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A Brief History of Sicily (05/25)
We may think of Sicily today as merely an extension of the Italian mainland, but the island has its own unique history that dates back thousands of years and reflects the cultural, political, and economic influence of numerous civilizations.
Because of its convenient location in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily has long been...
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) and Our Town (05/25)
In Ann Patchett's novel Tom Lake, the main character fondly remembers starring in a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. This is Wilder's best-known play, which debuted in 1938 to mixed reviews but earned him a Pulitzer Prize that same year, making him the only writer to have received the award in both fiction and drama.
Born in ...
Irish Vernacular in Glorious Exploits (04/25)
While it's impossible to determine for sure how ancient Greeks sounded, Ferdia Lennon asserts that, despite what one hears and reads in many works depicting this era, they didn't echo the tones of Oxford scholars. In his novel Glorious Exploits, set in 5th century BCE Sicily, the narrator Lampo converses in a contemporary Hiberno-English,...
Terminal Illness Memoirs (04/25)
Rationally, we all know death is coming, but how many truly believe it? Most people only accept the inevitability when forced to by accident or terminal illness. Ironically, such a diagnosis can lend a new lease on life, as it did for Rod Nordland, author of Waiting for the Monsoon. Rereading E.M. Forster's Howards End recently, I came ...
Elián González (04/25)
In Say Hello to My Little Friend, main character Izzy Reyes traveled by raft from Cuba to the United States in 2003 at age seven with his mother, who drowned during the trip. It is mentioned in the novel that his Tia Teresa exploits the sympathy of teachers who note the similarity of the circumstances between Izzy's journey and that of ...
Blood Magic in YA Literature by Asian American Authors (04/25)
In Vanessa Le's debut YA novel The Last Bloodcarver, her heroine, Nhika, is the titular protagonist: a person with the power to alter anatomy with a single touch, able to travel through a body's bloodstream, and cure it, wound it, or end its life altogether. Bloodcarvers can also feed on blood and proteins from other humans and animals to...
The American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel (04/25)
Anne Curzan, author of Says Who?, has some compelling bona fides when it comes to remarking upon English grammar and usage. Not only is she a linguistics professor, she was also for many years a member of the illustrious (and somewhat mysterious) American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Usage Panel. If you, like me, own a copy...
The Kingdom of the Happy Land (04/25)
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, which follows a group of formerly enslaved people who build a self-sustaining community on a mountainous plot of land in the Carolinas during the Reconstruction era, is based on a real-life historical place known as the Kingdom of the Happy Land. Perkins-Valdez stumbled upon the kingdom's history online...
Queen Marguerite of Navarre (04/25)
Allegra Goodman's novel Isola concerns Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval (born c. 1515), a French noblewoman who was marooned on a deserted island with her lover while on a voyage to New France (Canada). Marguerite was eventually rescued and upon her return to France was treated as a celebrity; her tale became widely known very quickly....
Hot Air Balloons (04/25)
The novel Hot Air begins with a hot air balloon falling from the sky into a backyard pool. Hot air balloons have a long history dating back to the eighteenth century, significantly predating the airplane. The hot air balloon was invented by French paper manufacturers (and brothers) Joseph Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier, who were ...
The Influence of King Solomon's Mines on The Creation of Half-Broken People (04/25)
King Solomon's Mines, a novel by H. Rider Haggard, is referenced throughout Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's African gothic historical fiction work The Creation of Half-Broken People.
After Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) had returned to England from a stint as an administrator in South Africa, his brother suggested a wager: he would...
Carnivorous Plants: How They Trap and Eat Their Prey (04/25)
The main horror of Eat the Ones You Love comes from a ravenous orchid that can only be truly satisfied by human meat. It's a myth that some orchid species consume meat, but other carnivorous plants do exist. There are more than 600 known species that survive on insects and other animals; carnivory is such an efficient adaptation that it ...
The Pale in Ireland (04/25)
In Jo Harkin's new novel The Pretender, Lambert Simnel—a long-shot hopeful for the English throne—is taken to raise an army in the English Pale in Ireland, the last Tudor stronghold on the island. A small area encompassing the counties around Dublin, the Pale is intimately tied to the history of Ireland and the beginnings ...
Gender Fluidity and Trans Identity in the Old West (04/25)
The titular 'novel' from Torrey Peters' book Stag Dance takes place in an illegal logging camp in early 1900s Montana. During a cold and lonely winter, the lumberjacks there hold a dance, with some men designating themselves as women by placing a triangle of fabric between their legs, showing that they wish to be courted by the others. ...
Lucrecia the Dreamer (04/25)
The fictional heroine of Leigh Bardugo's novel The Familiar interacts with several characters based on people who really did live in Spain during the 16th century. One of these is a young woman based on the figure Lucrecia de León, also known as 'Lucrecia the Dreamer.' Like the main character Luzia, Lucrecia comes under government ...
Chinese Science During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) (04/25)
May, the matriarch of Rachel Khong's Real Americans, is born into a poor rural Chinese family in the 1950s. Her fate is foretold by her mother's life: wake before dawn to cook breakfast, clean up after the men in the family, head to the rice paddies and toil until the time to head home to cook supper, rinse and repeat. It is backbreaking....
Notable Female Boxers (04/25)
Rita Bullwinkel's novel Headshot depicts the intensity and intimacy of a girl's boxing tournament. Although women's boxing was only officially introduced to the Olympics in 2012 and was banned by the USA Boxing organization before 1993, accounts of women boxing date back to the 1700s. Here are just a few of the trailblazing women boxers ...
In Sickness and In Health: Illness and Marriage (04/25)
While planning her wedding at the age of twenty-four, after seven years of dating her fiancé, Erin Fortin was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria, or PNH, involves the damage of red blood cells by the immune system. Because Erin and her future husband John both had a healthy sense of humor and ...
Climate Change Mitigation Strategies (04/25)
In The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue, author Mike Tidwell offers an overview of strategies being researched and implemented to mitigate climate change. Overall, the main strategies are decarbonization and the drastic cutting of greenhouse gas emissions by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Geoengineering technologies also aim ...
The "Moon Is Made of Cheese" Trope (04/25)
While the central conceit of John Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye is that the Moon has turned to cheese, the book is not overly concerned with how this has happened. Instead, it's more interested in how the world — specifically America — reacts to such a sudden, inexplicable event, as well as what happens when science ...
The Devastating Earthquake Predicted to Hit Portland (04/25)
Emma Pattee's debut novel
Tilt follows one woman's journey across Portland after the city is hit by a devastating earthquake. Though fictional, the disaster is based on research that suggests such an event could take place in the not-so-distant future. Readers may recognize this future earthquake as 'The Big One' from
Kathryn Schulz's ...
Spring-Heeled Jack (04/25)
Judge Dee Ren Jie, the protagonist of the Dee and Lao mystery series, frequently masquerades as Spring-heeled Jack, a legendary figure out of Victorian London. Sometimes Dee uses the costume to intimidate suspects into divulging information, but more often, he uses it to disguise his true identity while interacting with London's police ...
The Silent Generation in The Usual Desire to Kill (04/25)
In 1951, Time magazine described the youth of the era in the following terms: 'The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today's younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not ...
Objectum Sexuality (04/25)
Linda, the narrator of Sky Daddy, is sexually and romantically attracted to commercial airplanes. This phenomenon could be viewed as a subset of objectum sexuality (OS) — defined as romantic or sexual attraction to an object — although Linda insists that her interest in planes is different from 'the woman who married the ...
Books Featuring Actors as Characters (04/25)
The protagonist of Katie Kitamura's Audition is an actress, and sections of the novel reflect her thought process on performance, from the creation of her character to her considerations of a play's rhythms and structures. This plot device allows author Kitamura to contemplate themes that she and all novelists must also explore, ...
Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science (04/25)
In The Last Murder at the End of the World, a small group of people have survived the deadly fog that destroyed mankind. These survivors have managed to create a peaceful, productive society on their small island, benefiting from the sense of community bestowed by Abi. Abi is a mysterious intelligence that is part of the minds of all the ...
Facebook's Early Days (04/25)
Sarah Wynn-Williams' book, Careless People, details her experiences at Facebook from 2011 to 2017. The company had been around for seven years before her chronicle begins, however, and its earliest history is fascinating.
Born May 14, 1984, Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg was a wunderkind. He displayed a talent for computer ...
Icarus and Helios in Greek Mythology (04/25)
The titular protagonist of K. Ancrum's young adult novel Icarus denies that his name is an allusion to the famous character from Greek mythology and reveals that his mother christened him after the scientific name of a beloved fern, Icarus filiformis. Nonetheless, Icarus's denial of this reference only draws more attention to the ...
US Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (04/25)
Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray narrates the life of Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the first woman to serve in the US Cabinet. Perkins was a tireless supporter of workers' rights and is credited with drafting and lobbying support for some of the most critical parts of the New ...
The Tangled History of "Strange Fruit" (04/25)
In February 1959, Billie Holiday sang the anti-lynching song she popularized, 'Strange Fruit,' on the London television show Chelsea at Nine. She was battling liver disease because of a prodigious vodka and gin addiction. It was rare for Billie to sing 'Strange Fruit' when she was this physically fragile.
'She just needed a reason to ...
Hertha Ayrton (03/25)
The friendship between Hertha Ayrton and Marie Curie is explored in Anne Michaels's multigenerational novel Held. Although Marie Curie is a household name, Aryton's fascinating life is likely unfamiliar to most readers.
Born in 1854 in Portsea, England, Hertha Ayrton was born as Phoebe Sarah Marks. Levi Marks, a clockmaker from...
Artist Ana Mendieta (03/25)
The title character in Xochitl Gonzalez's Anita de Monte Laughs Last is closely based on the artist Ana Mendieta. Although Mendieta's shocking death at the age of thirty-five has overshadowed her artistic legacy in the public imagination, Mendieta was a rising star at the time of her death, and her creative work continues to hold ...
Puccini's Opera Tosca (03/25)
Roxana Robinson's novel Leaving begins with the protagonists meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House during a production of Tosca. This opera is a tragedy, set in Rome in 1800, during the Napoleonic Wars.
The drama centers around three main characters: Mario Cavaradossi, a painter and Napoleon supporter; Baron Vitellio Scarpia, the ...
The Highland Clearances (03/25)
In Clear, the third novel from Carys Davies, an impoverished presbyterian minister reluctantly takes part in the Highland Clearances, a series of mass evictions that took place in the north of Scotland between 1750 and 1850, driven in part by the restructuring of British society during the Industrial Revolution and the collapse of the ...
The Signs and Effects of Emotional Abuse (03/25)
Ciara Fay, the protagonist of Roisín O'Donnell's novel, Nesting, is the victim of emotional abuse, although she remains unaware of this for most of the book. Also referred to as psychological abuse or psychological aggression, this behavior erodes another person's sense of self-worth until they develop a psychological dependency on ...
Emily J. Taylor's Inspirations (03/25)
Emily J. Taylor's sophomore novel,
The Otherwhere Post, is an academic young adult fantasy filled with haunting secrets, a fascinating magic system, and a sweet slow-burn romance. Taylor has
shared that the idea for the story struck in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Between quarantining and the sleep deprivation that ...
Oliver Twist Adaptations (03/25)
Charles Dickens' works have been adapted and retold in countless forms. In the case of Oliver Twist, the most notable adaptations have been straightforward retellings of the original storyline. For example, the West End musical adaptation Oliver! largely adheres to Dickens' plot, although it omits the events before Oliver ends up at the ...
"Pre-Crime" in The Dream Hotel and Real Life (03/25)
Laila Lalami's The Dream Hotel takes place in a dystopian future in which government surveillance extends to dreams, and people can be arrested for being deemed a risk to society based on their supposed likelihood of committing a crime. The concept of 'pre-crime,' or the idea that crimes can be anticipated before they occur, was also ...
Spotlight on a Banned Author: Maia Kobabe (03/25)
When speaking about book bans, it rarely takes long for the 2019 graphic memoir
Gender Queer to enter the conversation. Its author Maia Kobabe, who is also the first contributing author to
Banned Together, never imagined that writing a memoir about eir experience growing up and coming out as nonbinary and asexual would lead to national ...
The Blue Mosque (03/25)
In Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel Theft, multiple characters dream of seeing the world, but only some have the privilege of doing so in reality. Badar, whose economic situation puts travel out of reach, keeps a photograph of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul on the wall of his rented room as a symbol of that dream. The Blue Mosque is one of the most...
How to Become a Professional Clown (03/25)
In Stop Me If You've Heard This One, the main character, Cherry, chases her dreams of becoming a successful clown. The unusual career path actually requires a lot more work—and financial investment—than one might assume. If you're considering trading in your 9-to-5 for a bright red nose, here are some steps you might ...
Transgender Support Organizations Serving Rural America (03/25)
In Emily St. James's debut novel, Woodworking, the protagonist, Erica, must travel more than an hour each way, from Mitchell to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to attend a support group for transgender people. The group is small—seven people is 'a good turnout'—but it's there, and over the course of the book, the group's existence ...
Fish and Chip Shops (03/25)
In Colm Tóibín's novel Long Island, one of the main characters owns a chip shop in Enniscorthy, Ireland – a carryout restaurant that sells fish and chips (french fries in the United States). The dish is a staple of the British Isles, and hundreds of chip shops (aka 'chippies') can be found in the Republic of Ireland, where...
Cape Horn (03/25)
David Grann's The Wager is a nonfiction book about events surrounding the 1741 wreck of the British ship the HMS Wager, which met its doom while rounding Cape Horn, a rocky headland at the southernmost tip of the Chilean archipelago Tierra del Fuego, where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet. With this book, Grann sheds light on one ...
The Plow That Broke the Plains: A Dust Bowl Documentary (03/25)
One of the protagonists in The Antidote is Cleo Allfrey, a photographer dispatched by the Resettlement Administration to document life in Nebraska's Dust Bowl. She and others in the book mention a similar, real-world project: a documentary titled The Plow That Broke the Plains.
The Plow That Broke the Plains was a controversial, ...
The Social Impact of COVID-19 on Young Adults (03/25)
COVID-19 has had an immense impact on people of all ages, in all stages of life, and in all parts of the world. Mahogany L. Browne's novel A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe focuses on the various effects on young people's lives, which are still being felt and studied today. Along with the widespread death, disability, and ...
Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi (03/25)
In Sarah Harman's All the Other Mothers Hate Me, Florence, an ex-pop star, clings to a notion: that one day, just like Mariah Carey, she will have what she calls her Emancipation of Mimi moment. I immediately knew what she meant, because The Emancipation of Mimi was one of my most impactful musical albums; it was the first CD I remember ...
Madame Sosostris in T.S. Eliot's Poetry (03/25)
In Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted, Londoner Viv meets the infamous clairvoyant Madame Sosostris while she is giving readings at the Cholmondeley Room of the House of Lords. Guests are frightened and awed by the accuracy of her gift, calling her "the most dependable clairvoyant in the country," as she has...
The Preppy Killer (03/25)
A crime that occurred in the summer of 1986 in New York City inspired Cynthia Weiner's A Gorgeous Excitement. On August 26, a cyclist discovered 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in New York City's Central Park, dead due to strangulation and half naked behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, badly bruised and with cuts on her face. She had been ...
