The National Book Foundation recently announced this year's National Book Awards. You can check out the winners here through MHL, or go to the National Book Foundation website to read the long lists of of nominees in each category.
|
|
Events in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are described through the eyes of the enslaved Jim. He decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island after learning he is to be sold to a man in New Orleans. |
|
|
An internationally recognized anthropologist, who embedded himself within a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years, presents this first-ever, character-driven look at human smuggling that revolves around the life and death of one coyote who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. |
|
|
It's nearly impossible to write poetry that holds the human desire for joy and the insistent agitations of protest at the same time, but Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's gorgeous and wide-ranging new collection Something About Living does just that. Her poems interweave Palestine's historic suffering, the challenges of living in this world full of violence and ill will, and the gentle delights we embrace to survive that violence. Khalaf Tuffaha's elegant poems sing the fractured songs of Diaspora while remaining clear-eyed to the cause of the fracturing: the multinational hubris of colonialism and greed. This collection is her witness to our collective unraveling, vowel by vowel, syllable by syllable. |
|
|
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She's been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese woman - who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name - is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko's travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, livelybanter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It's only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the "something" is. |
|
|
With the school year getting off to a rough start, Syrian American seventh grader Kareem finds himself stuck between friends, between football, between parents and between right and wrong, and must find his voice amidst the chaos. |