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Places, Cultures & Identities "Beyond the Book" Articles Written by BookBrowse Reviewers

Places, Cultures & Identities

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The Malaga Island Eviction of 1912 (12/23)
Paul Harding's novel This Other Eden takes place on Apple Island, where a Christian missionary arrives and becomes a catalyst for the destruction of a flourishing community of vulnerable people who did not, and could not, fit into societal norms. Harding's novel is inspired by true events that took place in the early 20th century on ...
Saint Thomas Christians (12/23)
One of the overarching themes in Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water is faith, in all its various guises. For the character Big Ammachi and her family, it is their proud history as Saint Thomas Christians that sustains them in their bleakest hours.

The novel refers to the legend of Saint Thomas, one of the twelve disciples of ...
The Pre-Columbian City of Tetzcoco (11/23)
In David Bowles' novel The Prince and the Coyote, Prince Acolmiztli is forced to flee his beloved city of Tetzcoco after it is overrun by enemies. Acolmiztli, later known as Nezahualcoyotl, was a real historic figure still famous today, and his city was one of the most important in the Aztec Empire.

Tetzcoco (also spelled Texcoco or ...
Historic Black Communities in the United States (11/23)
Jamila Minnicks' debut novel Moonrise Over New Jessup takes place in an all-Black town in 1950s Alabama. Residents are wary of integration, preferring to exist in their own space rather than being left to contend with racism in a white-dominated society. In an interview with The Rumpus, Minnicks explains that she wanted to write about...
Migrants in Italy (11/23)
Many of Jhumpa Lahiri's protagonists in Roman Stories, while not described as being of a specific ethnicity or nationality, are clearly foreign to Rome. So where might they be from? Italy's immigration statistics program only tracks non-EU newcomers to the country, giving an incomplete picture of immigration in general, but we can see ...
Korean Military Brides (11/23)
Franny Choi's The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On delves into how Korean women were treated before, during and after the Korean War, as well as the generational trauma and isolation resulting from this treatment. One aspect of this is the experience of military brides, or Korean women who married members of the American military...
Cabramatta, New South Wales, Australia (10/23)
Tracey Lien's debut novel, All That's Left Unsaid, follows a Vietnamese Australian family in Cabramatta, which is a suburb of Sydney, capital of the state of New South Wales. The presence of a migrant hostel in the area in the 1960s and '70s made it a hub for Southeast Asians fleeing the Vietnam War. By the mid-1990s, around a quarter ...
Simchat Torah (10/23)
Human connections are arguably at their most powerful when experienced through communal dance, music and other communication beyond words. Events such as these are highlighted numerous times in Isaac Blum's debut young adult novel, The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen, which creates a picture of Orthodox Jewish life that sears into one's ...
North Carolina's Ghost Lights (10/23)
In Ron Rash's The Caretaker, characters claim to have seen unexplained lights in Blowing Rock's cemetery and its environs: The previous graveyard caretaker, Wilkie, told Blackburn, the current caretaker, about a mysterious light that led a man to find his brother's grave after searching in vain in six other county burial grounds; and ...
The Churel (08/23)
In Melody Razak's novel Moth, one of the characters is fascinated by the legend of the churel, and the mythological being is mentioned several times throughout the plot.

A churel (also spelled 'chudail,' 'churail' and as other variations) is a staple of South Asian folklore, encountered most frequently in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh...
The Kumhar Caste (08/23)
In Anuradha Roy's The Earthspinner, one of the central characters is Elango, who, despite his college education, chooses to practice pottery like his ancestors. Elango belongs to the caste of potters known by various names including Kumhar, Kumbhar, Moolye, Odari and Kulal. As per India's caste system, since Elango was born into this ...
Bristol, England (08/23)
Moses McKenzie's debut novel, An Olive Grove in Ends, is set in Bristol, UK, a port city in southwest England, about 120 miles due west of London.

The Romans built a settlement in what is now Bristol early in the 2nd century CE. The oldest castle in the area — Bristol Castle, at the confluence of the Avon and Frome Rivers —...
Colonization and the Irish Language (07/23)
In Audrey Magee's The Colony, one of the characters dedicates his career to salvaging a language that is under threat of extinction: Irish. The source of his research is a multi-generational family, the oldest of whom speaks Irish exclusively, while the youngest is very much Anglicized. This family's linguistic patterns are representative...
China and Taiwan: A Short Primer (07/23)
In Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden, Zhuqing Li writes of how her two aunts' lives were shaped by the events of the Chinese Civil War. One of them, Jun, ended up living in Taiwan after the war, married to a general from the losing side, the Nationalists, who ruled the island after the Communists took over the mainland.

The ...
Ramadan (07/23)
Aisha Abdel Gawad's debut novel, Between Two Moons, follows twin sisters Amira and Lina as they navigate self-discovery during the celebration of Ramadan. Ramadan is a month-long Islamic tradition characterized by spiritual devotion practiced through prayer, fasting, charity and other activities. It is considered one of the holiest times ...
The Los Angeles Aqueduct (06/23)
In Marianne Wiggins' novel, Properties of Thirst, one of the main characters is in an ongoing battle with the Los Angeles Department of Water over their aqueduct installation in California's Owens Valley.

Los Angeles was officially founded on September 4, 1781 as part of Spain's colonization of California. As the town grew so did its ...
Denmark: A Brief Overview (05/23)
Amulya Malladi's A Death in Denmark takes place in the country of Denmark in the north of Europe, which is comprised of the Jutland peninsula and an archipelago of over 400 islands. To the south, Denmark shares a border with Germany. On its west side, it is separated from the United Kingdom by the North Sea. The Baltic Sea and Sweden lie ...
Muskiiki: The Four Sacred Ojibwe Medicines (05/23)
In Firekeeper's Daughter, Daunis is interested in how her fellow Ojibwe tribe members use medicinal herbs. She chooses to study pre-med courses and plant biology at college so that she may go on to study ethnobotany through an indigenous lens, and also learns directly from her tribe's Elders.

Traditional medicine is an important part ...
How Drug Cartels Became a Potent Force in Mexico (05/23)
One of the main areas of focus in Blood Gun Money is the role of drug cartels in criminal activity in Mexico. In particular, two organizations are cited multiple times: Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel. Both are known for the number of enemies they've dispatched and their brutal methods of doing so. As stated in the book, guns, many of ...
Small Aircraft Transport in Alaska (05/23)
Small airplanes are a common form of transport in Leigh Newman's collection of short stories, Nobody Gets Out Alive, set primarily in Alaska. Several of the stories take place on a lake where homes boast 'seaplane docks.' Alaska is a vast, sparsely populated region where it's estimated that around 80% of communities exist beyond the reach...
Brujería: Latin American Witchcraft Past and Present (05/23)
In Lorraine Avila's The Making of Yolanda la Bruja, Yolanda's mother and grandmother guide her as she becomes fully absorbed in her family's traditional religious practices. While she's lighting candles, reading tarot cards and immersing herself in her grandmother's bath mixes, Yolanda's rituals celebrate her spirituality and bruja ...
The Bribri (04/23)
Like brothers Max and Jay, the protagonists of her debut young adult novel Saints of the Household, author Ari Tison is Bribri American, descended from an Indigenous group native to the Talamanca region of Costa Rica. The characters' grandfather was raised among the Bribri people and their matriarchal society. His gentle, loving nature ...
Religious Sectarianism in Glasgow: Then and Now (04/23)
One theme of Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo is the quotidian experience of violence. In part, this violence comes from warring sectarian gangs, whose vicious rivalry wreaks havoc in Glasgow's East End. Enmity between Protestants and Catholics has a long history in Glasgow, as well as Scotland more generally. It can be traced back to the ...
Edgar Allan Poe and Gothic Fiction in 19th Century Philadelphia (03/23)
By 1838, Edgar Allan Poe had earned a reputation as a sharp literary critic and skillful editor while based in Richmond, Virginia. To make the most of his talents, he had to move to a bigger and better arena. Boston was the center of book publishing, and New York led the nation in daily journalism and newspapers. But the magazine trade ...
Who Really Has Your Back? Queerness and the Black Community (01/23)
In Nobody's Magic, a novel about three different black women with albinism who are on journeys of self-discovery, the social circles readers become privy to serve to normalize some of the characters' queerness. There are multiple queer moments throughout the novel; in Suzette's story, a character named Drina struggles with telling Suzette...
Segregation and Integration in Northern Irish Education (01/23)
The history of mostly separate education for Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland is a complicated one, existing alongside discriminatory and segregated employment, marriage and housing laws. In Michelle Gallen's Factory Girls, school is one of the most significant areas where the period of intense sectarian conflict between ...
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum (12/22)
A key scene in We Are Not Like Them occurs when one character impulsively stops at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and its associated Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama.

Both the memorial and the museum were created as a result of efforts by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) to honor those Black Americans who were ...
Escalating Anti-Muslim Sentiment in India (12/22)
At the time of the partition in 1947, what was once the British colony of India was split, separating the predominantly Hindu Dominion of India (modern-day Republic of India) from the predominantly Muslim Dominion of Pakistan (modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh). Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru envisaged India as a secular socialist ...
Dala Horses (12/22)
In Shelby Van Pelt's novel Remarkably Bright Creatures, Tova Sullivan treasures her collection of Dala horses brought to the United States from Sweden decades ago by her mother.

A Dala horse, also known as a Dalecarlian horse (or 'Dalahäst' in Swedish), is a type of hand-carved, painted statuette in Swedish culture. According to ...
Multiculturalism and Racism in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales (11/22)
Nadifa Mohamed's novel The Fortune Men takes place in Tiger Bay, the dockland district of the city of Cardiff, Wales. According to the BBC, Tiger Bay, now known as Butetown, is considered Wales' oldest multi-ethnic community and people from over 50 countries have settled there. While she was working on her novel, Mohamed explained in an ...
Svalbard, Norway (10/22)
Svalbard, formerly known as Spitsbergen, is a mountainous, snowfield-covered Norwegian archipelago located above the Arctic Circle that provides the primary setting for Sven's adventures in The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller. As described in the novel, there are three primary seasons in Svalbard: sunny winter, a period ...
Perth (10/22)
Perth features as the primary location in Rebecca Handler's debut novel Edie Richter Is Not Alone, about an American expatriate who relocates to Perth following the death of her father.

Located on the southwest coast, Perth is Australia's fourth-most populous city, with a population of around two million in the greater metropolitan ...
The Legacy of Slavery at Monticello (10/22)
In the novella that makes up the second half of My Monticello, survivors of a white nationalist uprising seek shelter at Thomas Jefferson's estate. Jefferson's former residence and plantation located just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and currently operates as a museum dedicated to the third U.S. ...
Stolpersteine (10/22)
In Those Who Forget, author Géraldine Schwarz relates a visit her father paid to his parents' former home in Mannheim, Germany, looking for a specific 'Stolperstein' installed outside the apartment.

The word 'Stolperstein' (plural 'Stolpersteine') means 'stumbling stone' or 'stumbling block' in German. These small ...
Who Are the Cossacks? (10/22)
In The Amur River: Between Russia and China, Colin Thubron engages with people from a variety of cultural backgrounds. One of these individuals is Alexei, an Amur Cossack who proudly meets the author decked out in his ceremonial uniform, yelling exuberantly 'the Cossacks are coming back!' But who are the Cossacks?

First, the term '...
Harlem and the End of the Civil Rights Era (09/22)
Harlem, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, was a crucial setting during the Civil Rights Era, which spanned approximately 1950 to 1964, arguably culminating with the passage of the controversial Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Great Migration in the early 20th century brought a considerable number of Black residents to the neighborhood, and...
Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon (08/22)
Located on the Mediterranean Sea, tiny Lebanon has the highest per capita population of Syrian refugees in the world, hosting an estimated 1.5 million who have fled from its war-torn neighbor. To put this in perspective, Lebanon is about half the size of Massachusetts with a population of just under eight million as of 2019. It has long ...
The Seven Sisters: How to Build an Old Girls' Network (08/22)
In Karin Tanabe's novel A Woman of Intelligence, some characters attend all-women's colleges. The narrator Katharina graduated from Vassar and another lead, Ava, graduated from Mount Holyoke. Katharina's occasional babysitter, Sarah Beach, studies at Barnard. These colleges and four other historically women's colleges — Bryn Mawr, ...
Eshu: The Yoruba God of Mischief (08/22)
Eshu (also spelled Esu, and also known as Elegba) is a powerful deity in the Ifa religion of the Yoruba people of Western Africa. He is an orisha, a figure that can be a representation of human or divine characteristics or concepts, as well as aspects of nature, such as rivers. A primordial orisha, Eshu represents mischief. However, he is...
The Bolla in Albanian Folklore (08/22)
Pajtim Statovci's novel Bolla takes its name from a creature in Albanian folklore. The narrative is interspersed with a reimagined version of this feared monster's origins, with thematic parallels to his characters' lives that enhance the emotional impact of their story while commenting on the importance of storytelling as a means of ...
The Spirituality and Symbolism of Buddhist Art (08/22)
In today's world, art therapy has become an increasingly popular option. According to the American Art Therapy Association (AATA), this experiential treatment 'is used to improve cognitive and sensorimotor functions, foster self-esteem and self-awareness, cultivate emotional resilience, promote insight, enhance social skills, reduce and ...
The Psychic Industry in the United States (08/22)
In Nan Fischer's novel Some of It Was Real, psychic-medium entertainer Sylvie Young comes under the scrutiny of Thomas Holmes, a reporter determined to expose her as a 'grief vampire' who takes advantage of people mourning loved ones. Whether or not you believe their claims of clairvoyance and communication with the dead are real or ...
Nomadic Housing: Somalia and Beyond (08/22)
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that in 2020 there were more than 82 million people displaced from their homes due to human rights issues such as violence and persecution worldwide. And, for as long as humans have existed, people have lived as nomads in various parts of the world, including Somalia, as detailed in Shugri Said ...
The Swastika Before and After Nazism (08/22)
Ru Freeman uses the swastika symbol outside of its prevailing cultural narrative in the landscape of Sleeping Alone's 'The Wake,' a story about a cult leader who believes he is an incarnation of Christ. He spends his last days in a modest New York City apartment with an ordinary family, in a room called 'the Swastika Room.' Freeman ...
The Canadian Shield (07/22)
In the acknowledgments at the end of her book, A Town Called Solace, author Mary Lawson writes, 'The town of Solace exists only in my imagination, but the setting is very real: the vast and beautiful area of lakes and rocks and forests known as the Canadian Shield, in Northern Ontario.'

A continental shield is a large expanse of land ...
Penobscot Indian Island Reservation (07/22)
Night of the Living Rez takes place on the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation in Maine, home of the Penobscot Nation tribe of Native Americans, also known as the Panawahpskek Nation. Panawahpskek is the name for the Penobscot in Abenaki, the language used by these and other Indigenous Algonquin peoples in Maine and Quebec. The island ...
Jaipur, Rajasthan (India's "Pink City") (07/22)
Alka Joshi's novel The Secret Keeper of Jaipur takes place in the city of Jaipur, the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan and home to over three million people.

Founded in 1727 by Maharaja Jai Singh II, Jaipur is said to be the first completely planned city in India. The Maharaja became aware that his current capital, Amber (now ...
The Significance of Black Hair in the United States (06/22)
In her debut thriller, The Other Black Girl, Zakiya Dalila Harris includes but does not explain certain concepts linked to Black life. This may be an intentional choice to move past the expectation that racialized and other marginalized authors should clarify concepts and issues that aren't commonplace in mainstream white society for ...
Cambodians in Stockton, California (06/22)
Several stories in Anthony Veasna So's short story collection Afterparties take place in Stockton, California, the author's hometown. Stockton is home to the fifth largest population of ethnically Cambodian people in the United States as of 2019, according to the Pew Research Center. A 2018 study by U.S. News and World Report found ...
The Republic of Chad (06/22)
Much of Ken Follett's novel Never is set in present-day Chad, a landlocked nation located in north-central Africa. Officially known as The Republic of Chad, at 496,000 square miles, the country is the fifth largest on the continent.

Chad has a long and complex history; it's one of the areas scientists believe may have been the cradle ...
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