity—found in the loneliness of the woods and seeking self-acceptance in the face of ugly truths, this collection offers a visceral encounter with the intertwined forces of nature, human struggle, and redemption.”
University of Iowa Press: “The stories in The Man in the Banana Trees take place in the past, present, and future — from the American Gulf South to the orbit around Jupiter. We meet teachers and students, ghosts and aliens. An ice cream consultant in the year 2036 predicts a devastating flavor trend and a disgruntled New England waiter investigates a mysterious tanker crash. Although wildly varied in setting, length, and genre, a thread of the fantastic unites these stories, as characters struggle to understand that thing lurking at the edge of their perception: something sinister, or maybe — miraculous.”
University of North Carolina Press: “The South is often perceived as a haunted place in its region’s literature, one that is strange, deviant, or “queer.” The peculiar, often sexually charged literary worlds of contemporary writers like Fannie Flagg, Monique Truong, and Randall Kenan speak to this connection between queerness and the South… Siegrist gathers a bevy of undertheorized writers, from Kenan and Truong to Dorothy Allison and even George R. R. Martin, showing that there are many “queer Souths.” Siegrist offers these multiverses as a way to appreciate a place that is often unfriendly, even deadly, to queer people. But as Siegrist argues, none of these Souths, from the terrestrial to the imaginary, would be what they are without the influence and power of queer literature.”
Dzanc Books: “In this stunning collection of braided essays, Yoke & Feather invites the reader into an exploration of the everyday sacred: blessings for the demolition derby and the public-school lice check, a canoe trip through Boquillas Canyon along the Rio Grande, and a visit to the kitchen of the biblical sisters, Mary and Martha, as they welcome their improbable foster daughter. Rooted in a rural mountain childhood and threaded with Renaissance painting, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and midlife longing for a partner and child, these essays — both playful and deeply felt — reimagine familiar biblical narratives and chart the connections between ancient myth and contemporary life.”
Crooked Lane: “While back on tribal land, Mud Sawpole uncovers an illegal fracking operation underway that threatens the Kiowas’ ancestral homeland. But there’s an even greater threat: a local businessman involved in artifact thefts is murdered, and a respected tribe elder faces accusation of the crime. After being roped in by her cousin, Denny, they begin to investigate the death while also pursuing evidence to permanently stop frackers from destroying Kiowa land, water, and livelihoods. Mud and Denny race against the clock to uncover the real killer and must face the knowledge that there may be a traitor — and a murderer — in their midst.
McSweeney’s: “Brimming with tension, action, wry dialogue, and unexpected pathos, Penalties of June is John Brandon’s sixth book published by McSweeney’s. With his distinct feel for the underbelly of his home state of Florida, Brandon takes readers into the forbidding corners of the Tampa Bay area — unsavory motels, secondhand shops, no-frills diners, and dubious used-car lots. Pratt navigates crime bosses and drug dealers on a perilous mission, his steed a trusty (if creaky) Chrysler LeBaron. Faced with an impossible choice, and the prospect of finally finding love after years behind bars, Pratt risks it all for a chance at making things right.”
0 Commentaires