The word "unsayable" can mean something is too vast to be put into words. Alternatively, it can refer to the things we can't say because they'd be hurtful or they'd make us look bad. In Lynne Sharon Schwartz's short story collection Truthtelling, the author communicates the unsayable — both ...
Read ReviewThe Apple in Religion and Myth
The unnamed mother in Lynne Sharon Schwartz's story 'Apples' rejoices when her picky daughter delights in a new kind of apple that makes her 'elated and energetic and enthusiastic.' The mother is so impressed she mentions to the pediatrician that the apple might be magical. This character is ...
Read ArticleCorazon — Cory — Tagubio is a Filipina-American teenager living with her family in California. She knows she could be a better daughter and a better student at her Catholic high school. But these ordinary concerns are set aside when a new AP World History substitute teacher, Ms. Holden, ...
Read ReviewBooks by Filipino Authors for Young Readers
Not that long ago, it would have been difficult to find many young adult or middle-grade novels featuring a Filipino or Filipino-American protagonist, let alone Filipino settings and customs as we see in My Heart Underwater. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. In 2005, Melissa de la ...
Read ArticleReading the first book in a series is always difficult because readers know that, by definition, it will leave them feeling a bit unsatisfied. After all, even if it's a remarkable read, as the book draws to a close, the characters' journeys are incomplete. They still have an unknown destiny out in ...
Read ReviewPre-Columbian Religion in the Americas
One of the most spectacular elements of Rebecca Roanhorse's Black Sun is its deep dive into pre-Columbian culture and beliefs. In a stark departure from the usual medieval European landscape used as a foundation in fantasy novels, Roanhorse instead uses the ancient landscape and religions of the ...
Read ArticleSomewhere in the Unknown World
Resettled refugees are mostly invisible. Their needs are rarely publicized and their struggles are often marginalized, if they are given attention at all. Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir introduces African, Asian and European refugees who have settled in Minnesota. It is ...
Read ReviewSomali Resettlement in the United States
Amid ongoing civil war, more than a million Somalis have fled their homeland in recent decades and now live somewhere else. According to UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), Kenya is host to the largest number of Somali refugees, with 256,186, followed by Yemen with 250,500 and...
Read ArticleThe protagonist of David Hopen's first novel, The Orchard, is 17-year-old Aryeh Eden, a Brooklyn boy raised in a Hasidic household where daily life revolves around strict observance of Orthodox Judaic tradition. When his father's job change forces Aryeh and his parents to relocate to Florida, the ...
Read ReviewIn David Hopen's novel, The Orchard, the main action is set in motion by a discussion of the Jewish legend of Pardes. In the tale, four celebrated sages enter the orchard, but only one emerges unscathed by his encounter with the divine. The word 'Pardes' comes from the ancient Persian word ...
Read ArticleShortly into What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, it becomes clear that the narrator is unreliable or, at the very least, absentminded; she has misled the reader by failing to mention a significant connection she has to another character. What additional details might she be withholding? This...
Read ReviewWhat Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez takes its title from the writing of Simone Weil, an influential French philosopher and intellectual whose work was unusual for incorporating both left-leaning politics and religious traditions. Weil was born in Paris on February 3, 1909 to agnostic ...
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Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious...
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