This week, Mount Holyoke News is highlighting several Black authors who have recent releases in honor of Black History Month. These emerging poets weave history, personal experiences, art and ancestry to craft thoughtful conversations about gender, sexuality and identity. Each of their poems, with unflinching words, opens a discussion about how Black history and experiences have shaped America.
“Daddy’s mind left like a dream at dawn, and now the encounter could only take place in my imagination, so that’s where I went,” the author’s note of Daniel Black’s latest novel, “Don’t Cry For Me,” reads.
Black, who won the Distinguished Writer Award from the Mid-Atlantic Writer’s Association in 2014, published his newest work, “Don’t Cry for Me” earlier this month.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, it’s the perfect time to celebrate all forms of love in our lives. According to Rabbi David Wolpe of Time Magazine, love is “a feeling that expresses itself in action.” This feeling manifests itself not just in romantic partners, but also in relationships between friends and family. As argued by Madeleine Dore of ABC Everyday, the love between families and communities are just as important as romantic love, despite the weight that society puts on romantic relationships.
“Call Us What We Carry” is the debut poetry collection of Amanda Gorman, who, according to NPR, became the youngest ever inaugural poet in 2021 at 22 years old. Her website notes that she graduated from Harvard with a degree in sociology in 2020, a year before she performed at Joe Biden’s inauguration. Gorman was appointed as the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017. Now, she is the youngest board member of 826 National, the largest youth writing network in the United States. Her first two books, a children’s book titled “Change Sings” and the published version of her inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb,” were released in September 2021. Readers can dive deeper into her work with “Call Us What We Carry,” originally “The Hill We Climb and Other Poems,” which was published on Dec. 7, 2021.
Fall book award season is upon us, highlighting titles from this past year that, according to critics and award panelists, are worthy of praise and recognition. Some notable book awards are the United States specific National Book Award, the Booker Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award and The Women’s Prize for Fiction. Every year, the panelists for each award pick books for a longlist based on nominations from publishers. They then narrow this down to a shortlist, from which they select a winner. Winners for the Women’s Prize for Fiction were announced on Sept. 8, and winners for the National Book Award and the Booker Prize will be announced in the coming weeks.
Content warning: this article mentions suicide.
“This is what it means to be a ghost. To watch all the other girls live — laugh, talk, sleep, eat, dance, study, scream — while you flicker and fade into the shadows,” an unnamed narrator declares, opening “When All the Girls Are Sleeping,” published July 13, 2021, the latest novel by Mount Holyoke alumna Emily Arsenault ’98.
“For eighteen years, my unibrow has saved me from being sold into a painful, terrifying death,” Xiran Jay Zhao writes in their debut novel, “Iron Widow.”
“Iron Widow” is not for the faint of heart.
A story about a thirst for vengeance and hunger for power, brimming with the pain caused by a deeply misogynistic society, the novel is for angry girls — the girls who have been beaten down and poked just enough to snap. For anyone who is aching to break out of the claustrophobic boxes that make up our world — “Iron Widow” is a novel of catharsis, or as the endorsement quote on the cover from E.K. Johnston states, “A primal scream of a book.”
Don’t let the title fool you — Rivka Galchen’s second novel “Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” is as far from contemporary popular fantasy as the Earth is from the sun. Based on an assemblage of historical documents from the seventeenth century, “Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” is a fictionalized account of the real-life story of astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mother, Katharina Guldenmann Kepler, an accused — and acquitted — witch.
The literary organization The Tolkien Society, founded around a half-century ago, is dedicated to promoting the life and works of the British scholar and author of the high fantasy novel “The Lord of the Rings,” J.R.R. Tolkien. Since 1986, the Society has held an annual short summer conference consisting of academic talks and panel discussions on a Tolkien-related theme. The 2021 Summer Seminar, titled “Tolkien and Diversity,” was held live via Zoom on July 3 and July 4. The conference, free to the public, hosted more than 500 attendees from 42 countries. The theme of diversity received backlash from right-wing political commentators who accused the society of going “woke.”
At around 250 pages, British author Susanna Clarke’s second novel “Piranesi” seems miniscule in comparison to her 800-page debut novel “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.” But with its imaginative world and compelling narrator, “Piranesi” packs a powerful epistemological punch. The book, however, is not without flaws — its portrayal of minority characters ultimately falls short, leaning on worn-out stereotypes of gay men and people of color.
On March 25, award-winning children’s author Beverly Cleary died in Carmel Valley, California, at the age of 104. She is perhaps best known for her series of books about sisters Ramona and Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby growing up in small-town America. The HarperCollins press release about Cleary’s death praised her for “setting a standard for realistic children’s fiction” through the publication of over 40 books, adding, “Cleary has also inspired authors, including Judy Blume, to deal with the real issues in young readers’ lives.”
As a first-year at Mount Holyoke, being able to handle the isolation of campus life during the pandemic can be difficult. My personal outlet has been finding places in and around campus to explore. One of the many places to find comfort during the pandemic for me has been bookstores. To be surrounded by physical books and people in real life seems like such a fantasy now, but it is slowly becoming reality again. Luckily for me and other Mount Holyoke book lovers, there seems to be a surplus of bookstores around the Pioneer Valley. Whether you’re on campus or just happen to be in Massachusetts, here are some local bookstores to explore.
Mount Holyoke held the 98th Kathryn Irene Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Contest from March 25 to March 27. Normally held in Gamble Auditorium, this year’s competition was held virtually on Zoom due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The first day of the event was dedicated to a conversation with the judges. The event was intentionally set to “meeting” instead of “webinar” style, allowing the poets to better connect with the audience as they answered questions.
Kylie Gellatly FP ’22 isn’t one for a backstory or explanation. “I’ve never even attempted to do this,” she said in regard to summarizing over a decade of time that led her to Mount Holyoke and the publication of her first book. For Gellatly, this is best summarized through her art and creative process. When speaking at the FP Monologues on March 23, instead of talking about her journey to Mount Holyoke or a key event in her life that led her to who she is today, Gellatly shared a handful of poems, all to be published July 16 in her book “The Fever Poems.”
