Front Table Newsletter 3/10

 On this week’s Front Table, discover the history of America's most powerful broadcast network and what it means to be a Jew today. Explore a meditation on Black identity and belonging, poetry from one of Denmark's most celebrated writers, and a vital friendship that led to controversy and questions about race, equity and politics. Finally, uncover a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ever-changing country and lyrical poetry exploring sensuality, and queer, Black joy. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

The Trouble of Color
(Basic Books)
Martha S. Jones

Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones's right to speak. Suspicious of the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, he confronted her with a question that inspired a lifetime of introspection: "Who do you think you are?" Journeying across centuries, from rural Kentucky and small-town North Carolina to New York City and its suburbs, The Trouble of Color is a lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family.

There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die
(Straus and Giroux Farrer)
Tove Ditlevsen

From one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers comes a major volume of selected poetry written throughout Tove Ditlevsen's life. Infused with the same wry nihilism, quiet intensity, dark humor, and crystalline genius that readers savor in her prose, these are heartbreak poems, childhood poems, self-portraits, death poems, wounded poems, confessional poems, and love poems--poems that stare into the surfaces that seduce and deceive us. 
 

On Air
(Avid Reader Press)
Steve Oney

Founded in 1970, NPR is America's most powerful broadcast news network. Despite being overshadowed by the larger and more glamorous PBS, public radio has long been home to shows that captivate millions of listeners in homes, cars, and workplaces across the nation. In On Air, journalist Steve Oney tells the dramatic history of this institution, tracing the comings and goings of legendary on-air talents and the rise and fall and occasional rise again of brilliant and sometimes venal executives. It depicts how NPR created a medium for extraordinary journalism--in which reporters and producers use microphones as paintbrushes and the voices of people around the world as the soundtrack of stories both global and local.


Guatemalan Rhapsody
(Ecco Press)
Jared Lemus

A vibrant debut story collection--poignant, unflinching, and immersive--masterfully moving between sharp wit and profound tenderness, Guatemalan Rhapsody offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ever-changing country, the people who claim it as home, and those who no longer do

Ranging from a custodian at an underfunded college to a medicine man living in a temple dedicated to San Simon, the patron saint of alcohol and cigarettes, the characters in these stories find themselves at defining moments in their lives, where sacrifices may be required of them, by them, or for them.


To Be a Jew Today
(Picador)
Noah Feldman

What does it mean to be a Jew? At a time of worldwide crisis, venerable answers to this question have become unsettled. In To Be a Jew Today, the legal scholar and columnist Noah Feldman draws on a lifelong engagement with his religion to offer a wide-ranging interpretation of Judaism in its current varieties. How do Jews today understand their relationship to God, to Israel, and to each other--and live their lives accordingly?


Scorched Earth
(Washington Square Press)
Tiana Clark

Dive between the borders of ruined and radical love with this lyrical poetry collection that explores topics as expansive as divorce, the first Black Bachelorette, and the art world. Stanzas shift between reverence to irreverence as they take us on a journey through institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys.


Baldwin, Styron, and Me
(Biblioasis)
Melikah Abdelmoumen

In 1961, while James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron's guest house, he is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.

Decades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers' surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today's politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen--even in disagreement.