"Salt Water Blood"

New from Sarah Barley Books / Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: Salt Water Blood by Manuia Heinrich.

About the novel, from the publisher:

An Indigenous teen who hears the sea’s prophetic thoughts must rely on the gift she’s always feared to save her brother, and her island home, in this “gripping Polynesian mystery laced with Indigenous cultural knowledge, for fans of Angeline Boulley and Ari Tison” (School Library Journal, starred review).

Eighteen-year-old Moe hears the sea’s prophetic thoughts—not just hears them…she feels them. That’s how she experienced her father’s death before he did and how she felt her mother’s relief when she abandoned Moe and her younger brother, Tao, months after.

So when the sea warns Moe that Tao will drown, she’s determined to get in fate’s way and secures them passage off their island home. But those plans are ruined when Tao’s girlfriend goes missing and Tao is found where she was last seen, with blood on his hands—and no memory of what happened.

Moe will do anything she can to clear her brother’s name, even if it means swallowing her pride and teaming up with her annoyingly clever school rival, Temanea. And even if it means relying on the sea’s prophecies. Because her dreaded gift may be the only way to save her brother—and uncover the truth behind the sickness poisoning her community.

Visit Manuia Heinrich's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mother Tongue and English"

Coming November 30 from Cambridge University Press: Mother Tongue and English: The Politics of Language in Indian Higher Education by Christina P. Davis and Chaise LaDousa.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first of its kind, this book ethnographically examines mother tongue, a pervasive concept in South Asian social life, yet one that is rarely questioned in policy and educational institutions. In recent education policy, the Indian government advocates for mother tongue education but makes little mention of English despite its centrality at all levels of education. Through interviews with students at three Indian higher educational institutions, the authors analyze how the recent policy recommendations resonate with students' understandings and usage of language. Presenting the notion of language ideology in an engaging and accessible manner, this book highlights the changing views and attitudes toward mother tongue in light of the increased desire to learn English. It also stresses the importance of students' voices in the critique of language and education policy. It is essential reading for scholars and students of language policy, multilingual education, linguistic and cultural anthropology, and South Asian studies.

Visit Christina P. Davis's website and Chaise LaDousa's faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: The Struggle for a Multilingual Future.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Don't Stop Snowing"

New from Algonquin Books: Don't Stop Snowing by Gabriel Bump.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deeply personal and funny novel from the winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award, about embracing one's own troubled self, demons and all. Perfect for readers of Percival Everett, Kevin Wilson, and Brandon Taylor's The Late Americans.

Fresh out of grad school in Michigan, on the brink of despair, directionless, David worries his parents. They don't know how to heal him. His doctor suggests that he needs to gain some perspective, and possibly a relocation would help. Maybe there is such a thing as a geographical cure?

Snowy, grey Buffalo is not the first place that comes to mind when you think of a curative place, but maybe time with his cousin Flip will help David to forget his own troubled past. But as it turns out, Flip's life and state of mind is even unsteadier than his own. Suddenly enlisted to take care of his cousin and to even fill in for him at his job, David falls into a new life and a new way of seeing the world. A world where, come to think of it, he doesn't mind the snow.

Don't Stop Snowing is a fresh and honest―and funny―story of the struggles we all face as we realize that we don't just inherit eye, hair, and skin color, but also the complicated psyches of our parents.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Soviet Trickster"

New from Cornell University Press: The Soviet Trickster: Cynicism and Its Subversions by Mark Lipovetsky.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Soviet Trickster explores narratives in Soviet and post-Soviet culture featuring rogues, swindlers, and improbable adventurers who enjoyed widespread popularity across Russia. These figures simultaneously mocked and justified the pervasive culture of Soviet cynicism, facilitating subversive counter-narratives that challenged the power and incompetence of the state. Mark Lipovetsky thoroughly analyzes the most remarkable and popular Soviet tricksters in literature, film, visual art, and performance, discussing different facets of the trickster: their nihilistic revolutionary messianism, problematic ethics, role within the Soviet empire, and connections to underground culture and gender politics.

Through the combination of seemingly incompatible features thanks to its ambivalent and transgressive nature, the trickster becomes a parody and deconstruction of the Soviet "messiah"―the new Soviet man envisioned by communist propaganda. The Soviet Trickster reveals how after the collapse of the USSR, the trickster loses its critical potential and aligns with authoritarian power, serving as its populist avatar. Nonetheless, tricksters remain inexhaustible: they constantly reinvent themselves to sabotage new forms of political cynicism and authoritarianism.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Doomscroller's Companion"

New from the University of Wisconsin Press: The Doomscroller's Companion by Wendy Wimmer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Jane, aka @erejane, a thirtysomething professional web influencer, lives in her aunt’s spare bedroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Her only confidant is Brian, a potter who is thrilled that the internet allows him to connect without having to leave his nearby home and studio. With limited options and a dwindling bank account, Jane lands a high-paying gig that requires her to travel to a wildlife refuge on a remote island near San Francisco to publicize a marine biologist’s shark study.

However, when a global pandemic strikes with astonishing speed, the scientists surrounding Jane succumb one by one; meanwhile, Brian grapples with neighbors living out their apocalyptic movie fantasies. When real-world events force them to set aside their online personas, Jane and Brian are forced to decide what—or whom—they care for the most.

Told through traditional narrative and imagined social media posts—which often appear, as they do in life, out of chronological order—The Doomscroller’s Companion is as engaging as it is unexpected.

Visit Wendy Wimmer's website.

-Marshal Zeringue

"The Internet Is Real Life"

New from University of Wisconsin Press: The Internet Is Real Life: Performing Folklore Online and Off by Anthony Bak Buccitelli.

About the book, from the publisher:

We often speak of a divide between online and offline cultures, despite growing recognition that the two are intertwined. Here, folklorist Anthony Bak Buccitelli challenges the idea of any divide at all in contemporary American culture. He argues that digital communications and behaviors are already deeply embedded in everyday expressive life and therefore are also already implicated in a variety of ways in the embodied performance and transmission of folklore. In other words, in contemporary American society, the internet truly is “real life.”

By treating the digital interface as a site at which embodied performance can take shape rather than just a point of contact with the online, Buccitelli argues for a critical renewal of core folkloristic concepts to meet the challenges of understanding modern networked life. The result is a folklore book for the current age.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Glacier's Guide to Dying"

New from Algonquin Books: A Glacier's Guide to Dying: A Novel by Michelle Porter.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young Métis man searching for his missing father finds himself arguing with a dying glacier in this compelling and hopeful novel about the burdens and blessings of inheritance, from the award-winning author of A Grandmother Begins the Story.

Robbie has spent most of life wondering about his real father, Mike, who long since left their family due to his struggles with visions and mistrust of the modern world. Robbie can't forget how much he felt connected to him from his few visits, and not just because they share two differently colored eyes. But now, as he rescues his mother from encroaching wildfires, he's determined to also find his father. Robbie takes off to find answers, and when his uncle confesses that he last dropped Mike off at a glacier, he and his uncle head climb up the mountain of ice to see if Mike might still be there, and whether he's still alive.

On the slopes of a huge glacier, Robbie, starts hearing the ancient voice of the glacier itself giving him guidance. Has he accessed a deep connection to the land, or is he succumbing to the same illness that had wreaked havoc on his father's life?

Michelle Porter brings her profoundly moving sensibility and disarmingly funny voice to a powerful contemporary story of identity and belonging, loss and healing, within families and with the immortal land itself.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Data Centre Entanglements"

New from Oxford University Press: Data Centre Entanglements: Geopolitics, Vulnerabilities, Sustainability, Activisms by Pradip Ninan Thomas.

About the book, from the publisher:

Data centres are involved in the sorting, sifting, storage, aggregation, and monetization of transactional data critical to data capitalism. Tucked away in high-rise buildings or peri-urban areas, data centres are largely invisible and fundamentally resource-intensive, and deploy extractive, energy-intensive technologies. In the context of artificial intelligence, data centre energy consumption has skyrocketed. Data Centre Entanglements addresses external challenges, specifically, contemporary geopolitical struggles between China and the USA to become the world's data hegemon and supply chain issues related to critical minerals and semiconductors, as well as internal issues such as data centre sustainability, which is particularly acute in countries facing significant water and power stresses. Given their essential infrastructure status in many countries, data centres are immune to public scrutiny, leading to transparency and accountability issues. The special relationship that data centres--in particular, hyperscale data centres owned by Big Tech--have with the State is reflected in the migration of public data to privately-owned data centres. Thomas focuses on this relationship in the context of data localization, data sovereignty, risk, the politics of greening and renewable energy, and incentives such as access to subsidized land, tax breaks, and unrestricted labour supply. The book concludes with a discussion on the democratization of data centres and makes a case for diversity in data centre ownership, including community-based ownership.

The Page 99 Test: Empire and Post-Empire Telecommunications in India.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Pearl Farmers"

New from She Writes Press: The Pearl Farmers: A Novel by Stacey Gordon.

About the novel, from the publisher:

For fans of Ann Patchett, a layered, multigenerational family novel about three sisters carrying on the legacy of their family’s pearl farm in small-town Tennessee.

Three estranged sisters—Helen, Anna, and Penn Lockshire—are bound by the shimmering but fragile legacy of their family’s freshwater pearl farm in rural Tennessee. When the business that once made them famous faces collapse, the sisters are pulled back into each other’s lives and forced to reckon with old betrayals, unspoken resentments, and the complicated truth of their inheritance. Soon, what began as a fight for survival becomes a reckoning with the myths that shaped them and the secrets buried in the family’s past.

From the discovery of a rare pearl in 1981 to the struggles of a failing farm in 2008, the Lockshire sisters must navigate love, loss, ambition, and forgiveness to decide whether their heritage is a blessing to preserve—or a burden to escape.

Rich with emotional depth and anchored by the pearl’s enduring symbolism—a thing of beauty born from irritation—this sweeping story of family, identity, and resilience will captivate readers of Celeste Ng and Claire Lombardo.

Visit Stacey Gordon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Imagined Environments"

New from the University of California Press: Imagined Environments: The Making of the Borderlands by Carlos Alonso Nugent.

About the book, from the publisher:

Casting light across the US-Mexico borderlands, Carlos Alonso Nugent reveals the region’s “imagined environments”―the frameworks through which its human groups have represented, related to, and resided in their more-than-human worlds. While these imagined environments can feel immersive and even immutable, Nugent explains how they have in fact emerged in everything from Apache pictographs to US and Mexican laws to novels, poems, paintings, and photographs. By showing how the larger imagined environments have shaped and been shaped by such cultural constituents, he revises accepted accounts of relational racialization. Advancing from 1848 to the present, he demonstrates that whiteness has coevolved with western water infrastructures, that Latinidades have developed through divergent forms of land tenure, and that Native nations have thrived not only by staying in specific places but also by migrating across vast spaces. With such stories, Nugent complicates the environmental humanities; even as he argues that media have naturalized our use and abuse of the planet, he still explores how they have helped us love places we have never been and care for creatures we have never met.

Visit Carlos Alonso Nugent's website.

--Marshal Zeringue