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New Books for Spring 2021 SELECT TITLES
On the cover: Hand-colored linocut by Carol Zaloom. From Reservoir Year: A Walker’s Book of Days by Nina Shengold.
Reading with . . .
DEWAINE FARRIA A Shelf Awareness Interview Dewaine Farria’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, CRAFT, War on the Rocks, The Rumpus and the Southern Humanities Review. He is a co-editor at the Maine Review. Farria holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an MA in International and Area Studies from the University of Oklahoma. As a U.S. Marine, Farria served in Jordan and Ukraine, and worked for the United Nations, with assignments in the North Caucasus, Kenya, Somalia and Occupied Palestine. Tobias Wolff selected his debut novel, Revolutions of All Colors, as the winner of Syracuse University’s 2019 Veterans Writing Contest.
love of fiction), organized a class field trip to see the play. It took me seeing the Black Panther film a few years ago to realize just how important the fantasy landscapes of Narnia, Middle Earth and Camelot had been for me as a child. I’m glad my kids can add Wakanda—a radically reimagined African kingdom—to that list.
On your nightstand now:
Book you’ve faked reading:
I just finished George Pelecanos’s The Man Who Came Uptown. I always fly through Pelecanos’s novels and this was no exception—great characters, gritty situations, and absolutely Elmore Leonard–level dialogue. Whenever someone brings up the subject of white authors writing modern Black American vernacular, I mention the dialogue in “String Music” from Pelecanos’s short story collection, The Martini Shot.
The Bible.
Favorite book when you were a child: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader from C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. My fourth grade teacher, Ms. Chandler (a wonderful woman who, of all my former teachers, is most responsible for my
Your top five authors: James Baldwin
Sebastian Junger
Joyce Carol Oates
George Orwell
Toni Morrison
Also, once in an airport I bought a copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary and carefully tore off the paperback’s cover because I was embarrassed to be seen reading it. Does that count? I thoroughly enjoyed Helen Fielding’s novel, by the way. Book you’re an evangelist for: Dispatches by Michael Herr. Some of the best American writing on war ever done.
Book you’ve bought for the cover: Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir by Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple. Molly Crabapple has illustrated some of the most important stories of this decade—from the Ferguson riots to Guantanamo Bay—and remains one of the most influential visual artists of our time. Crabapple compared the process of transforming Hisham’s photos and verbal descriptions into illustrations with “downloading memories.” Many of Crabapple’s more fantastic illustrations—including Brothers of the Gun’s cover image of Tareq, a sniper hardened on the battlefield against ISIS forces, playing his knock-off Russian rifle like a violin—depict more truth than would be possible in other mediums.
Now Available
Book you hid from your parents: I’m happy to report that I never felt compelled to hide a book from my parents. Book that changed your life: God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Favorite line from a book: From James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room: “When Giovanni wanted me to know that he was displeased with me, he said I was a ‘vrai américain’; conversely when delighted, he said that I was not an American at all; and on both occasions he was striking, deep in me, a nerve which did not throb in him. And I resented this: resented being called an American (and resented resenting it) because it seemed to make me nothing more than that, whatever that was; and I resented being called not an American because it seemed to make me nothing. Five books you’ll never part with: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin Tribe by Sebastian Junger On Writing by Stephen King Bloods—Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History by Wallace Terry On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates Book you most want to read again for the first time: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. I could use those deep belly laughs right now.
“A wonderfully kaleidoscopic portrait emerges of Black masculinity. . . . This grips the reader from start to finish.” —Publishers Weekly “Farria writes with vibrant, breathtaking elegance, unabashed to imbue even bleak corners of the world with shades of humor and simmering sexuality.” —Shelf Awareness
Read the Shelf Awareness interview with Najwa Bin Shatwan, author of The Slave Yards: A Novel https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3733#m48372
Audiobooks Syracuse University Press has partnered with Sound Beat: Access Audio to produce audiobooks. A true example of SU community partnership in action, Sound Beat: Access Audio also produces long-form audio projects, including interviews, narrated journals, experiences, and perspectives of unique Syracuse University community members. View The Power of Audio, an Orange Central presentation detailing this new partnership https://video.syr.edu/media/1_ys6lr621
Reservoir Year
Harry Haft
A Walker’s Book of Days Nina Shengold
Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano
Narrated by Kathleen McNenny
Alan Scott Haft
“A comforting yet thought-provoking meditation on the human relationship with the natural world and how a connection with nature can deepen our awareness and empathy, no matter where we are in life.”
Narrated by Price Waldman “A complete picture of a flawed yet courageous human being, a survivor beyond measure, and is highly recommended for biography and Holocaust studies shelves.”
—Literary Ladies Guide Duration (10:06)
—Bookwatch Duration (5:07)
News and Reviews
“A challenging, powerful story of people trying to survive through some of life’s harshest conditions. It captures a time and place with nuance and care.”
“A penetrating analysis of the transition from 2011 to 2013 and the devastating consequences for Egypt today. Highly recommended.”
—Book Riot
—Choice
“Explores questions of race, class, and freedom. This is a novel that showcases lives of extreme poverty and lavish wealth and explores the ways in which its setting—Libya in the nineteenth century—was a particularly fraught time for women.”
“Skillfully synthesizing the work of Samer Soliman and Joel Beinin, Stacher does a wonderful job of uncovering the constant tension in Egypt’s post-1991 political economy between crisis spending and austerity programs, and how this tension was only deepened during the uprising and current regime.”
—Words without Borders
—Mona El-Ghobashy, New York University
Selected for the 2021 YIDDISH BOOK CENTER’S Great Jewish Books Book Club “This opportunity to hear a voice from one hundred years ago telling of her predicament . . . makes for fascinating reading.” —Reading Jewish Fiction “A valuable addition to Yiddish Literature in Translation, set in New York City in the second decade of the 20th century.” —The Reading Life
“Traces the competing narratives of Arab American belonging to enhance the understanding of how Othering is at once constructed and challenged, and what is at stake in those ongoing, parallel processes.” —New Books Network Read the Waleed Mahdi interview by Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute https://www.jadaliyya.com/ Details/41729/Waleed-FMahdi,-Arab-Americans-in-Film-FromHollywood-and-Egyptian-Stereotypes-toSelf-Representation-New-Texts-Out-Now
“Filled with forensic connoisseurship, this collection is one to be savored. Kavita Mudan Finn and EJ Nielsen have assembled a fine roster of contributors, including production staff from the show.” —Matt Hills, author of Fan Cultures
“[This book] has great potential to advance critical conversations about television, new media, black feminism, and so much more. A must read for #Gladiators.” —David Leonard, Washington State University
“These two edited collections [Becoming and Gladiators in Suits] are thus of particular value for understanding contemporary television. . . . The essays examined in each of these volumes are nonetheless indicative of the fascinating questions which circulate around the star show runner in contemporary television.” —Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies
Virtual Book Talks Reservoir Year with Nina Shengold
Watermelon Democracy with Josh Stacher
Shengold talks about the differences between Reservoir Year: A Walker’s Book of Days and Thoreau’s Walden, the writers who inspired her, and how the experience of writing about the outside world each day affected her, giving her a better understanding of both the person she was and the person she wanted to be.
Stacher talks about his new book, revolutions, uprisings, and how to find a way to understand them with OpenDemocracy.
http://historyofliterature.com/240-more-thoreau-experiencingnature-with-nina-shengold/
Moonfixer: A reading by Aarick Knighton, produced by Sean Kirst While writing his autobiography in 2009, the late Earl Lloyd shared deeply personal thoughts on racism in America. This is an excerpt from Moonfixer: The Basketball Journey of Earl Lloyd read by Syracuse poet and writer Aarick Knighton. Lloyd was the first African American to play in the NBA. https://vimeo.com/431031962
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/egyptswatermelon-democracy-an-interview-with-joshua-stacher/
Harry Haft with Alan Haft Haft vividly describes the powerful story of 16-year-old Harry Haft’s survival in the Nazi concentration camps, a survival dependent on his ability to fight and win concentration camp boxing matches. https://www.facebook.com/22430126190/videos/699862497485825
A Taste of Upstate New York with Chuck D’Imperio Find out about the foods that have made Upstate New York a foodie destination before you hit the road! https://www.facebook.com/atasteofupstatenewyork/
The Slave Yards with Najwa Bin Shatwan
videos/277528046945255
As part of the annual Banipal Visitor Writing Fellowship, Bin Shatwan discusses her novel The Slave Yards. The Fellowship encourages dialogue with the Arab world through literature. The cultural exchange and dialogue it enables and creates opens windows for non-Arab audiences in the UK.
Forever Orange with Scott Pitoniak and Rick Burton
https://www.banipal.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=313
Gaia, Queen of Ants with Hamid Ismailov and Shelley Fairweather-Vega Ismailov and Fairweather-Vega talk with Lisa Carter, founder of Intralingo, about their new release, Gaia, Queen of Ants, the art and politics of translation, and the complexity of the Uzbek language. Intralingo’s SPOTLIGHT series shines a light on authors and translators from around the globe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VoYT3TtkFM&t=481s
Pitoniak and Burton discuss the diverse people, places, and events that have helped SU become an internationally renowned research university. https://vimeo.com/420134723
The Ministers’ War with Michael Doyle Listen in as Doyle offers a riveting account of Presbyterian minister John W. Mears’s crusade against the Oneida Community. He explores the ways in which Mears’s multipurpose zeal reflected the passions behind the nineteenth-century temperance movement, the fight against obscenity, and the public animus toward unconventional thought. As an author, political candidate, and controversialist, Mears was a prominent moralizer at a time when public morality seemed to be most at risk. https://www.facebook.com/22430126190/videos/2676667559110812
Awardwinning
Winner of the 2020 Association of Middle East Children and Youth Studies book award
Winner of the 2020 College Language Association Book Award for Creative Scholarship
The committee describes the book as “impeccably written, highly readable . . . providing both a new approach to the study of children and a new approach to working in and interpreting archives. This is simply a wonderful book.”
“Hartman deftly analyzes Arab American work with Black Studies as a critical lens, offering radical reading strategies that fundamentally shift how we understand Arab American letters. Breaking Broken English should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the field.”—Therí Pickens, Bates College
Winner of the 2020 Victorian Society in America Book Award
Winner of the 2020 Peace Corps Writers Paul Cowan Award for the Best Book of Non-Fiction
Finalist for the Wiener Holocaust Library Ernst Fraenkel Prize
621 Skytop Road, Suite 110 Syracuse, New York 13244-5290 press.syr.edu
Upcoming Events Tuesday, November 10, at 1 p.m.
Tuesday, November 17, at 7 p.m.
Sharon Israel interviews Nina Shengold on Planet Poet, WIOX radio, 91.3 FM
Dewaine Farria will discuss and read from his novel Revolutions of All Colors at Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, LA
Thursday, November 12, 2020, at 4 p.m. Veterans Writing Award reading and book talk with Dewaine Farria and Tobias Wolff Sunday, November 15, at 8 p.m. “Words Carry Us” with Marlene Adelstein, Susan Krawitz, Nina Shengold, and Betty MacDonald at Green Kill Art Center, Kingston, NY
Wednesday, November 18, at 4 p.m. Dewaine Farria will discuss his novel, Revolutions of All Colors, as part of the Raymond Carver Reading Series December 2–6 Virtual Palestine Writes Literature Festival—featuring The Book of Disappearance, Jerusalem Stands Alone, and Mahmoud Darwish: A Poet’s Art and His Nation