7/15 Front Table Newsletter

On This Week's Front Table, grapple with the nuances of modern society, from our supply chain's shortcomings to the toll of the American dream to the fate of uninsured persons confronting our healthcare system. Follow artists as they create art in Chicago's urban spaces; ask questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage; journey through a provocative portrayal of sibling competition and the exploitation of social outcasts and rediscover the beauty of Baudelaire's poems. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

How the World Ran Out of Everything
(Mariner Books)
Peter S. Goodman

How does the wealthiest country on earth run out of protective gear in the middle of a public health catastrophe? How do its parents find themselves unable to locate crucially needed infant formula? How do its largest companies spend billions of dollars making cars that no one can drive for a lack of chips? In How the World Ran Out of Everything, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman reveals the fascinating inner workings of our supply chain and the factors that have led to its constant, dangerous vulnerability. His reporting takes readers deep into the elaborate system, showcasing the triumphs and struggles of the human players who operate it--from factories in Asia and an almond grower in Northern California, to a group of striking railroad workers in Texas, to a truck driver who Goodman accompanies across hundreds of miles of the Great Plains. Through their stories, Goodman weaves a powerful argument for reforming a supply chain to become truly reliable and resilient, demanding a radical redrawing of the bargain between labor and shareholders, and deeper attention paid to how we get the things we need.

My Side of the River
(St. Martin's Press)
Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family. When her parents' visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a "statistic," she knew that even though her parents couldn't stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws. For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It's also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother's dreams easier than it was for her.

Art in Pursuit of Common Cause
(Delmonico Books) 
Abigail Winograd

This publication examines the development and reception of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 (TCC), a citywide project in Chicago that included the work of 29 artists installed at 19 venues throughout the city. The volume commemorates the widely discussed exhibition, which sought to underscore art's power to catalyze change and to unleash the imagination on pressing social challenges, including environmental justice, public health crises, economic inequality and others. Art in Pursuit of Common Cause seeks to document the ideas, roadblocks, rewards and questions that were raised during the planning, exhibitions and aftermath of the citywide exhibition. An attempt has been made to include content rarely seen in the traditional exhibition catalog, to analyze and amplify the voices of actual visitors and to place the project's learnings in the context of the shifting ground of museum practice.

The People's Hospital
(Scribner Book Company) 
Ricardo Nuila

Here, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital that prioritizes people over profit. First, we meet Stephen, the restaurant franchise manager who signed up for his company's lowest priced plan, only to find himself facing insurmountable costs after a cancer diagnosis. Then Christian--a young college student and retail worker who can't seem to get an accurate diagnosis, let alone treatment, for his debilitating knee pain. Geronimo, thirty-six years old, has liver failure, but his meager disability check disqualifies him for Medicaid--and puts a life-saving transplant just out of reach. Roxana, who's lived in the community without a visa for more than two decades, suffers from complications related to her cancer treatment. And finally, there's Ebonie, a young mother whose high-risk pregnancy endangers her life. Whether due to immigration status, income, or the vagaries of state Medicaid law, all five are denied access to care. For all five, this exclusion could prove life-threatening. As readers follow the moving twists and turns in each patient's story, it's impossible to deny that our system is broken--and that Ben Taub's innovative model, where patient care is more important than insurance payments, could help light the path forward.

The Skin and Its Girl
(Ballantine Books) 
Sarah Cypher

In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family's ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis' centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love. Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha's gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she's ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family's cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family immigrate to the United States. But, as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that.The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us--and wield even the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.

Mysterious Setting
(Pushkin Press)
Kazushige Abe

This surreal, twisty novel presents a provocative portrayal of sibling competition and the exploitation of social outcasts. Shiori knows at heart that she's a troubadour. She may be completely tone-deaf, but she won't let that stop her living a life dedicated to music. Even when her dominant older sister, Nozomi, forces Shiori to accept that her wild singing provokes only revulsion, she decides to forge a career as a lyricist instead. At eighteen, she moves to Tokyo to pursue her dream. Isolated and struggling in this unfamiliar city, Shiori seeks connection online, where her trusting outlook leaves her vulnerable to exploitation - with potentially explosive results. This page-turning literary fiction from a Japanese star is perfect for fans of the wild worlds and unforgettable creations of Mieko Kawakami and Sayaka Murata.

Flowers of Evil
(New York Review of Books)
Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire invented modern poetry, and Flowers of Evil has been a bible for poets from Arthur Rimbaud to T. S. Eliot to Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, with George Dillon, composed an inspired rhymed version of the book published in 1936 and reprinted here, with the French originals, for the first time in many years. Millay and Dillon, while respectful of the spirit of the originals, lay claim to them as to a rightful inheritance, setting Baudelaire's flowing lines to the music of English. The result is one of the most persuasive renditions of the French poet's opulence, his tortured consciousness, and his troubling sensuality, as well as an impressive reimagining of his rhymes and rhythms on a par with Marianne Moore's La Fontaine or Richard Wilbur's Molière.