Thursday, June 03, 2010

Short Takes

Robin Ekiss and THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS have won the Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers.

The new issue of Booklist suggests that CORNBREAD NATION 5 "should be required reading both for southerners themselves and for anyone else seeking enlightenment."


Christopher Waldrep, author of the forthcoming title JURY DISCRIMINATION, quoted in a New York Times article on the persisting practice in the South of eliminating jurors based on race.

Keith Gilyard's biography of JOHN OLIVER KILLENS praised in the Neworld Review. In addition, the editor notes: "The more I read of Professor Keith Gilyard’s excellent and well written account of the internal battle Killens faced between being a social activist, and a solitary person which creative writing demands, I couldn’t help but note that what an exciting time in world history it must have been to have lived as a creative, thinking black person."

The new issue of Aperture features Reuben Cox and THE WORK OF JOE WEBB, with an excerpt from Cox's introduction.


Now available:

BROTHERS OF A VOW
Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch

In this detailed study of secret fraternal organizations in Virginia prior to the Civil War, Pflugrad-Jackisch connects the culture of secret orders to changing definitions of Southern white manhood in a tumultuous era.

CONTENTIOUS LIBERTIES
Gale Kenny

Oberlin College sent a mission to Jamaica in the 1830s in the wake of emancipation, expecting to be able to use the transition as an argument in favor of abolition in America. Kenny examines the American-Jamaican encounter from both sides, illuminating the cultural assumptions and differing ideas about freedom that kept this mission from going as expected.

STREETS OF MEMORY
Amy Mills

Geographer Amy Mills looks at one particularly interesting neighborhood in Istanbul to understand how cultural memory can preserve the idea of a tolerant, multi-ethnic neighborhood even as a place in reality becomes less and less diverse.

SUFFERING CHILDHOOD
Anna Mae Duane

Using a wide range of early American writing, Duane investigates the powerful image of the child-victim and its relationship to American understandings of colonization and power.