This issue of Wordgathering includes eleven reviews that engage a wide variety of works. In myriad ways, the authors and editors of these very different texts address both the impact associated with and the ongoing necessity of actively undermining racism, ableism, queerphobia, transphobia, misogyny, classism, and xenophobia, and the interconnections between these and other forms of oppression.
Shahd Alshammari’s Head Above Water brings readers into direct conversation with her personal and professional commitments to illness narratives as a Kuwaiti/Palestinian scholar-activist. In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha “writes about disability justice at the end of the world, documenting the many ways disabled people…are keeping each other–and the rest of the world–alive,” as noted by the team at Arsenal Pulp Press. Featured in this issue are reviews of poetry works by [ɥɐɹɐs] cavar, Emily Rose Cole, Mike Gill, Sandy Olson Hill, the many authors whose writing is included in the Tupelo Quarterly‘s forum on Disability Poetics (a special folio curated by Christopher Salerno), Daniel Simpson (our beloved and esteemed Flash Memoir Editor), Brian Tierney, and Adam Wolfond.
- Shahd Alshammari, Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness
- [ɥɐɹɐs] cavar, Out of Mind & Into Body and bug butter
- Emily Rose Cole, Thunderhead
- Mike Gill, Reflections from the Front Porch
- Sandy Olson Hill, The Sun Shows How it’s Done
- Raymond Luczak, A Quiet Foghorn: More Notes from a Deaf Gay Life
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs
- Christopher Salerno (curator), A Forum on Disability Poetics (Tupelo Quarterly)
- Daniel Simpson, Inside the Invisible
- Brian Tierney, Rise and Float
- Adam Wolfond, The Wanting Way
As Wordgathering has grown, the number of requests that we receive for book reviews has likewise grown. 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.
If you would like to become a potentially “frequent flyer” book reviewer for Wordgathering, thereby joining our (of course, accessible) reviewers’ “pool,” please reach out to us at wordgathering@syr.edu with a short summary of your areas of interest and expertise, a short statement of how you understand yourself and your writing to be in alignment with the journal’s goals, and a short bio, and we will be in touch with you as soon as possible. Thank you in advance for your interest and commitment.