The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) (08/20)
David Joy's novel
When These Mountains Burn is set in and around the town of Cherokee, North Carolina, which is situated in the far western corner of the state, abutting Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cherokee is the capital and cultural center of the
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and is located in an area known as The...
Little Haiti (08/20)
Several stories in Edwidge Danticat's
Everything Inside take place in Florida's Little Haiti neighborhood, a popular residence for Haitian immigrants and exiles (along with individuals from other Caribbean nations) located in Miami Dade County. The neighborhood has a population of 28,000 people, with
73 percent identifying as Black and 20...
India's Street Children (08/20)
Jayant Kaikini's short story collection, No Presents Please, does some of its best work exploring Mumbai's marginalized communities, including the prominently featured community of the city's street children, many of whom roam the streets alone, neglected, undernourished and with few prospects for the future. Stories like 'A Spare Pair of...
Greene County, Pennsylvania, and Coal (08/20)
Sarah Elaine Smith's Marilou Is Everywhere is set in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in the southwest corner of the state, bordering West Virginia. The novel vividly reflects the economic distress of the struggling communities and families that make up this county. It's a mostly rural area, with just under 39,000 residents in the last census...
Auschwitz-Birkenau Today (07/20)
The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp (the setting of Jack Fairweather's riveting history The Volunteer) was liberated by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945. In 1946, Poland's Ministry of Culture and Art recognized the need to preserve the site of so much horror for memorial and educational purposes, and set to work on a museum. ...
The Geography of Iceland (06/20)
As A. Kendra Greene writes in
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, 'Everywhere in Iceland is some kind of remote. It is almost always a word I reach for when describing a place here, though I mean it differently every time.' Greene makes it clear that understanding Iceland requires understanding its geography, which affects not only...
Mayotte: A Community in Crisis (05/20)
An official department of France, Mayotte is a group of islands located in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of southeast Africa. This unique political and geographic setup has led to the development of a complex, fraught national identity for many of its people, with problems related to crime, population density, poverty and poor social ...
The Islands of Maine (05/20)
Sarah Blake's The Guest Book is set predominantly on a private island off the coast of Maine owned by the Milton family. There are roughly 3,000 islands in Maine's territory, some that are popular vacation spots, others that are entirely uninhabited.
Islands like Chebeague, Vinalhaven and Mount Desert are some of the most popular ...
Korčula: Past and Present (05/20)
Korčula is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea off the Dalmation coast, and the setting of Karen Russell's story 'Black Corfu' from her story collection Orange World. It's the second most populated island in the Adriatic (after Krk), and it has a long, storied history of being occupied by various superpowers reaching back to the ...
The Ancient Druids (05/20)
It is likely that when you hear mention of the ancient Druids or Druidism, certain images arise–perhaps there are flowing white robes or oak leaves involved, there are also probably long, bushy beards and maybe a sprig of mistletoe. Over the centuries that separate us from this enigmatic group, we have done a great deal of ...
Nymphs in Greek Mythology (05/20)
The nature of nymphs, the 'least of the lesser goddesses,' as they are referred to in Circe, is central to the novel. Circe, herself a sorceress or witch nymph, is most famous for turning Odysseus' crew into wild pigs and later becoming the hero's lover and adviser. In Greek mythology, nymphs are female spirits associated with the natural...
Greek Influence on the English Language (05/20)
As Mary Norris notes in her travelogue/memoir/historical narrative Greek to Me, many words and terms in the English language are derived from Greek. These range from somewhat arcane medical and scientific terminology, to more commonly used words and phrases. The etymological evolutions are generally divided into three categories: learned ...
Freya, the Norse Goddess of Love, Fertility, War & Death (05/20)
The Boneless Mercies is based on the classic Anglo-Saxon poem
Beowulf, a sweeping tale of heroes, monsters and epic battles influenced by the culture and mythology of sixth-century Scandinavia. While there are no gods or goddesses in
Beowulf, there are references to mythological heroes like Sigmund of the
Völsunga saga (a Norse epic ...
Brisbane, Australia (04/20)
Brisbane (pronounced 'brizz-binh'), the capital city of Queensland, Australia, is the setting for Trent Dalton's debut novel Boy Swallows Universe. In an essay in the Weekend Australian Magazine, Dalton describes his hometown with his trademark literary flair: 'Brisbane is a bat-sucked mango wedged in your mower blades...Brisbane is all ...
The Indigenous People of Kamchatka, Russia (04/20)
The remote Russian peninsula of Kamchatka, where Julia Phillips' debut novel Disappearing Earth takes place, is very isolated. It is located on the far east side of Russia, surrounded by the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean, riddled by volcanic activity from the Pacific tectonic plate, part of Earth's 'Ring of Fire.' ...
1970s Hangouts in New York City (04/20)
Among other things, Hustvedt's novel Memories of the Future is a vivid portrait of what it was like to live in New York City as a young woman in the late 1970s. She writes evocatively about many of her character's favorite haunts, which include several establishments that are still operating today. Interested in a glimpse into 'Minnesota'...
The Underwater World of Haenyeos (03/20)
Lisa See's novel, The Island of Sea Women, highlights the lives of haenyeos – women from the South Korean island of Jeju who support their families by free-diving for plants and animals that thrive in the ocean. They're known to be able to hold their breath for two to three minutes at a stretch and can descend to depths of 30 to 45 ...
The Legendary Esalen Institute (03/20)
In Rajeev Balasubramanyam's novel,
Professor Chandra Follows his Bliss, about a man's golden years' journey to finding himself, Oxford Professor P. R. Chandrasekhar takes a course in self-awareness at California's legendary
Esalen Institute. Tucked between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Esalen is gifted with the relaxing sounds of ...
Patriarchy in the Mennonite Community (03/20)
Miriam Toews' novel Women Talking is inspired by events that took place in Manitoba Colony, a Mennonite community in eastern Bolivia with a population of about 2,000. From 2005-2009, hundreds of girls and women were drugged and raped during the night, which religious leadership claimed was the work of God or the devil, punishing them for ...
Kotzebue, Alaska (03/20)
Caroline Van Hemert's memoir, The Sun is a Compass, chronicles a 4000-mile journey that concludes in northwest Alaska in the city of Kotzebue.
Kotzebue is located on a three-mile-long sand spit at the end of the Baldwin Peninsula, where the Noatak, Kobuk and Selawik rivers converge. Although it was named after Otto von Kotzebue (1787-...
Arab Americans at a Glance (02/20)
The term 'Arab' designates those who share a specific cultural, linguistic and in some cases political heritage. According to the
Arab American Institute (AAI), the Arab world is comprised of the 22 countries that make up the Arab League, an organization formed in 1945 to represent the interests of Arabs worldwide. The nations (Algeria, ...
The History of the Sunset Strip (02/20)
Titular character Daisy Jones from Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel Daisy Jones & The Six comes of age in the 1970s, visiting rock clubs on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. This 1.6 mile stretch of music venues, nightclubs, restaurants and retail stores on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard has a long, fascinating history full of intrigue, and ...
Hadrian's Wall: Remains of a Fallen Empire (01/20)
Sarah Moss' novel Ghost Wall is set in Northumberland, Britain where Emperor Hadrian (AD 76-138) ordered his troops to build a wall about AD 122 when the region was under Roman rule. It's estimated that the wall was built over a six year span by at least 15,000 men. Excavations reveal that many sections of the wall were originally ditches...
Cattle Ranching in Australia (01/20)
Jane Harper's The Lost Man takes place on a cattle station in the Australian Outback. Cattle stations function quite differently than American or European beef cattle ranches. Many are extremely large; the territory devoted to raising the livestock is generally hot and arid, producing little vegetation, and so an immense area of land is ...
Zār Exorcism (01/20)
Throughout Celestial Bodies there are a smattering of references to zār exorcisms, but little detail is given on what these ceremonies actually are. What becomes apparent, though, is that many al-Awafi villagers look forward to these gatherings.
For one character in the book, these exorcisms become a source of entertainment which...
India: A Feast of Languages (12/19)
In Madhuri Vijay's novel
The Far Field, characters speak a variety of languages: Hindi, Kashmiri, English, Tamil and Urdu. India has a shimmering history as the crossroads of civilizations and cultures, so it's not surprising that its inhabitants speak many languages. The constitution of India recognizes
22 official languages, but a 2011 ...
The Barbershop and Black Male Bonding (11/19)
As a young teen, Michael (in David Chariandy's Brother) begins spending time at the neighborhood barbershop, Desirea's, with his older brother and his friends. In the book, just as in life, black men visit the barbershop not just for haircuts, but to share their personal lives, discuss current events, listen to music and just relax with ...
The History of Chinese Immigration in the United States (11/19)
Large-scale Chinese immigration to America began in the mid-1800s, partly in response to economic instability in China during the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war that lasted from 1850-1864. Like many others, Chinese immigrants were also drawn
by the California Gold Rush.
After the gold rush ended, many Chinese people stayed on in the U...
Swarthmore College (10/19)
Much of Kurt Eichenwald's memoir, A Mind Unraveled, takes place while he attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
Swarthmore is the product of a meeting of the Joint Committee of Friends (aka Quakers) in 1861. The liberal Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends pushed for the establishment of a co-ed school 'under the care of ...
Glastonbury and Arthurian Legend (10/19)
Nowadays famous for its music festival, held in nearby Pilton, Glastonbury is a small English town in Somerset, with a population of around 9000 people. In the 10th century, before Dunstan, the character in The Abbot's Tale arrived there and built the first great Glastonbury Abbey, it was little more than a medieval village, but still one...
The Shinchonji Church (09/19)
In The Incendiaries, Phoebe Lin is gradually drawn into a fictional Christian cult called Jejah. South Korea is home to a few such apocalyptic religious cults, the most prominent among them being Shinchonji.
Shinchonji, whose full name is Shinchonji, Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, was founded in 1984 by...
Godstow Abbey (07/19)
In his first trilogy, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman brings readers into the story through an intense use of space; he gives us a fantastical Oxford, but described in such a way that readers could visit the real place and trace Lyra's adventures around the city and colleges and thus bring the fantasy world into their own. Pullman's ...
Georgia: Crossroads of History (07/19)
In Lands of Lost Borders, author Kate Harris and her friend Melissa Yule bicycle through eastern and central Asia, stopping in the Eurasian nation of Georgia. Bordered by Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, Georgia was a member of the Soviet Union until the latter's dissolution in 1991, at which time it regained its independence. The ...
Rwanda Today (06/19)
Many of us remember reading about the events that Clemantine Wamariya experienced as a six-year-old girl in Rwanda in 1994, when over barely 100 days, Rwanda's Hutu ethnic majority went on a rampage, brutally murdering the ethnic Tutsi minority. The state-sponsored slaughter, a culmination of at least 30 years of unrest, took the lives of...
Baltimore's Storied Past (05/19)
Clock Dance, like many of Anne Tyler's novels, takes place in Baltimore, Maryland. The largest city in the state, Baltimore is home to over 600,000 residents, or 2.8 million people including the entire metro area. Located just 40 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. on the Patapsco River close to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay, ...
The Intricacies of Interwoven Cultural Identities (05/19)
You Bring the Distant Near is successful, in large part, because of the way Mitali Perkins reveals the many, many intricacies of cultural identities, quietly challenging a western sense of the immigrant as stereotypical 'other.' She makes many references to Bengali culture, sometimes called Bangla culture, which plays a large part in how ...
The Flamingo Hotel (05/19)
The Flamingo Hotel, opened by Bugsy Siegel in 1946, where Esme spends her teenage years, was the third gambling establishment to open on the Strip. It is now Las Vegas' oldest hotel.
The hotel had been the brainchild of Billy Wilkerson, who envisioned a European-style hotel and casino, a far cry from the rustic, western-themed ...
The Unarmed Police Force of Norway (04/19)
In Derek B Miller's
American by Day, which takes place in 2008, Oslo Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård doesn't carry a gun. She is a member of Norway's unarmed police force, one of nineteen countries worldwide with cops who don't carry guns. This is despite the
fact that Norway falls eleventh among first world ...
The Jinn of Senegal (04/19)
In Fisherman's Blues, Anna Badkhen takes us on a trip to the West African nation of Senegal. Although her primary focus is on the families who make their living in and around the ocean, another thread emerges - the fascinating stories of the jinn. The magical power of these equally magical creatures is described in stories of great ...
Indian Muslim Marriage Ceremonies (03/19)
A Place for Us, Fatima Farheen Mirza's debut novel about a Muslim family of Indian descent, begins with a wedding. Marriage is an important part of the Muslim culture and is mandated by the Quran. While all that is required to be legally married is a simple ceremony involving the bride and groom, two Muslim witnesses and a male guardian ...
Zoroastrianism (03/19)
One of the motivating factors for the various conflicts Zarin faces in Tanaz Bhathena's debut YA novel A Girl Like That, is that she is a Zoroastrian - a religion that is far less recognizable than some of the other major world religions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or Hinduism. This is because, though it is one of the ...
A Different California: The State of Jefferson (03/19)
Barbed Wire Heart is set in the wilderness forest of northern California. In a state widely known for its big money areas of Southern California and the Silicon Valley Bay Area, as well as its rich farmland in the center, the northern region—from Sacramento to the Oregon border—is starkly different in geography, economics, and...
Romani Fortune Tellers (02/19)
Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists begins with four children visiting a fortune teller in New York in the '60s. The fortune teller is nameless. Her whereabouts is only gleaned from hearsay and neighborhood gossip. What's more, the psychic is said to regularly change address to avoid being detected by the authorities. Despite being shrouded...
Chateau-sur-Mer (02/19)
The Windermere estate where the contemporary arm of The Maze at Windermere is set, is modeled after one of the historic Newport mansions, Chateau-sur-Mer. Until the Vanderbilts' Breakers mansion came on the scene in the late nineteenth century, the Chateau was the most palatial estate in Newport known for its Victorian architecture ...
Syrian Culture: A Rich, Layered Legacy (01/19)
The voices and stories of Syrian refugee experiences are not the only thing drowned out by the international news agencies' overwhelming focus on conflict, war, and death tolls. Underneath the tragedy, now literally buried beneath the rubble in many cases, is a cultural legacy that has spanned centuries and empires. The empires that ruled...
Spartan Mothers (01/19)
In Mothers of Sparta, author Dawn Davies compares herself and her decisions about her son to those made by mothers in Ancient Sparta.
Sparta was a city-state in Greece that reached its pinnacle in the 5th century BCE. Its name, now and then, conjures up the image of powerful warriors that thrived on austerity and deprivation. Its ...
Chastleton House (01/19)
The Wychwood of Lucy Hughes-Hallett's novel Peculiar Ground, an English estate built in the 1600s, sets the stage for the personal intrigues of characters spanning several centuries and generations. Secluded from the rest of the public, the estate and its enclosed garden are also symbols of social divisions and how they often trap people....
Cats in Japanese Culture (11/18)
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa is set in Japan, a country where felines are held in high esteem.
Cats first arrived in Japan around 500 CE as stowaways on ships returning from China, where the animals had already been domesticated for centuries. They were quickly adopted in Buddhist temples by the resident monks, who ...
Liberals Love Guns Too (10/18)
In his memoir, Let It Bang: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey With Guns, R.J. Young takes readers into his obsession with guns, and in the process explores race, guns and self-protection in the U.S.
But who exactly owns guns? While gun ownership skews strongly to rural white men who most likely vote Republican, the American ...
The Looting of the National Museum of Iraq (10/18)
When looking back on the Iraq War, many American policy decisions stand out for their shortcomings, such as de-Baathification, which removed all experienced civil servants from government in one stroke; and disbanding the army, thereby leaving thousands of trained soldiers out of work and on the street. Another example, while less deadly,...
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