2009 University Press Books
Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries
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2009 University Press Books |
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800-899 Literature and Rhetoric
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809.393 Theology after Reading: Christian Imagination and the Power of Fiction 298 pp., 6” x 9”, 1 b&w illus., bibliog., index, $44.95 cloth, CIP included September 2008 Baylor University Press Theology after Reading explores how recent novelists, alongside certain post-War Christian theologians, appear to be challenging, inverting, reinterpreting, and sometimes even affirming, the basic questions and answers of more traditional theologians. Focusing on five novels, Darren Middleton illustrates how literary art provokes theological reflection. Examining Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, Toni Morrison’s Sula, Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ, Earl Lovelace’s The Wine of Astonishment, and Paul Thigpen’s My Visit to Hell, Middleton deftly illuminates the expression of both mainstream and progressive Christian doctrines as themes in these selected works of fiction, ultimately reaffirming the graced search for meaning in the mindful Christian life. LC 2008008640, ISBN 978-1-602581-58-6 (c.) AASL: S/P PLA: S 810.8 The Art of Friction: Where (Non)Fictions Come Together 242 pp., 6” x 8”, bibliog., $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper, CIP included October 2008 University of Texas Press The Art of Friction is an anthology of works by contemporary, award-winning writers, including Junot Díaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Thomas Beller, Bernard Cooper, Wendy McClure, and Terry Tempest Williams—as well as a discussion of the craft of writing—that explores the ways in which fiction and nonfiction intersect, commingle, and challenge notions of “truth”. “What I like about this collection is that it takes a complicated issue and intentionally muddies the waters even more—in the interim giving us some wonderful stories, essays, or what-have-you.”—Phillip Lopate LC 2008026880, ISBN 978-0-292-71879-1 (c.), ISBN 978-0-292-71891-3 (p.) AASL: G/HS PLA: G 810.803 Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood 280 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., $22.95 paper, CIP included February 2008 McGill-Queen’s University Press In Double Lives, the first Canadian literary anthology focusing on mothering and writing, twenty-two writers, who range in reputation from seasoned professionals to noteworthy new talents, reveal the intimate challenges and private rewards of nurturing children while pursuing the passion to write. Varying widely in age, marital status, sexual orientation, culture/ethnicity, and philosophical stance, authors such as Di Brandt, Stephanie Bolster, Linda Spalding, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Sharron Proulx-Turner, Sally Ito Rachel Rose and Susan Olding, make significant and illuminating contributions to our understanding of how writer and mother co-exist. C 20079074022, ISBN 978-0-7735-3377-6 (p.) AASL: S/P PLA: G 810.803 Love You To Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs 256 pp., 5 1/2” x 8 1/2”, $17.00 paper, CIP included June 2008 Beacon Press Responding to a dearth of literary writing on disability, Suzanne Kamata gathers parents’ perspectives at various stages in the lives of children with mental or physical difficulties. Together, the authors-including Michael Bérubé, Jayne Anne Phillips, Penny Wolfson, Carol Zapata-Whelan, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Bret Lott-paint a beautiful, wrenchingly honest portrait of what it means to care for a child who does not experience the world as we do. The book serves as a site of quiet contemplation amid the swirling issues of medical research and disability rights, and the writers come clean about the complications of even the deepest love. LC 2007038366, ISBN 978-0-80700030-4 (p.) AASL: S/P PLA: G 810.809 Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature 420 pp., 8” x 11”, 100 illus., bibliog., index, $32.95 cloth, CIP included November 2008 New York University Press Rather than teaching children to obey authority, to conform, or to seek redemption through prayer, twentieth-century leftists encouraged children to question the authority of those in power. Tales for Little Rebels collects forty-three mostly out-of-print stories, poems, comic strips, primers, and other texts for children that embody this radical tradition. These pieces reflect the concerns of twentieth-century leftist movements, like peace, civil rights, gender equality, environmental responsibility, and the dignity of labor. They also address the means of achieving these ideals, including taking collective action, developing critical thinking skills, and harnessing the liberating power of the imagination. LC 2008020926, ISBN 978-0-8147-5720-8 (c.) AASL: S/HS PLA: G 810.886 One Island, Many Voices: Conversations with Cuban-American Writers 176 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., $40.00 cloth, $22.95 paper, CIP included October 2008 The University of Arizona Press From playwright Dolores Prida to author and literary critic Gustavo Pérez Firmat, these voices run the gamut of both genre and personality. What del Rio has ultimately brought together is a series of intimate sketches that will not only serve as an important reference for any discussion of the literature but will also help readers to develop for themselves a sense of what Cuban-American writing is, and what it is not. LC 2008018872, ISBN 978-0-8165-2714-4 (c.), ISBN 978-0-8165-2806-6 (p.) AASL: G/HS PLA: G 810.93 American Women and Classical Myths 280 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $34.95 paper, CIP included December 2008 Baylor University Press American women, in contrast to their European counterparts, have long engaged with and critiqued the myths of antiquity. American Women and Classical Myths explores the paradoxical attitudes that women in the U.S. have exhibited over a span of more than two centuries. These essays insightfully examine the attempts of Margaret Fuller, Edith Hamilton, Hilda Doolittle, Willa Cather, and Phillis Wheatley to interpret myth for an audience that distrusted it. Then they show how American women have reinterpreted myths about women such as Antigone, Penelope, or the Amazons to create identities appropriate to women in the New World. LC 2008011910, ISBN 978-1-932792-85-0 (p.) AASL: S/HS, P PLA: S 811 The Office Tower Tales 264 pp., 5 1/4” x 9”, $24.95 cloth, CIP included March 2008 University of Alberta Press In this ambitious long poem, Alice Major exemplifies the redemptive force of story. Through the light-hearted interplay of such literary touchstones as Chaucer, The Thousand and One Nights, and Greek myth, readers meet receptionist Aphrodite, Sheherazad in PR, and Pandora, expectant grandmother from accounting, who gather to share tales during coffee breaks from their male-dominated engineering firm. Literary pilgrims, lovers of narrative and long forms, or fans of Major’s past explorations are certain to find redemption here. C 20079075533, ISBN 978-0-88864-502-9 (c.) AASL: G/P PLA: G 811.52 The Modern Dilemma: Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and Humanism 430 pp., 6 1/8” x 9 1/8”, $49.95 cloth, CIP included June 2008 McGill-Queen’s University Press Leon Surette’s new study of T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens challenges the received view that Stevens’ poetry expresses a Humanist world view, and—more surprisingly—documents Eliot’s early Humanist phase. The Modern Dilemma shows the extent of the common ground shared by two of the twentieth century’s most prominent modernist poets, casting light on how the political and cultural developments of their time helped to shape their art.” C 20089005910, ISBN 978-0-7735-3363-9 (c.) AASL: G/HS PLA: S 811.54 Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry 328 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper, CIP included March 2008 The University of Arkansas Press An indispensable and historic volume, Inclined to Speak gathers together poems, from the most important contemporary Arab American poets, that shape and alter our understanding of this experience. These poems also challenge us to reconsider what it means to be American. Impressive in its scope, this book provides readers with an astonishing array of poetic sensibilities, touching on every aspect of the human condition. Whether about culture, politics, loss, art, or language itself, the poems here engage these themes with originality, dignity, and an unyielding need not only to speak, but also to be heard. Here are thirty-nine poets offering up 160 poems. LC 2007045037, ISBN 978-1-55728-866-0 (c.), ISBN 978-1-55728-867-7 (p.) AASL: G/HS PLA: G 811.54 Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke 90 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., $14.95 paper, CIP included December 2008 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Blues singer, preacher, cultural critic, exile, Africadian, high modernist, spoken word artist, Canadian poet—these are some of the voices of George Elliott Clarke. This selection from Clarke’s early poetry to his most recent offers readers an impressive cross-section of those voices. Jon Paul Fiorentino’s introduction focuses on this polyphony, his influences, and his “voice throwing,” and shows how the intersections here produce a “troubling” of language. Clarke’s afterword is an interesting re-spin of Fiorentino’s introduction. Decrying any grandiose notions of theory, Clarke presents himself as primarily a songwriter. C 20089058429, ISBN 978-1-55458-060-6 (p.) AASL: G/P PLA: RS 811.54 The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest 600 pp., 6” x 9”, 3 b&w illus., index, $39.95 cloth, CIP included December 2008 Wesleyan University Press One of the most notable members of the New York School-and its best-known woman-Barbara Guest began writing poetry in the 1950s in company that included John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler. From the beginning, her practice placed her at the vanguard of American writing. Guest’s poetry, saturated in the visual arts, extended the formal experiments of modernism, and played the abstract qualities of language against its sensuousness and materiality. Now, for the first time, all of her published poems have been brought together in one volume, offering readers and scholars unprecedented access to Guest’s remarkable visionary work. LC 2008020147, ISBN 978-0-8195-6860-1 (c.) AASL: O/HS PLA: G 811.54 Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems 288 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., $24.95 paper, CIP included July 2008 The University of Arizona Press For nearly four decades, Juan Felipe Herrera has documented his experience as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning, memorable poetry. Often political, never fainthearted, Herrera’s career has been marked by tremendous virtuosity and a unique sensibility for uncovering the unknown. “Many poets since the 1960s have dreamed of a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too. Many poets have tried to create such an art: Herrera is one of the first to succeed.”—The New York Times LC 2007044782, ISBN 978-0-8165-2703-8 (p.) AASL: G/HS PLA: G 811.54 All These Roads: The Poetry of Louis Dudek 80 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., $14.95 paper, CIP included April 2008 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Louis Dudek devoted much of his life to shaping the Canadian literary scene through his meditative and experimental poems as well as his work in publishing and teaching. All These Roads brings together 35 of Dudek’s poems written over the course of his sixty-year career. Karis Shearer’s introduction provides an overview of Dudek’s prolific career as poet, professor, editor, publisher, and critic, and considers the ways in which Dudek’s functional poems help, both formally and thematically, to carry out the tasks associated with those roles. C 20089006208, ISBN 978-1-55458-039-2 (p.) AASL: G/HS PLA: RS 811.54 My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer 508 pp., 6” x 8”, 10 b&w illus., bibliog., index, $35.00 cloth, CIP included December 2008 Wesleyan University Press In 1965, when died at the age of forty, Jack Spicer left behind a trunkful of papers, manuscripts, and a few copies of the seven small books he had seen to press. A West Coast poet, his influence spanned the national literary scene of the 1950s and ‘60s, though in many ways Spicer’s innovative writing ran counter to that of his contemporaries in the New York School and the West Coast Beat movement. Now, over forty years later, Spicer’s voice is more compelling, insistent, and timely than ever. This landmark publication includes this poet’s life work. LC 2008024997, ISBN 978-0-8195-6887-8 (c.) AASL: O/HS PLA: G 811.54 A Radiant Curve: Poems and Stories 128 pp., 6” x 8 1/4”, $35.00 cloth, $17.95 paper, CIP included October 2008 The University of Arizona Press The well-known Navajo poet and writer Luci Tapahonso tugs her readers into a world that is both familiar and magical. It seems like a world we know—with elderly parents and newborn grandchildren, with daily rituals and occasional funerals—but it welcomes “Old Salt Woman” and “Dawn Boy” too. And so do we. “Tapahonso celebrates the everyday acts, rituals, and stories that draw people together across the years and across the distances of cultural dispersion.”—Library Journal LC 2008027223, ISBN 978-0-8165-2708-3 (c.), ISBN 978-0-8165-2709-0 (p.) AASL: G/MS PLA: G 811.542 After-Music: Poems 152 pp., 6” x 9 3/4”, $15.95 paper, CIP included January 2008 Wayne State University Press After-Music is a varied and rich collection of meditations on both the personal and universal. Among the many intriguing places, people, and events that Hilberry brings to life in these poems are watching manatees in a Florida canal, a reluctant priest blessing the animals in Mexico, a rushed and sullen checkout girl in the supermarket, and Day of the Dead skeletons that form a mariachi band. Some poems are formal-in sonnets, quatrains, and tetrameter couples-but most are free verse, all of them accessible and enjoyable reading. LC 2007024010, ISBN 978-0-8143-3352-5 (p.) AASL: G/HS PLA: RG 811.542 Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream 96 pp., 5” x 7 1/2”, $15.95 paper, CIP included January 2008 Wayne State University Press Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream is a collection of traveling poems written in Russia, Israel, Germany, and China that take the reader on a contemplative journey through both the geography of these countries and their cultures as well as through the inward mind of the narrator. As Liebler travels the world, he wrestles with themes of self-discovery, spirituality, identity, and change, and renders poems in his signature raw and defiant style. Thoughtful and direct, these poems look toward beauty and contemplation in a bitter world that has become fraught with mistrust and misunderstanding. LC 2007029901, ISBN 978-0-8143-3382-2 (p.) AASL: O/MS PLA: S 811.542 The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays 80 pp., 6 1/4” x 8 1/2”, $23.00 cloth, CIP included October 2008 Beacon Press The Truro Bear and Other Adventures brings together ten new poems, thirty-five of Oliver’s classic poems, and two essays, all about mammals, insects, and reptiles. The award-winning poet considers beasts of all kinds: bears, snakes, spiders, porcupines, humpback whales, hermit crabs, and, of course, her little dog, Percy; much loved by dedicated fans, he appears and even speaks in thirteen poems, the closing section of the volume. LC 2008015400, ISBN 978-0-80706884-7 (c.) AASL: O/MS PLA: G 811.622 Now You’re the Enemy: Poems 70 pp., 5 1/2” x 8 1/2”, bibliog., $16.00 paper, CIP included January 2008 The University of Arkansas Press These raw and powerful poems have at their heart the charged, archetypal figure of the mother. Conflicted by the twin desires of self-destruction and self-preservation, this mother is both terrible and beautiful. This compassionate, nervy collection of poems shows a family in the aftermath of violence. James Allen Hall explores themes of loss, the intersection of grief and desire, and the ways in which history, art, and politics shape the self. LC 2007041678, ISBN 978-1-55728-864-6 (p.) PLA: S 813.309 Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History 338 pp., 6” x 9”, 10 halftones, bibliog., index, $65.00 cloth, CIP included July 2008 Temple University Press Tomboys is a first full-length critical study of this gender-bending code of female conduct. Michelle Abate uncovers the origins, charts the trajectory, and traces the literary and cultural transformations that the concept of “tomboy” has undergone in the United States. Abate focuses on literature including, Little Women, and The Member of the Wedding, and films such as Paper Moon. She also draws on Cold War lesbian pulp fiction, and New Queer Cinema from the 1990s. Abate’s insightful analysis provides useful, thought-provoking connections between different literary works and eras. The result demystifies this cultural phenomenon and challenges readers to consider tomboys in a whole new light. LC 2007050234, ISBN 978-1-59213-722-0 (c.) AASL: G/P PLA: S 813.4 Little Women Abroad: The Alcott Sisters’ Letters from Europe, 1870-1871 376 pp., 7” x 9”, 78 b&w photos, 1 map, index, notes, index, $34.95 cloth, CIP included November 2008 University of Georgia Press In 1870, Louisa May Alcott and her younger sister Abby May Alcott began a fourteen-month tour of Europe. Little Women Abroad gathers a generous selection of May’s drawings along with all of the known letters written by the two Alcott sisters during their trip. Nearly all of the drawings are previously unpublished; most of the letters appear in their entirety for the first time. “Little Women Abroad warms the heart as it broadens the mind.”—John Matteson, author of Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (2007 Pulitzer Prize winner) LC 2007039027, ISBN 978-0-8203-3009-9 (c.) AASL: O/MS PLA: O 813.52 Unfinished Masterpiece: The Harlem Renaissance Fiction of Anita Scott Coleman 224 pp., 6” x 9”, 1 b&w photo, bibliog., $22.95 paper, CIP included May 2008 Texas Tech University Press Collected short fiction of a Southwestern writer who published in The Crisis and other Harlem Renaissance journals. These stories offer commentary on the roles of women and African Americans in early twentieth-century America. What Champion and Glasrud have recovered in this collection is more than Coleman’s complete collected short fiction. It is a road map of African American life in the Southwest during the movement’s glory days, etching not only indelible glimpses of character and culture but also the farthest-reaching evidence of the Harlem Renaissance’s success in sharing ideals and goals across a nation. LC 2008000992, ISBN 978-0-89672-629-1 (p.) AASL: G/HS PLA: O 813.54 The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of José Antonio Burciaga 256 pp., 6” x 9”, 38 illus., $35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper, CIP included September 2008 The University of Arizona Press This first and only collection of Burciaga’s works showcases many of his most important works in verse, prose, and visual art, and contains previously unpublished material, including selections from a memoir he was writing at the time of his death. This rich compendium preserves a pioneering voice in Chicano literature and includes 38 drawings. “Burciaga seeks the roots of his Chicano heritage in Mexico and Texas, telling today’s Mexican Americans how the Chicano movement has changed their lives for the better. His personal anecdotes of growing up a stranger to both of his native lands speak to today’s immigrants, especially the second and third generations.”—Library Journal LC 2008005980, ISBN 978-0-8165-2661-1 (c.), ISBN 978-0-8165-2662-8 (p.) AASL: G/P PLA: G 813.54
If I Die in Juárez
336 pp., 6” x 8 1/2”, $16.95 paper, CIP included
March 2008
The University of Arizona Press
In this haunting novel, Stella Pope Duarte examines the lives of three women who meet by chance in Juárez, Mexico, where women are frequently abducted, tortured, and murdered. Based on the author’s first-person interviews with kidnapped women and relatives of victims, If I Die in Juárez vividly brings to life “the maquiladora murders.” “Brilliantly and powerfully told by a superb storyteller and human rights activist. The saga of her three brave women characters walking through fire, hatred, greed and human depravity, holding a torch of hope and transformation in their path is unforgettable.”—Multicultural Review
LC 2007026134, ISBN 978-0-8165-2667-3 (p.)
AASL: G/P
PLA: G
813.54
Who’s Jim Hines?
152 pp., 5” x 7 1/2”, 10 illus., $12.95 paper, CIP included
July 2008
Wayne State University Press
Who’s Jim Hines? is a story based on real events about Douglas Ford Jr., a twelve-year-old African American boy growing up in Detroit in the 1930s. Doug’s father owns the Douglas Ford Wood Company, and when Doug must join his father in the backbreaking work of delivering wood throughout the city and suburbs, he takes the opportunity to unravel the mystery of a man names Jim Hines who he always hears about but has never met. In discovering Hines’s identity, Doug also learns much about the realities of racism in Depression-era Detroit. Winner of a 2009 Michigan Notable Book Award.
LC 2008007457, ISBN 978-0-8143-3402-7 (p.)
AASL: G/MS, HS
PLA: O
813.54
Mordecai Richler: Leaving St Urbain
528 pp., 6 1/2” x 9 1/2”, 15 b&w photos, bibliog., index, $39.95 cloth, CIP included
March 2008
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Master of prose and polemics, for nearly five decades Mordecai Richler was one of Canada’s most compelling writers. Though Richler insisted that his private life was not important to his work, Reinhold Kramer shows that Richler’s uneasy Jewishness, his reluctant Canadianness, and his secularism were central to all of his writing. More than a biography, Mordecai Richler: Leaving St. Urbain is the story of a Jewish culture finding its place within a larger stream, a literary culture moving into the colloquial, and a Canada torn between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
C 20079068286, ISBN 978-0-7735-3355-4 (c.)
AASL: G/P
PLA: S
813.54
Dinner with Osama
208 pp., 5 3/4” x 8 1/2”, $20.00 paper, CIP included
February 2008
University of Notre Dame Press
“A strong story collection...showcasing a feminist, leftist, postmodernist, funny voice.... Krysl has a thing for Boulder; even more so, a thing for women’s lives portrayed with wry or tender originality. ‘Heraclitus, Help Me,’ for example, illustrates the changes in a daughter’s life with allusions to the paintings of Mary Cassatt, and ‘Cherry Garcia, Pistachio Cream’ is a beauteously real portrayal of mother/daughter bonding. The more political Krysl gets, the bleaker the results-think William Burroughs without the misogyny. Her piece ‘Welcome to the Torture Center, Love,’ concerning a night journey through the inferno that is war-torn Sudan, is a dazzler.”—Kirkus Reviews
LC 2007050580, ISBN 978-0-268-03318-7 (p.)
AASL: G/P
PLA: G
813.54
Apocalyptic Patterns in Twentieth-Century Fiction
272 pp., 6” x 9”, index, $28.00 paper, CIP included
October 2008
University of Notre Dame Press
“David Leigh has made a major contribution to our understanding of the apocalyptic tradition in twentieth-century fiction. Along the way, Leigh introduces us to a remarkable array of fiction-from science fiction to literature of death, to specific African American works such as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and to examples from post-colonial fiction such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Shusaku Endo’s Deep River. Leigh’s work is required reading for students interested in connections between religion and literature.”—John L. Mahoney, Rattigan Professor of English, Boston College
LC 2008026867, ISBN 978-0-268-03380-4 (p.)
AASL: G/P
PLA: S
813.54
Spirits in the Grass
296 pp., 6” x 9”, $25.00 cloth, CIP included
September 2008
University of Notre Dame Press
“Part baseball book, part mystery, part love story, part search for identity, and part social battle between small-minded townspeople and American Indians, this book leads the reader on a complex journey that begins with baseball and ends with spirituality.”—La Crosse Tribune. “[Meissner] handles all his story lines—the centerfielder manqué, the ‘spirits in the grass,’ the troubled romance, the fight with city hall—with admirable subtlety, sidestepping the multiple clichés that can so easily attach themselves to all of these themes. This is a quiet novel but an emotionally powerful one, rich with ambiguity and with the scent of felt life.”—Booklist (starred review)
LC 2008026868, ISBN 978-0-268-03513-6 (c.)
AASL: G/MS, HS
PLA: G
813.54
Dying in a Strange Land
272 pp., 6” x 9”, $24.95 paper, CIP included
June 2008
University of Hawai’i Press
Milton Murayama’s long-awaited Dying in a Strange Land brings to a close the saga of the Oyama family. Familiar faces from All I Asking For Is My Body, Five Years on a Rock, and Plantation Boy return to advance the story from the years immediately following World War II to the 1980s. After her husband sinks them deep in debt, strong-willed and pragmatic Sawa takes charge of the family. The war ends and her children leave the plantation camp for Honolulu and the Mainland, but Sawa has little time for loneliness or regret.
LC 2008000410, ISBN 978-0-8248-3197-4 (p.)
AASL: Not Reviewed
PLA: G
813.54
Red Land, Red Power: Grounding Knowledge in the American Indian Novel
312 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $79.95 cloth, $22.95 paper, CIP included
May 2008
Duke University Press
In lucid narrative prose, Sean Kicummah Teuton studies the stirring literature of “Red Power,” an era of Native American organizing that began in 1969 and expanded into the 1970s. Teuton challenges the claim that Red Power thinking relied on romantic longings for a pure Indigenous past and culture. He shows instead that the movement engaged historical memory and oral tradition to produce more enabling knowledge of American Indian lives and possibilities.
LC 2007043861, ISBN 978-0-8223-4223-6 (c.), ISBN 978-0-8223-4241-0 (p.)
AASL: G/P
PLA: S
813.542
Trespassing: Dirt Stories & Field Notes
176 pp., 5 1/2” x 7 1/2”, 13 illus., $18.95 paper, CIP included
March 2008
Wayne State University Press
Trespassing is composed in equal amounts of short fiction and essays that illustrate the impact of modern factory farms—confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—on a rural Michigan community. Michigan author Janet Kauffman debunks the myth of the idyllic “clip art” farm of decades past by giving readers a close-up look at mega-meat and mega-milk, the extreme amounts of animal waste and barren countryside CAFOs produce, and the people who live in the midst of this new rural landscape threatened by agricultural sprawl.
LC 2007039291, ISBN 978-0-8143-3374-7 (p.)
AASL: G/P
PLA: O
813.622
Legend of a Suicide
160 pp., 8 1/2” x 5 3/4”, $24.95 cloth, CIP included
November 2008
University of Massachusetts Press
“This well-crafted debut collection, five stories and a novella, from award-winning writer and memoirist Vann (A Mile Down) revolves obsessively around the suicide of an Alaskan father. Vann uses startling powers of observation to create strong characters, tense scenes and genuine surprises, leading to a ghastly conclusion that’s sure to linger.”—Publishers Weekly. “This is one of the most striking fictional debuts in recent memory, and David Vann is an important new voice in American literature.”—Robert Olen Butler. Winner of the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. A New York Times Editor’s Choice and “Notable Book” of 2008.
LC 2008035381, ISBN 978-1-55849-672-9 (c.)
AASL: G/P
PLA: G
818.3
The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
312 pp., 6 1/8” x 9 1/4”, 14 illus., bibliog., index, $34.95 cloth, $19.95 paper, CIP included
January 2008
University of Pennsylvania Press
Introducing a dramatic new chapter to American literary history, this book brings to the public for the first time the complete writings of the first known American Indian literary writer, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800-1842). Beginning as early as 1815, Schoolcraft wrote poems and traditional stories while also translating songs and other Ojibwe texts into English. Her stories were published in adapted, unattributed versions by her husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a founding figure in American anthropology and folklore, and they became a key source for Longfellow’s popular The Song of Hiawatha.
LC 2006052805, ISBN 978-0-8122-3981-2 (c.), ISBN 978-0-8122-1969-2 (p.)
AASL: S/HS
PLA: Not Reviewed
818.54
The Norman Maclean Reader
260 pp., 6” x 9”, 19 halftones, bibliog., $27.50 cloth, CIP included
November 2008
The University of Chicago Press
Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his two masterpieces, this book is a perfect introduction for readers new to Norman Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career. “This book introduces readers to Maclean’s life and writing, collecting previously unpublished essays, stories, letters, and selections from his two books. Rooted in his native Montana, where he returned every summer to the cabin he had helped his father build, the man who emerges from these pages is funny, irreverent, and thoughtful...This book will appeal to those who love fly-fishing, hunting, the Forest Service, and, above all, good writing.”—Library Journal
LC 2008014519, ISBN 978-0-226-50026-3 (c.)
AASL: G/HS
PLA: Not Reviewed
820.808
Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature
288 pp., 6” x 9 1/2”, bibliog., index, $29.95 paper, CIP included
July 2008
McGill-Queen’s University Press
In a political system that renders them largely voiceless, Australia’s Aboriginal people have used the written word as a powerful tool for over two hundred years. Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature presents a rich panorama of Aboriginal culture, history, and life through the writings of some of the great Australian Aboriginal authors.
C 20089013980, ISBN 978-0-7735-3459-9 (p.)
AASL: RS/HS
PLA: RS
820.936
Renaissance Ecology: Imagining Eden in Milton’s England
356 pp., 6” x 9”, illus., index, $62.00 cloth, CIP included
January 2008
Duquesne University Pres
The essays in Renaissance Ecology consider how writers and artists such as John Milton imagined, by way of Eden, a future where human beings would live in greater peace with the natural world. This impressive collection takes an exciting, new, “green” approach to representations of Eden, while also considering the role of gender, politics, and poetics, discussing relevant issues of both literature and culture. Renaissance Ecology will have a major impact on Renaissance studies as well as ecocriticism.
LC 2007040573, ISBN 978-08207-0402-9 (c.)
AASL: G/HS
820.994
Finding Ireland: A Poet’s Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture
296 pp., 6” x 9”, illus., index, $25.00 paper, CIP included
October 2008
University of Notre Dame Press
“In this book of literary tourism, Tillinghast includes essays on Ireland’s major literary figures as well as on contemporary Irish culture. As an American poet and critic who visited and lived in Ireland periodically before becoming a resident in 2005, Tillinghast is uniquely suited to write about the culture, history, and literature of his adopted country...What distinguishes this book is Tillinghast’s blend of tourist information and insightful criticism. Whether planning a trip or just fascinated by Ireland’s rich history and literary contributions, readers will enjoy this book. Recommended for public collections.”—Library Journal
LC 2008028330, ISBN 978-0-268-04232-5 (p.)
AASL: RS/HS
820.996
The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English Since 1945
216 pp., 7” x 10”, bibliog., index, $85.00 cloth, CIP included
December 2008
Columbia University Press
Composed by a premier scholar of African literature, this volume is a comprehensive guide to the literary traditions of Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria, five distinct countries bound by their experience with colonialism. Oyekan Owomoyela begins with an overview of the authors, texts, and historical events that have shaped the development of postwar Anglophone literatures in this region, exploring shifts in theme and the role of foreign sponsorship and illuminating recent debates regarding the language, identity, gender, and social commitments of various authors and their works. His introduction concludes with a bibliography of key critical texts.
LC 2007049090, ISBN 978-0-231-12686-1 (c.)
AASL: RS/HS
821.309
Refiguring the Sacred Feminine: The Poems of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton
392 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $60.00 cloth, CIP included
April 2008
Duquesne University Press
Theresa M. DiPasquale’s study of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton demonstrates how each of these seventeenth century English poets revised, reformed, and renewed the Judeo-Christian tradition of the sacred feminine. The central figures of this tradition—divine Wisdom, created Wisdom, the Bride, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Ecclesia—are essential to the works of Donne, Lanyer, and Milton. All three poets are deeply invested in the ancient, scripturally authorized belief that the relationship between God and humankind is gendered: God is father, bridegroom, king; the human soul and the church as corporate entity are daughter, bride, and consort.
LC 2007051592, ISBN 978-08207-0405-0 (c.)
AASL: S/HS
823
Party Shoes (Oxford Children’s Classics)
320 pp., 7 1/4” x 5”, $ 9.95 cloth, CIP included
September 2008
Oxford University Press
When Selina receives a parcel from her godmother in America it causes much excitement among her and her cousins, and, to Selina’s delight, the parcel contains a beautiful party dress and a pair of party shoes. But delight turns to dismay when she realizes that she may never have an occasion to wear such a wonderful outfit—until, that is, she and her cousins come up with an idea of organizing a pageant...
LC 2008298529, ISBN 978-0-19272010-8 (c.)
AASL: G/MS
PLA: G
823.8
Mr. Charlotte Brontë: The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls
216 pp., 6” x 9”, 19 b&w photos, bibliog., index, $24.95 cloth, CIP included
February 2008
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Few people seeking to avoid the glare of publicity have had more of it turned on them than Charlotte Brontë’s husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Some critics have implied that he not only put a stop to her writing but might even have inadvertently caused her death. Alan Adamson’s biography takes recent scholarship into account and adds new material about Nicholl’s family, education, and early life in Ireland to give a more balanced view.
C 20079070256, ISBN 978-0-7735-3365-3 (c.)
AASL: S/HS
PLA: G
823.8
A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill
352 pp., 6” x 9”, 22 illus., bibliog., index, $34.95 cloth, CIP included
October 2008
Wayne State University Press
After winning an international audience with his novel Children of the Ghetto, Israel Zangwill went on to write numerous short stories, four additional novels, and several plays, including The Melting Pot. Meri-Jane Rochelson, a noted expert on Zangwill’s work, examines his career from its beginnings in the 1890s to the performance of his last play, We Moderns, in 1924, to trace how Zangwill became the best-known Jewish writer in Britain and America and a leading spokesperson on Jewish affairs throughout the world. Rochelson examines Zangwill’s published writings, alongside letters, diaries, manuscripts, press cuttings, and other items in the vast Zangwill files of the Central Zionist Archives.
LC 2008022800, ISBN 978-0-8143-3344-0 (c.)
AASL: O, S/HS, P
PLA: S
823.914
Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale
216 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $29.95 paper, CIP included
June 2008
Wayne State University Press
Recent decades have witnessed a renaissance of interest in the fairy tale, not least among writers of fiction. In Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale, editor Stephen Benson argues that fairy tales are one of the key influences on fiction of the past thirty years and also continue to shape literary trends in the present. Contributors detail the use of fairy tales both as inspiration and blueprint and explore the results of juxtaposing fairy tales and contemporary fiction.
LC 2007051880, ISBN 978-0-8143-3254-2 (p.)
AASL: G, S/P
PLA: S
830-899 Literature of Other Languages
839
Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories about Teens in the Arab World
216 pp., 5 1/2 x 81/4”, $15.95 paper, CIP included
July 2008
Indiana University Press
This lively collection of eight short stories about Arab teenagers living in Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and a Palestinian refugee camp engagingly depicts young people’s experiences growing up in the Middle East. The characters, drawn from urban and rural settings and from different classes as well as a mix of countries, confront situations involving friends, family, teachers, and society at large. Along with some specifically Middle Eastern issues, the young people deal with more familiar concerns such as loyalty to friends, overcoming personal insecurities, dreams of a future career, and coping with divorcing parents.
LC 2007050768, ISBN 978-0-253-22004-2 (p.)
AASL: Not Reviewed
PLA: O
843
The Countess von Rudolstadt
472 pp., 6 1/8” x 9 1/4”, bibliog., $49.95 cloth, CIP included
May 2008
University of Pennsylvania Press
This is the first English translation in over one hundred years of one of George Sand’s most ambitious and engaging novels, hailed by many scholars of nineteenth-century French literature as her masterpiece. It’s the story of Countess von Rudolstadt, Consuelo, born the penniless daughter of a Spanish gypsy, is transformed into an opera star by the great maestro Porpora. Her peregrinations throughout Europe become a quest undertaken on a number of levels: as a singer, as a woman, and as an unwilling subject of alienation and oppression.
LC 2008298218, ISBN 978-0-8122-4073-3 (c.)
AASL: S/HS
PLA: S
851.1
The Ancient Flame: Dante and the Poets
320 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $35.00 paper, CIP included
March 2008
University of Notre Dame Press
Selected as a 2009 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. “A well-known scholar of classical and medieval Latin poetry, Wetherbee brings his enormous expertise in that field to bear on Dante’s Commedia, with consistently original and thought-provoking results...genuinely and profoundly humane, these readings succeed admirably in attaining their author’s stated goal of showing ‘the extent to which [Dante’s] gradual discovery of his own mission as a vernacular poet depended on a close and attentive reading of his Latin models.’ This will be a valuable resource for those interested in classical, medieval, and comparative literature as well as Italian studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”—Choice
LC 2008000420, ISBN 978-0-268-04412-1 (p.)
AASL: Not Reviewed
PLA: S
881.01
Woman’s Songs in Ancient Greece
256 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $85.00 cloth, $32.95 paper, CIP included
December 2008
McGill-Queen’s University Press
By considering women’s voices in performance, Anne Klinck provides a new perspective on women’s “writing.” She shows that our understanding of femininity in ancient Greece can be expanded by going beyond poetry composed by women poets like Sappho to explore girls’ and women’s choral songs from the archaic period, songs for female choruses and characters in tragedy, and lyrical representations of women’s rituals and cults.
C 20089036131, ISBN 978-0-7735-3448-3 (c.), ISBN 978-0-7735-3449-0 (p.)
PLA: S
891.733
Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction
290 pp., 6” x 9”, bibliog., index, $24.95 cloth, CIP included
August 2008
Baylor University Press
Rowan Williams explores the intricacies of speech, fiction, metaphor, and iconography in the works of one of literature’s most complex, and most complexly misunderstood, authors. Williams’ investigation focuses on the four major novels of Dostoevsky’s maturity (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Devils, and The Brothers Karamozov). He argues that understanding Dostoevsky’s style and goals as a writer of fiction is inseparable from understanding his religious commitments. Any reader who enters the rich and insightful world of Williams’ Dostoevsky will emerge a more thoughtful and appreciative reader for it.
LC 2008012100, ISBN 978-1-602581-45-6 (c.)
AASL: S/HS
PLA: S
895.609
Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan
208 pp., 5 1/2” x 8 1/4”, illus., $27.95 cloth, CIP included
May 2008
Columbia University Press
“A beautifully written narration of the formation of a scholar/’life artist’ that traces the boyhood and early influences of Donald Keene, his gradual awakening to an awareness of other cultures and languages, his introduction to the Chinese and then the Japanese language and culture, his military service during World War II, and his later interactions with many of the major figures of the Japanese literary world of the latter half of the twentieth century.”—Laurel Rasplica Rodd, professor of Japanese, University of Colorado. “The history is fascinating, and the literary life Keene has doggedly carved out of it, remarkable.”—Time, Asia edition
LC 2007038841, ISBN 978-0-231-14440-7 (c.)
AASL: S/HS
PLA: G
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