Blog

the book cover for The Greatest Invention, featuring some linguistic characters against an orange background

Silvia Ferrara’s The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts and the Power of Written Language

At times of injustice and tragedy caused by senseless human actions, it is helpful to recall the revolutionary power of writing from the broad perspective of the history of human existence.

cover of How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith in a side by side series

The Embodied Narrator in How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Clint Smith’s new book is an examination of memory through an examination of sites that represent our country’s collective memory of slavery. He makes an important and effective call for us to examine how we remember our past, and how central our historical memory is to our existence today.

side by side series of the covers of The Collection, The Iliac Crest, and Breasts and Eggs

Gender and the Body in Breasts and Eggs, The Collection, and The Iliac Crest

Around the world, woman novelists are refocusing narratives about desire, sex, and the body around their own experiences. Some of their stories explore society’s current hang-ups around women’s bodies, some paint a picture of a potential world full of guilt-free pleasure, and some explode the idea of gender determined by the body.