6/17 Front Table Newsletter

On This Week's Front Table, Meditate on poems about reparations, restitution, and desire that dream of a different world that is also categorized by disaster, explore an absurd queer narrative that channels something between diary entry, absurd surrealist short stories, and autofiction, investigate the effects of the internet on how our brains store knowledge from ancient times to modern day and how it relates to thoughtfulness, and delve into the science and history behind the great lakes through the eyes of biologists, fishermen, and sailors. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com

woke up no light: poems
(Knopf) 
Leila Mottley 

woke up no light is a Black girl's saunter turned to a woman's defiant strut. These are the hymns of a new generation of poetry. Young, alive, yearning. A mouth swung open and ready to devour. A quest for home in a world that knows only wasteland and wanting. Moving in sections from "girlhood" to "neighborhood" to "falsehood" to, finally, "womanhood," these poems reckon with themes of reparations, restitution, and desire. The collection is sharp and raw, wise and rhythmic, a combination that lights up each page. From unearthing histories to searching for ways to dream of a future in a world constantly on the brink of disaster, this young poet sets forth personal and political revelation with piercing detail. woke up no light confirms Leila Mottley's arrival and demonstrates the enduring power of her voice--brave and distinctive and thoroughly her own.

Sex Goblin
(Nightboat Books)
Lauren Cook

As if hauled up squirming from the bowels of the internet, Sex Goblin metabolizes sex writing, popular culture, and autofiction to present the real and the imagined as equally surreal possibilities. In the narrator's childlike voice, all things become both mundane and strange--a child and their dog fused after a car accident, moments of tenderness amidst frat hazing, witches, and hiking accidents. At turns charming and bizarre, Sex Goblin channels sexual violence through the lens of the absurd to alchemize shame and abuse into something that registers differently than trauma. Sex Goblin is a barely factual but deeply felt field guide to relationships and relatability.

Work: The Last 1,000 Years
(Verso) 
Andrea Komlosy; Jacob Watson, Lauren Balhorn trans. 

Say the word "work," and most people think of some form of gainful employment. Yet this limited definition has never corresponded to the historical experience of most people--whether in colonies, developing countries, or the industrialized world. That gap between common assumptions and reality grows even more pronounced in the case of women and other groups excluded from the labour market. In this important intervention, Andrea Komlosy demonstrates that popular understandings of work have varied radically in different ages and countries. Looking at labour history around the globe from the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries, Komlosy sheds light on both discursive concepts as well as the concrete coexistence of multiple forms of labour--paid and unpaid, free and unfree. From the economic structures and ideological mystifications surrounding work in the Middle Ages, all the way to European colonialism and the industrial revolution, Komlosy's narrative adopts a distinctly global and feminist approach, revealing the hidden forms of unpaid and hyper-exploited labour which often go ignored, yet are key to the functioning of the capitalist world-system. Work: The Last 1,000 Years will open readers' eyes to an issue much thornier and more complex than most people imagine, one which will be around as long as basic human needs and desires exist.

The End of Love: Sex and Desire in the Twenty-First Century
(Europa) 
Tamara Tennenbaum; trans. Carolina Parodi 

Drawing from philosophy and feminist militancy, from conversations with friends and colleagues, and from an attempt to turn her own body and experience into a laboratory for both individual and collective reflection, Tenenbaum explores the challenges that young people today face at the start of their adult lives.Tenenbaum examines the multiple dimensions of affection, from the value of friendship to the culture of consent, passing through motherhood as a choice or an imperative, desired and abhorred singlehood, polyamory, open relationships, and the workings of dating apps. Timely and illuminating, The End of Love celebrates the creative destruction of romantic relationships as we know them, and advocates for the rise of a better, freer love.

Cecilia
(Coffee House Press) 
K-Ming Chang 

Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor's office, reencounters Cecilia, a woman who has obsessed her since their school days. As the two of them board the same bus--each dubiously claiming not to be following the other--their chance meeting spurs a series of intensely vivid and corporeal memories. As past and present bleed together, Seven can feel her desire begin to unmoor her from the flow of time. Smart, subversive, and gripping, Cecilia is a winding, misty road trip through bodily transformation, the inextricable histories of violence and love, and the ghosts of girlhood friendship.

Knowing What we Know: The Transmision of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
(Harper Perennial)
Simon Winchester

With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things--no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization--are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness? Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion--from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium. Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?

The Living Great Lakes:Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas, Revised Editions
(St. Marin's Grffin) 
Jerry Dennis 

The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas is the definitive book about the history, nature, and science of these remarkable lakes at the heart of North America. From the geological forces that formed them and the industrial atrocities that nearly destroyed them, to the greatest environmental success stories of our time, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are portrayed in all their complexity. A Michigan native, Jerry Dennis also shares his memories of a lifetime on or near the lakes, including a six-week voyage as a crewmember on a tallmasted schooner. On his travels, he collected more stories of the lakes through the eyes of biologists, fishermen, sailors, and others he befriended while hiking the area's beaches and islands. Through storms and fog, on remote shores and city waterfronts, Dennis explores the five Great Lakes in all seasons and moods and discovers that they and their connecting waters--including the Erie Canal, the Hudson River, and the East Coast from New York to Maine--offer a surprising and bountiful view of America. The result is a meditation on nature and our place in the world, a discussion and cautionary tale about the future of water resources, and a celebration of a place that is both fragile and robust, diverse, rich in history and wildlife, often misunderstood, and worthy of our attention.