This issue includes six book reviews. Esmé Weijun Wang’s widely praised Collected Schizophrenias (winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize) undermines numerous mainstream stereotypes, while advancing a critical consciousness for memoir readers—among them, policy makers and healthcare practitioners—to think deeply about self-representation, social and cultural imagery, “code switching,” and mental illness. Five reviews are of new poetry collections—by Meg Eden, Rebecca Foust, Dylan Krieger, Doug May, and Petra Kuppers. When brought into virtual as well as real-time conversation, these rather different texts create quite a lot of food for thought!
- Meg Eden – Drowning in the Floating World
- Rebecca Foust – The Unexploded Ordnance Bin
- Dylan Krieger – Metamortuary
- Doug May – Songs from the Back Row
- Petra Kuppers – Gut Botany
- Esmé Weijun Wang – The Collected Schizophrenias
Please note that Ria Cheyne’s Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction (Liverpool University Press, 2019) will be reviewed in the June 2020 issue, rather than in the current issue, as had been planned, originally. Cheyne’s book is a nuanced, interdisciplinary academic text that will be of interest to many readers who engage in discussions about emotional life, while seeking out rigorous and thoughtful literary resources. As noted on the publisher’s website, this monograph is “the first book to examine disability representation in a range of popular literary genres,” and includes “the most in-depth examination of disability in popular genre fiction” ever created.
As Wordgathering has grown, it is increasingly indebted to those who offer their skills as book reviewers. In this issue they are Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Shane Neilson, Michael Northen, Charlotte Price, and Diane R. Wiener. Writers who would like to review books for or have books reviewed by Wordgathering should send queries to wordgathering@syr.edu. Please refer to our Submission Guidelines for more information.