Front Table Newsletter 1/19

On This Week's Front Table, examine the prison system through a compilation of writings from the American Prison Writing Archive, dive into poetry that explores brutality through the human, natural, and animal world, parse through what it means to practice a spiritual life that is predicated upon social justice and the teachings of Black leaders, and mull over a novel of verse about Indigenous families and Indigenous resistance that span over one hundred years. Explore these and more at semcoop.com.

Inside Knowledge: Incarcerated People On the Failures of the American Prison 
(New York University Press) 
Doran Larson 

Inside Knowledge is the first book to examine the American prison system through the eyes of those who are trapped within it. Drawing from the writings collected in the American Prison Writing Archive, Doran Larson deftly illustrates how mass incarceration does less to contain any harm perpetrated by convicted people than to spread and perpetuate harm among their families and communities. Inside Knowledge makes a powerful argument that America's prisons not only degrade and debilitate their wards but also defeat the prison's cardinal missions of rehabilitation, containment, deterrence, and even meaningful retribution. If prisons are places where convicted people are sent to learn a lesson, then imprisoned people are the ones who know just what American prisons actually teach. At once profound and devastating, Inside Knowledge is an invaluable resource for those interested in addressing mass incarceration in America.

Why Read
(Grove Press) 
Will Self 

Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.  With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell, and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebald's childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers, how, what, and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self's trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humor infuse every piece.A book that examines how the human stream of consciousness flows into and out of literature, Why Read will satisfy both old and new readers of this icon of contemporary literature.  

Our Hidden Conversations
(Simon & Schuster) 
Michele Norris

The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Story. Six Words. Please Send. In the twelve years since award-winning journalist Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox.  Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor. Responses such as: You're Pretty for a Black girl. Lady, I don't want your purse. I'm only Asian when it's convenient. Many go even further than just six words, submitting backstories, photos, and heirlooms: a collection much like a scrapbook of American candor you rarely get to see. Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. The breadth of this work came as a surprise to Norris. For most of the twelve years she has collected these stories, many were submitted by white respondents. This unexpected panorama provides a rare 360-degree view of how Americans see themselves and one another. Our Hidden Conversations reminds us that even during times of great division, honesty, grace, and a willing ear can provide a bridge toward empathy and maybe even understanding.

Dancing in the Darkness
(Simon & Schuster) 
Otis Moss III 

In 2008, the Trinity United Church in Chicago received threats when one of its parishioners, Senator Barack Obama, ran for president. "We're going to kill you" rang in Reverend Otis Moss's ears when he suddenly heard a noise in the middle of the night. He grabbed a baseball bat to confront the intruder in his home. When he opened the door to his daughter's room, he found that the source of the noise was his own little girl, dancing. Caught in a cycle of worry and anger, he had allowed the darkness inside. But seeing his daughter evoked Psalm 30: "You have turned my mourning into dancing." He set out to write the sermon that became this inspiring and transformative book. Dancing in the Darkness is a "life-affirming" (Dr. Teresa L. Fry Brown) guide to the practical, political, and spiritual challenges of our day. Drawing on the teachings of Dr. King, Howard Thurman, sacred scripture, southern wisdom, global spiritual traditions, Black culture, and his own personal experiences, Dr. Moss instructs you on how to practice spiritual resistance by combining justice and love.

A History of Half-Birds
(Milkweed Editions) 
Caroline Harper New 

Rooted in the Gulf Coast, A History of Half-Birds measures the line between love and ruin. Part poet, part anthropologist, Caroline Harper New digs into dark places--a cave, a womb, a hurricane--to trace how violence born of devotion manifests not only in our human relationships, but also in our connections to the natural and animal worlds. Everywhere in these pages, tenderness is coupled with brutality: a deer eats a baby bird, a lover restrains another. A woman tastes the earth for acidity, buries lemons and pennies for balance. A lone elephant wanders into the wilderness of rural Georgia, never to be seen again. But perhaps most arresting about New's work are the truths told by its strangeness, like the ancient fish who "carved their shape" in a mountain's peak, or a mother who wears a lifejacket in the bathtub. Crafted by New's voracious mind and carried by her matchless lyricism, A History of Half-Birds is a stunning investigation of love's beastly impulses--all it protects, and all it destroys.

Slow Down
(Astra House) 
Kohei Saito  

In his international bestseller, Kohei Saito argues that it is impossible to reverse climate change in a capitalist society--more: the system that caused the problem in the first place cannot be an integral part of the solution. Instead, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and production. In practical terms, he argues fo: the end of mass production and mass consumption, decarbonization through shorter working hours, and  the prioritization of essential labor over corporate profit. By returning to a system of social ownership, he argues, we can restore abundance and focus on those activities that are essential for human life, effectively reversing climate change and saving the planet. 

Aednan
(Knopf) 
Linnea Axelsson

In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the earth, and my mother. These are all crucial forces within the lives of the Indigenous families that animate this groundbreaking book: an astonishing verse novel that chronicles a hundred years of change. The tale begins in the 1910s, as Ristin and her family migrate their herd of reindeer to summer grounds. Along the way, Ristin loses one of her sons in the aftermath of an accident, a grief that will ripple across the rest of the book. In the wake of this tragedy, Ristin struggles to manage what's left of her family and her community. In the 1970s, Lise, as part of a new generation of Sámi grappling with questions of identity and inheritance, reflects on her traumatic childhood, when she was forced to leave her parents and was placed in a Nomad School to be stripped of the language of her ancestors. Finally, in the 2010s we meet Lise's daughter, Sandra, an embodiment of Indigenous resilience, an activist fighting for reparations in a highly publicized land rights trial, in a time when the Sámi language is all but lost. Weaving together the voices of half a dozen characters, from elders to young people unsure of their heritage, Axelsson has created a moving family saga around the consequences of colonial settlement. Ædnan is a powerful reminder of how durable language can be, even when it is borrowed, especially when it has to hold what no longer remains