Featured Titles
Spell Albuquerque: Memoir of a "Difficult" Student
The daughter of novelist Ishmael Reed and writer/choreographer Carla Blank, Tennessee Reed was diagnosed at an early age with several language-based learning disorders. The bottom line, the experts agreed, was that she would never read or write. Within a few years, however, she published her first book of poetry. By the time she was a teenager, she was writing the text for Meredith Monk performances and traveling the world to read her poems. Spell Albuquerque is an inspiring memoir of one woman's struggle to overcome racism and institutional authority and to achieve what everyone said was impossible. Tennessee Reed is the author of five books of poetry, including City Beautiful, Airborne, and Electric Chocolate.
Spell Albuquerque | Tennessee Reed | AK Press | 9781904859888 | October 2008 | Trade Paper $18.95
The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks
Written over many years, this book is a collection of notebook entries by our current Poet Laureate, Charles Simic. Excerpts include:
Stupidity is the secret spice historians have difficulty identifying in this soup we keep slurping.
American identity is really about having many identities simultaneously. We came to America to escape our old identities, which the multiculturalists now wish to restore to us.
What an outrage! This very moment gone forever!
"Nabokovian in his caustic charm and sexy intelligence, Simic perceives the mythic in the mundane and pinpoints the perpetual suffering that infuses human life with both agony and bliss."—Donna Seaman, Booklist
The Monster Loves His Labyrinth | Charles Simic | Ausable Press | 9781931337403 | September 2008 | Trade Paper $14.00
Baghdad, Mon Amour: A Journey of Exile and Return
Baghdad, Mon Amour is centered on author Salah Al Hamdani's imprisonment under Saddam Hussein and subsequent exile to France. Within his memoir, Al Hamdani explores his emotional return to Baghdad after a thirty-year absence. The beauty of Al Hamdani's prose and poetry is skillfully captured in translation. Salah Al Hamdani, poet and French actor from Iraq, was born in 1951 in Baghdad. He started writing as a political prisoner in Iraq at twenty and is the author of numerous works in both Arabic and French.
Baghdad, Mon Amour | Salah Al Hamdani; Translated by Sonia Alland | Curbstone Press | 9781931896443 | April 2008 | Trade Paper $15.00
While in Darkness There is Light: Idealism and Tragedy on an Australian Commune
During the Vietnam War era, five young men started a commune, Rosebud Farm, in Australia. The Rosebud Farm Project was born of idealism, commitment, and virtue, all deeply rooted in friendships that have transcended distance and time. The men in this story, insulated by wealth and innocence of heart, were trying to gain clarity and peace within a tumultuous world. Charlie Dean, brother of politician Howard Dean, was one of the members of the commune. Howard Dean wrote the introduction for this book.
While in Darkness There is Light | Louella Bryant; Introduction by Howard Dean | Dzanc Books | 9780976899396 | September 2008 | Trade Paper $16.00
Walking the Precipice
Covering everything that Charlie Wilson's War did not, Walking the Precipice gives one woman's personal account of the rise of the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan. In 1990, Barbara Bick, age sixty-five, traveled with a women's delegation to Afghanistan for what she thought would be her last great adventure. Instead, while the Mujahideen shelled Kabul, Bick forged deep friendships with her Afghan hosts. In the ensuing years, and after two return visits in 2001 and 2004, Bick watched with horror as the Taliban took over Afghanistan and instituted its fiercely anti-woman policies. Walking the Precipice gives new insight into the people, politics, and culture of a country that should be on everyone's watch list. A longtime peace and human rights activist, Barbara Bick has worked for Women Strike for Peace, NEGAR-Support of Women of Afghanistan, and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Walking the Precipice | Barbara Bick | The Feminist Press at CUNY | 9781558615861 | December 2008 | Trade Paper $14.95
Walking the Precipice | Barbara Bick | The Feminist Press at CUNY | 9781558615922 | December 2008 | Library Binding $55.00
A Hidden Life: A Memoir of August 1969
For years, Johanna Reiss' husband Jim encouraged her to return to Holland to chronicle the two years, seven months, and one day she had spent hiding from the Nazis in rural Usselo, Holland. In 1969, she finally made the trip. Accompanied by Jim and their two young children, Reiss intended to spend seven weeks researching the book that would eventually become The Upstairs Room, her Newbery Honor–winning account of her time hiding in the attic of a farmhouse in which for a time a contingent of Nazi soldiers was billeted. But unknown to the millions of people who went on to read her beloved classic, behind the dark and painful story of the book was a still darker tale: Reiss' husband returned to America early and committed suicide at age thirty-seven, leaving no note. For Reiss, an ongoing reckoning with universal tragedy becomes particular: she is forced to reckon, too, with Jim's death—and explain it to her children. Subtle and disturbing, the book is a powerful consideration of memory, violence, and loss, told in a stunning and sparse narrative style.
A Hidden Life | Johanna Reiss | Melville House | 9781933633558 | October 2008 | Trade Cloth $23.95
Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader
"Today more than ever, Muslims and non-Muslims alike need to be reminded of the courage, compassion and intellect of Emir Abd el-Kader. . . . Abd el-Kader's jihad provides Muslims with a much- needed antidote to the toxic false jihads of today, dominated by anger, violence and politics."—His Royal Highness, Prince Hassan bin Talal (Prince of Jordan)
When Abd el-Kader died in 1883, The New York Times hailed him as "one of the few great men of the century." The warrior/saint had won the heart of the French nation, his sworn enemy and the invader of his Algerian homeland. He reached the summit of his fame after he saved the lives of thousands of Christians during a Turkish rampage in Damascus. Author John W. Kiser also wrote The Monks of Tibhirine, which won the French Siloe Prize. His articles have appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Commander of the Faithful | John W. Kiser | Monkfish Book Publishing | 9780979882838 | November 2008 | Trade Cloth $28.95
Cleaning Up: How I Gave Up Drinking and Lived
"In this gem of a memoir, Glyde, a talented British writer with two novels under her belt, provides gritty details of her life as an alcoholic. . . . Anyone who has been around the block with the bottle will heartily embrace this survivor's story."—Library Journal (Starred Review), September 15, 2008
At the end of a twenty-three-year love affair with alcohol, Tania Glyde remembers her inner white wine witch. Cleaning Up examines why women drink, how to stop, and what life after alcohol is really like. In this witty and searingly honest memoir, Glyde addresses her party years—from the excuses used for drinking to the ones she used when giving up.
Cleaning Up | Tania Glyde | Serpent's Tail | 9781852429492 | January 2009 | Trade Paper $16.95
Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy
In January 2006, The New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy. A media frenzy ensued as JT's fans, mentors, and readers came to terms with the fact that the gay-male-ex-truck-stop-prostitute-turned-literary-wunderkind was really a girl from San Francisco, whose middle-aged sister-in-law, Laura Albert, wrote the books. Girl Boy Girl is the story of how Savannah led this bizarre double life for six years, trading a precarious existence as a college dropout for a life in which she was embraced by celebrities and artists—and traveled the world. Telling her side of the story for the first time, Savannah reveals how being perceived as a boy gave her a sense of confidence and entitlement she never had before. Inadvertently, she finds herself through the adventure of being someone else.
Girl Boy Girl | Savannah Knoop | Seven Stories Press | 9781583228517 | October 2008 | Trade Paper $17.95
Up Against the Wall Motherfu**er: A Memoir of the Sixties with Notes for Next Time
They called themselves the Motherfuckers; others called them a "street gang with an analysis." Osha Neumann's thoughtful, funny, and honest account of his part in '60s counterculture examines what that rebellion means today. The fast-moving story follows the establishment of the Motherfuckers, who are cited as influences by the Yippies and members of SDS; makes vivid the art, music, and politics of the era; and reveals the colorful, often deeply strange, personalities that gave the movement its momentum. Abbie Hoffman said the Motherfuckers were "the middle-class nightmare . . . an anti-media media phenomenon simply because their name could not be printed." In the few years of its existence, the group forced its way into the Pentagon during a war protest, helped occupy one of the buildings in the Columbia University takeover, and cut the fences at Woodstock to allow thousands in for free. Progressing from a fractured family of intellectuals to rebellion in the streets of New York and on to communes in California, Neumann shows us a life led in rebellion, anger, and eventually a tentative peace. Neumann is now a lawyer in Berkeley, California.
Up Against the Wall Motherfu**er | Osha Neumann | Seven Stories Press | 9781583228494 | November 2008 | Trade Paper $16.95
The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange
"Wonderfully captures the insensitivity, insecurity and selfishness of the adolescent male. His eye for the oddities of 1970s British life is equally astute . . . Barrowcliffe renders all the comedy and sorrow of early manhood, when boys flee the wretchedness of their real status for a taste of power in imaginary domains."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Barrowcliffe's retrospective self-awareness is by turns poignant and amusing . . . as fantasy movies dominate the box office; the author offers a timely, appropriate memoir of addiction recovery . . . worth a few hours holed up in the basement."—Kirkus Reviews
Summer, 1976. Twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had a chance to be normal. He blew it. While other teenagers were being coolly rebellious, Mark—and twenty million other boys in the 1970s and 1980s—chose to spend his entire adolescence pretending to be a wizard, a warrior, or an evil priest. Armed only with pen, paper, and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games. Spat at by bullies and laughed at by girls, they now rule the world. They were the geeks, the fantasy war gamers, and this is their story. Mark Barrowcliffe worked as a stand-up comedian before writing his first hit novel, Girlfriend 44. He has written two other acclaimed comic novels, Lucky Dog and Infidelity for First-Time Fathers. He lives in Brighton, England.
The Elfish Gene | Mark Barrowcliffe | Soho Press | 9781569475225 | November 2008 | Trade Cloth $25.00
Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid
"[Frank B.] Wilderson [will] become a major American writer. Mark my word."—Ishmael Reed
"Wilderson has a distinct, powerful voice and a strong story that shuffles between the indignities of Johannesburg life and his early years in Minneapolis, the precocious child of academics who barely tolerate his emerging political consciousness. Wilderson's observations about love within and across the color line and cultural divides are as provocative as his politics . . . this is a riveting memoir of apartheid's last days."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
A coming-of-age story, Incognegro shares the point of view of a black man, growing up in Minneapolis in the early 1960s, who experiences exile at home from racism—only to feel further isolated while fighting apartheid, serving as one of only two black Americans in the African National Congress. Wilderson finds himself labeled "a threat to national security" by President Nelson Mandela. This memoir documents, through one life story, a history that most Americans assume is already known: the struggle to topple legal apartheid in South Africa on the one hand and, on the other, the oppression and resistance of black Americans in the United States from the mid-twentieth century through the post-9/11 era. With gut-wrenching honesty, Wilderson reveals rarely spoken, darker pieces to these twin histories, offering essential clarity about racial politics and our own lives.
Incognegro | Frank B. Wilderson, III | South End Press | 9780896087835 | August 2008 | Trade Paper $18.00
Starred Reviews
For Tranquility:
"The first work by Bartis to be translated into English follows Ander Weer through 15 years dominated by his oedipal relationship with his agoraphobic mother, Rebeka, while, outside, Hungary transitions from Soviet satellite to independent state. . . . Oddly beautiful and unsettling, the novel boldly illustrates the lengths people go to in securing their own private hells."—Publishers Weekly, October 6, 2008
Tranquility | Attila Bartis; Translated by Imre Goldstein | Archipelago Books | 9780980033007 | Trade Paper $15.00
For The Dirty South:
"A young black man struggles to surmount British ghetto culture in this brilliant sixth novel from Wheatle (The Seven Sisters, 2003, etc.). . . . Often brutal but always compassionate—a galvanizing piece of work by someone who obviously knows these mean streets."—Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2008
The Dirty South | Alex Wheatle | Serpent's Tail | 9781852429850 | Trade Paper $15.95
For Tinkers:
"Harding’s outstanding debut unfurls the history and final thoughts of a dying grandfather surrounded by his family in his New England home. . . . The real star is Harding's language, which dazzles whether he's describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship."—Publishers Weekly, September 29, 2008
Tinkers | Paul Harding | Bellevue Literary Press | 9781934137123 | Trade Paper $14.95
Tinkers | Paul Harding | Bellevue Literary Press | 9781934137192 | Trade Cloth $25.00
For Twigs and Knucklebones:
"In work reminiscent of Amy Clampitt and of Albert Goldbarth, Lindsay weaves informed and moving lyric claims around scientific facts, lamenting extinct species or following local rivers. Some poems warn us to care better for Earth, and all become reminders of our own short spans here, as when this extraordinary writer envisions her own life as a river, 'full / of salmon shoving upstream to breed and die, / not one of them saying / remember, remember me.'"—Publishers Weekly, September 15, 2008
Twigs and Knucklebones | Sarah Lindsay | Copper Canyon Press | 9781556591648 | Trade Paper $15.00
For Obamanomics:
"Talbott (The Coming Crash in the Housing Market) gives fiscal politics a shot of excitement and, yes, hope as he explores presidential nominee Barack Obama's proposed bag of economic tricks. With reasoned but brutally blunt arguments, topics like corporate lobbying turn improbably fascinating; Talbott explains the system and its problems, and provides simple charts that will make average Americans blanch. Talbott delineates the differences between top-down and bottom-up economics, explaining the latter's advantages and how Obama's proposed policies will take us in the direction of greater economic justice and opportunity for average citizens." –Publishers Weekly, September 8, 2008
Obamanomics | John R. Talbott | Seven Stories Press | 9781583228654 | Trade Paper $16.95