New Pages Winter 2022

Asian American Literature in Transition, 1850–1930, Volume 1
Cambridge University Press, 2021
From the publisher: "The years between 1850 and 1930 witnessed the first large-scale migration of peoples from East Asia and South Asia to North America and the emergence of the US as an imperial power in the Pacific. This period also produced the first instances of Asian North American writing, theater, and film. This exciting collection examines how the many literary and cultural works from this period approached questions of migration, exclusion, and identity."

From the Tops of the Trees [picture book]
‎Carolrhoda Books, 2021
From Publishers Weekly: "In 1985, a four-year-old Hmong child sees her first glimpse of the world in this poetic autobiographical account by Yang. Born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand, per an author's note, young Kalia plays with her cousins as their families, Hmong refugees, struggle with hunger, racism, and fear: 'They are scared to return to the old country. They are scared to go to a new country.' When Kalia innocently asks if 'all of the world [is] a refugee camp,' her father climbs to the top of the tallest tree with her on his back to show her the wide view and distant mountains. A stirring, lyrical portrait of hope and intergenerational bonds."

Nice Girls [fiction]
HarperCollins, 2021
From The New York Times Book Review: "Nicknamed 'Ivy League Mary' by her high school classmates, she was supposed to find Cornell a dream-making space of reinvention—not a place where her dreams combusted in an abrupt flare of violence. Slinking back home in shame, Mary ponders her next move. Then a high school frenemy disappears. . . . Mary’s personal redemption quest transforms into greater purpose. Dang captures the surface cynicism a young college student like Mary would adopt to mask the flameout of potential. But Dang smartly pivots the novel into a greater reflection of savior complexes and the ways we can be blinded by projected images rather than remaining true to ourselves." Read our interview.

Dancing on the Tarmac [poetry chapbook]
Yemassee Journal, 2021
Winner of the Yemassee Chapbook Prize in Poetry. From diode Poetry Journal: "In the chapbook, the poet Tarik Dobbs invites readers into a deeply conflicted world, one where environment and being are, at every turn, being oppressed and destroyed. An expertly crafted collection, Dobbs illustrates a plethora of tensions in their poems, which excavate topics to become, when put together, a beautiful cohesion like a constellation. In this tight focus, they cover ground on topics that include Arab American culture, queerness, the terrors of war, the natural world, and humanity’s very behavior in existence."

You'd Be Home Now [young adult fiction]
Delacorte Press, 2021
From School Library Journal (starred review): "Emory Ward has spent her life living in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, her troubled brother, and her super successful parents who expect her to be perfect. After a summer of turmoil, Emory returns to school as an outcast—the sister of an addict who the whole town holds responsible for the death of a young girl, she struggles to make new friends and take care of her brother who seems dangerously close to a relapse all the time. . . . A heartbreaking yet important story that will resonate with many, it also brings home the effects that addiction can take on an entire community."

Poetry Against All: A Diary
Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020
From the author Jeff Jackson: "This slim journal contains multitudes. It’s a compulsively readable account of returning to a childhood home, a provocative meditation on artists such as Susan Sontag, Francesca Woodman, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and a radical reexamination of concepts like ruin porn, tourism, and translation. But mostly it’s an urgent manifesto. 'Poetry is obscene,' Göransson writes. 'But there are those who want to maintain the illusion that it is good for us.' This necessary book strips away the various illusions that have obscured poetry’s truest values. Göransson concludes: 'This is written without hope.' But paradoxically, Poetry Against All offers just that."

Summoned [poetry]
Nodin Press, 2021
From the publisher: "Hasse explores the sorrows and delights of daily life through narratives and ruminations enlivened by her lightning-quick imagination and her care in choosing just the right detail to achieve the desired effect. Her attention ranges widely, from the distant past, seen through a filter of nostalgia (as in 'Summer of Love, 1967' and 'Marijuana') to the humor and acceptance of aging that enliven the present, as in 'Medicare Birthday' and 'After a Fall.' Alongside such descriptive pieces we also come upon moments of reverie. The natural world, from butterflies to moose, makes repeated appearances; more challenging is the sequence of poems scattered here and there throughout the volume that Hasse labels 'Another Day of Being White.'"

[WHITE] [poetry]
University of Georgia Press, 2021
2020 National Poetry Series Winner. From the publisher: "This debut collection of poetry follows two paths of obsession, laying them over one another to tease out a critique of whiteness in the arts that reflects on how we think of whiteness in America. Throughout, Ketner curates a landscape that is part [auto] biography and part political synthesis. Ketner's work takes inspiration from seeing a retrospective of Rauschenberg's work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) seven times and from teaching themselves to read tarot in two weeks. As we follow the life of Rauschenberg, so too do we follow the journey of the fool through the major arcana of the tarot moving forward into understanding."

This Aster [music album]
Fonograf Editions, 2021
From the publisher: "This Aster is a suite of songs based on poems by the French-Canadian poet Emile Nelligan. The poet produced his entire oeuvre by the age of nineteen, and was then, at twenty, abruptly committed to a mental hospital. A century later, poet-songwriter Brian Laidlaw was offered a Hinge Artist Residency to live and work on the grounds of a different mental hospital—the Kirkbride, in Northern Minnesota—translating Nelligan’s poems from French into English, and then setting the texts to music. . . . A soundscape of ghosts and snowfall, love and loss, and the golden rattle of falling leaves."

Prognosis [poetry]
Graywolf Press, 2021
From The New York Times Book Review: "Moore is preoccupied with old age, loneliness, mortality, and also with the American body politic’s own failure. These are poems of arresting lyric reportage; whimsical, tragic, a touch fantastical. Watching from a window in 'The Pandemic Halo' the poet notices a glow appearing around 'the nurse who wears a pink cape and parks / in the lot across from me, almost always empty now.' Instead of simply watching, these lines get at what’s broken, and attempt repair."

Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist
Counterpoint Press, 2021
From Kirkus Reviews (starred review): “A lively investigation of the numerous connections among fascism, imagery, media, and politics. [Nathan’s] originality of thought drives this impressive nonfiction debut . . . [He] delivers deep thinking and clever turns of phrase in equally abundant amounts, making his history lesson and philosophical discussion a page-turning good time. An unexpectedly entertaining scholarly warning about fascism’s spread through imagery.”

What the Chickadee Knows: Poems in Anishinaabemowin and English [poetry]
Wayne State University Press, 2020
From author Adam Spry (White Earth Anishinaabe): "With careful attention to rhythm and sound, What the Chickadee Knows reveals the wonderfully unexpected connections between Anishinaabemowin and English. Weaving together not only different languages but different landscapes and histories, this collection of evocative and minutely observed poems celebrates the vast web of relations that sustains us all."

The Complete Personal Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
Routlege, 2021
From author Phillip Lopate: "What a joy to get this complete edition of Stevenson's personal essays! In addition to the great ones all aficionados of the form know and love, there are many treats which show the freedom and flow of this master essayist's prose, as well as the capaciousness of his interests. Thanks to the intrepid digging and skillful assemblage of editor Trenton Olsen, lovers of belles lettres are enriched by this long-overdue and much appreciated collection."

Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed (Nearly) Everything I Know
University of Minnesota Press, 2021
From The Star Tribune: "In Tom Rademacher's memoir, Ollie's dad explores the modern complexities of being a public school teacher and dad, devoting just a slim portion of the book to reflecting on Ollie's gender identity. But this 2014 Minnesota Teacher of the Year does it with such heartfelt wisdom, guiding those of us who didn't grow up understanding the entirety of the gender spectrum by giving us a window into how a family, a school, and a community can work to support nonbinary kids. Most of it comes down to listening to and trusting young people."

My Room Is a Zoo! [picture book]
Amicus Ink, 2021
From the publisher: "It’s bedtime. It should be quiet. But not if your room is a zoo! A young boy is kept awake by his toy animals (26 of them, from A to Z) who employ all the bedtime delay tactics they can muster. Finally, the boy steps up and puts a stop to the animals’ shenanigans so he can get some sleep. Written in humorous rhyming verse by debut picture book author Jerry Ruff and brought to life by Simona Ceccarelli’s whimsical illustrations, this book is a fun bedtime read that kids will ask for again and again." Read our interview.

My Father When Young
‎The Sager Group LLC, 2021
From the publisher: "In the late 1950s, Jerry Tisserand roamed from Barcelona to Paris to Kentucky to New Orleans. Tisserand captured a series of unique and vibrant scenes of everyday life: ancient cobblestone vistas, hidden backcountry roads, classic cars, young love, and brilliant revelers at Mardi Gras. Sixty years later, his son, Michael Tisserand, keeping close to home due to COVID, began pulling out dusty boxes of forgotten family mementos. Inside one box, he found two grey steel cases, each containing tidy rows of Kodachrome slides. Then he realized the photos had been taken by someone he never knew—his father when young."

The Figures: A Litter [poetry chapbook]
Dancing Girl Press, 2021
From the book, an excerpt from the poem "Heirloom Figure": "or how panic / can appear suddenly— / like a mushroom / —without clamor or / preamble."