"Detroit Never Left"

New from NYU Press: Detroit Never Left: Black Space, White Borders, Latino Crossings by Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new perspective on the relationship between race and space in Detroit

Detroit seemed to experience an explosive rebirth following its bankruptcy, the largest in US municipal history. It was as if the slate had been wiped clean and the color line erased in the nation’s largest Black city. Detroit Never Left explains the relation between racism and space by analyzing the ways opportunities changed in the years leading up to and following bankruptcy.

Based on a variety of data, including in-depth interviews with people who identify as “Latina/o/x” in their early 20s, ethnographic observation, and media coverage, Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán shows how a dialectic between empty and concrete abstractions created new opportunities for outside investment, often at the expense of residents' fortunes. She reveals space is much more than a neutral backdrop; It is continually produced through abstractions that act like bordering and crossing practices to control resources and opportunities. With broad implications for analyses of space and opportunity, Detroit Never Left tackles important contradictions in the post-bankruptcy city. For example, urban youth do not want to be moved out or isolated in their barrio. Similarly, many Detroiters feel spatial changes happen “to,” instead of “for” them. Ultimately, residents’ concerns underscored broader tensions between democratic inclusion and racialized capitalism.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Yesteryear"

New from Knopf: Yesteryear: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.

My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.

Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.

A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

Visit Caro Claire Burke's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Selves in Doubt"

New from Oxford University Press: Selves in Doubt by Eli Hirsch.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Selves in Doubt, Eli Hirsch focuses on the importance of the first-person perspective to a normal human level of rational thought and behavior. Hirsch argues that an "I-blind" being—one who lacks the capacity to employ the first-person pronoun—could not be fully rational; nor could they acquire normal knowledge of physical reality.

The meaning of the first-person pronoun is shown to have a particular bearing on the anomalous context of split-brain patients and generalizations of that context. Hirsch critiques Parfit's suggestion that a better language might eliminate or revise the concept of personal identity and the use of the first-person pronoun, on the grounds that the first-person perspective must remain as it is because the capacity to employ the first-person pronoun is a necessary condition for a language to be suitable for rational beings. Hirsch also contends that, contrary to Lewis and Sider, it may be difficult to find any other necessary condition for a language to be suitable for rational beings.

A bold claim defended later in the book is that it is metaphysically impossible to be sane while doubting the reality of other selves. This claim leads to a discussion of skepticism, and the final chapter consists in reflections on how facing skepticism relates to facing death.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Consequences of Normal"

Coming April 28 from Lake Union: Consequences of Normal: A Novel by Elle Baade.

About the book, from the publisher:

A devoted mother fights to change hearts and minds while protecting her transgender child in a hopeful and poignant novel about family, finding your voice, and the illusion of normalcy.

Jane Zander has moved with her husband, Matt, back to his hometown of Atwood, Wisconsin, where he is the new headmaster of the prestigious Atwood Prep School. Jane hopes it will be a good fit for herself, her husband, and their children. Especially Charles, their six-year-old son, who aspires to be the next Julia Child, rejects the norms of boyhood, and insists he is a girl.

Jane only wants Charles to be happy. Matt, fearing for his own reputation in a town small enough for everyone to know everything, is in denial. And Charles is facing increasing pressure to conform. When Jane befriends Libby, an Atwood outcast, her advocacy for Charles grows even stronger. Then an unforeseen crisis changes everything, forcing a husband and wife, a family, and a community to confront their beliefs about gender, identity, and unconditional love.

Compassionate and illuminating, The Consequences of Normal explores the journey of a mother and child navigating a different but true path of their own.

Visit Elle Baade's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Feminist Freedom"

New from Cornell University Press: Feminist Freedom: An African Vision by Minna Salami.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Feminist Freedom, Minna Salami asks: What happens when we consider Africa through a feminist lens—and feminism through an African one?

Salami explores these questions through an unflinching and clear-sighted African feminist vision. From African knowledge systems to feminist thought and through postcolonial history, she reveals the matrix of power, identity, patriarchy, and imagination that animates everyday life. She tackles the hardest challenges to the African feminist movement—why feminism matters in Africa, how it relates to Black liberation and global feminism, whether "African feminist" is itself a contradiction—and confronts the backlash that both sparked and stalled its progress. Patriarchy and culture, she shows, can smother feminist fire—but language, history, and soul can reignite it.

Braiding social criticism with personal storytelling, Feminist Freedom invites readers to see our past, present, and future from the continent outward and to imagine new horizons of liberation.

Follow Minna Salami on Instagram and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Last Woman of Warsaw"

New from Dutton: The Last Woman of Warsaw: A Novel by Judy Batalion.

About the book, from the publisher:

A debut novel by the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days, following two very different Jewish women in Warsaw in the late 1930s as they unexpectedly come together in their search for love, meaning, and a sense of home, and as they grapple with the storm clouds gathering around them

1938: Fanny Zelshinsky is a sophisticated, modern daughter of the city’s Jewish elite who wants nothing more than to be recognized as a legitimate artist by her family, her radical professor whom she idolizes, and the world at large. And all while she wonders if she is really going to go through with her wedding.

Meanwhile, Zosia Dror has left behind her small northeastern shtetl and religious family in the wake of violence. Part of a budding youth movement that believes in social equality and creating a Jewish homeland, all she wants is to not get distracted by the glitz and hubbub of the city—or by the keen eyes of a certain tall, handsome comrade.

When legendary artist Wanda Petrovsky—both a member of Zosia’s movement leadership and Fanny’s beloved photography professor—goes missing, the two young women are thrown together in the pursuit of the elusive firebrand. Is Wanda simply hiding, or is her disappearance connected to the rise in antisemitic laws and university practices? Fanny and Zosia may be the most unlikely of allies, but they must bridge their differences to help someone they both care for—and dodge the danger mounting around them in the process.

Visit Judy Batalion's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Legislating Against Liberties"

New from the University Press of Kansas: Legislating Against Liberties: How Congress Suppresses Constitutional Rights After Wars by Harry Blain.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sobering and eyeopening indictment that Congress has consistently been the most dangerous branch of government when it comes to protecting, and undermining, civil liberties—particularly in the wake of military conflict.

Why do wartime restrictions on civil liberties outlive their original justifications? Scholars have long argued that the blame lies with the executive branch of government. Their logic is straightforward: during war, lawmakers require (in Alexander Hamilton’s words) “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch,” so they choose to enable executive leadership. Executives promise to wield extraordinary powers temporarily, only to entrench them indefinitely. This book tests how these claims hold up in four pivotal moments in US history: the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. Ultimately, it finds them wanting.

Harry Blain argues that national legislators are decisive in sustaining postwar restrictions on civil liberties. These elected officials have formidable tools at their disposal, including powers over the rules and membership of their own institution, the funding and personnel of the executive branch, the jurisdiction of federal courts, and the priorities of state and local governments. These tools make Congress, not the executive, the primary institutional threat to civil liberties in the aftermath of war. For example, the House used its exclusion power to refuse to seat the socialist Victor Berger, disenfranchising voters in the process; Congress used its power to compel testimony during the Red Scares in an effort to discredit and humiliate their political enemies; and legislators have removed, or threatened to remove, Supreme Court jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions throughout US history.

In a time where the president and the Supreme Court are seen as the most dangerous branches of government, Legislating Against Liberties is a sober reminder that Congress has historically been at the vanguard of undermining democracy and liberty.

--Marshal Zeringue

"An Impossibility of Crows"

New from the University of Massachusetts Press: An Impossibility of Crows: A Novel by Kirsten Kaschock.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A story of mothers, monsters, and the science of longing

In this daring and evocative tale, Agnes Krahn, a chemist trained in Philadelphia, returns to her childhood home after the death of her father. Just a stone's throw from the haunted fields of Gettysburg, the small town of Letort, Pennsylvania is where the Krahn family has lived for six generations—bound by twisted folk wisdom and an uncanny kinship with the crows that loom over their land.

Back in the grim farmhouse of her youth, Agnes is drawn into the strange legacy she tried to leave behind. When she discovers an abandoned nest in the barn, she becomes consumed by a scientific—and deeply personal—experiment: to breed a crow large and intelligent enough to carry her daughter, Mina, to a freedom Agnes has never known herself. As the bird grows, so does its terrifying potential—manifest in language, cunning, and a violent will of its own. What begins as a gesture of love and liberation turns darkly obsessive, echoing the dangerous ambition of Frankenstein’s monster and the generational trauma buried in the soil of her family’s past.

A thoroughly modern, feminist novel, this is a story of mothers and daughters, inheritance and isolation, and the thin line between care and control. It confronts themes of self-harm and self-preservation, as well as memory and myth, in a narrative as visceral and uncanny as the bird that rises at its heart.

Visit Kirsten Kaschock's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"American Torture and American Terrorism"

New from Oxford University Press: American Torture and American Terrorism: The Myth of American Decency by Jessica Wolfendale.

About the book, from the publisher:

For most Americans the terms 'torture' and 'terrorism' evoke barbaric regimes and savage enemies, not liberal democracies dedicated to human rights and freedom, as the United States claims to be. American Torture and American Terrorism demonstrates the falsity of the claim that America is a nation fundamentally opposed to torture and terrorism. Drawing on and developing victim-centred definitions of torture and terrorism, Wolfendale reveals how these forms of violence have been embedded within American institutions since the country's founding. From the earliest days of colonization to today's prison conditions, high rates of police violence, and drone warfare, torture and terrorism have been used to dominate, attack, threaten, and control groups and individuals-primarily people of color-viewed as dangerous to white political and social domination. But this reality has been ignored and distorted, if not completely forgotten. By recognizing and naming the violence inflicted on victims of American torture and terrorism, Wolfendale provides a crucial corrective against this national amnesia.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Soldier's House"

Coming April 21 from Red Hen Press: The Soldier's House: A Novel by Helen Benedict.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A bold and compassionate novel about war’s aftermath, The Soldier’s House confronts the uneasy truths of rescue, redemption, and what it means to share a home and future with a former enemy.

In The Soldier’s House, Helen Benedict tells the story of an Iraq War veteran who saves the lives of his assassinated Iraqi interpreter’s widow, child, and mother by bringing them to his upstate New York home. For the soldier, this is a way of making amends, but the widow finds being rescued by the enemy both humiliating and compromising. This is a compassionate tale that examines whether redemption and forgiveness are even possible in the wake of war. In light of the increasing displacement of people all over the world, The Soldier’s House is particularly timely and poignant.

Visit Helen Benedict's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Wolf Season.

Q&A with Helen Benedict.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Deed.

--Marshal Zeringue