Monday, January 23, 2012

Short Takes


The Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News and Observer call George Derek Musgrove’s RUMOR, REPRESSION, AND RACIAL POLITICS “an enlightening, scholarly, yet accessible book.”

The February issue of Essence recommends Vincent Carretta’s PHILLIS WHEATLEY. According to Senior Books Editor Patrik Henry Bass: “I have a new appreciation for the colonial poet. You will as well. Author Vincent Carretta offers an extensive look at Wheatley and discovers that the enigmatic Senegalese talent was nobody’s puppet. Wheatley was about 31 when she died impoverished in 1784, but her recently discovered poems offer a glimpse of a remarkable talent way ahead of her time.”
 
The Massachusetts Historical Society’s blog, The Beehive, claims that PHILLIS WHEATLEY “introduce[s] provocative ideas regarding Wheatley and her family that will likely spark debate among historians for years to come.”

A January book review in the Post and Courier has John Lane’s book MY PADDLE TO THE SEA being celebrated for its “beautifully written and lyrical” prose as well as its “intimate look at the vanishing wilds of [South Carolina and] the author’s own life.”

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner features an interview with Melinda Moustakis about her book, BEAR DOWN BEAR NORTH.

In Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination Karen Pickell praised David Lucas for his collection WEATHER, saying that “[t]he poems of Weather have been polished, and I expect they will shine for quite a long time.”

In a recent copy of the Journal of Asian Studies Charles Horner was applauded for his book RISING CHINA, which “charts the complexities of China’s many hopes, dreams, anxieties and ambivalences.”

Nishani Frazier, in a recent issue of the Journal of American Ethnic History, reviewed CARRY IT ON by Susan Youngblood Ashmore and said that her “book is well worth the read.”