Bookshelf

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American Born: An Immigrant’s Story, A Daughter’s Memoir

by Rachel Mayer Brownstein ’58

(University of Chicago Press)

Brownstein delivers a lovingly layered memoir of her mother, Reisel Thaler, a Jewish woman born on New York’s Lower East Side and raised in Poland. (At 18 years old, Thaler returned, alone, to the U.S. for good.) Inspired to write by Trump-era rhetoric, Brownstein considers identity and immigration through her mother’s character — how she embodied what it means to be Jewish, to be American, and to be a woman. Weaving personal memories with family history, Brownstein creates a lively tapestry of mother and daughter through the decades. 

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Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Working and Living

by Christine Bullen ’67 

with Bob Johansen and Joseph Press 

(Berrett-Koehler Publishers)

The office takes up a large piece of our daily lives, and in the wake of the pandemic, Bullen advocates that we look at this workplace environment with a renewed intention. Interlocking systems of people, information, and communication — the “officeverse” — can usher in increasingly productive exchanges for all involved. Bullen proposes how an office, rather than being a static and stifling environment, can be a verb: officing. It’s workplace as process as we navigate our post-pandemic work lives. 

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Breaking Point: The Ironic Evolution of Psychiatry in World War II

by Rebecca Schwartz Greene ’68 

(Fordham University Press)

Schwartz Greene uses vivid primary sources and interviews to bring to life an overlooked chapter in modern American history. The U.S.’s institution of psychiatric examinations for WWII recruits had many unforeseen consequences that would forever change how the country handles issues surrounding mental health. Psychiatry’s expansion as a practice can be traced back to wartime hopes of preventing mental breakdowns in soldiers and the discipline’s underestimation of the true cost of combat.

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Streaming Now: Postcards From the Thing That Is Happening

by Laurie Stone ’68

(Dottir Press)

Stone pens an associative, unrestrained collection of essays, candidly ruminating on time as well as our hopes and desires within this continuum. Through memoir and criticism, the essayist considers the direction of contemporary cultural narratives, her topics ranging from satirical comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and disgraced CNN analysts to the emotions stirred by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Stone strikes an intimate author-reader relationship, balancing an embrace of fragmentation and things lost to time with a keen desire for clarity. 

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Dinah’s Kitchen: 

My Journey in Korean Food, Cooking Contests and Comfort Food

by Dinah Surh ’79

(www.dinahsurh.com)

Surh shares recipes with a Korean flair inspired by her mother’s cooking and shaped by the many distinct flavors of cuisines on offer in her native New York City. Alongside her recipes, Surh divulges hard-won cooking secrets through recollections of her experiences in local and national cooking competitions. This self-described “culinary diva” and Food Network Chopped champion shows the reader how to give soulful, home-cooked food a competitive edge. 

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Kept for a Purpose: A True Story of Peril, Forgiveness, and Unexpected Favor

by Karen Panton WalkingEagle ’84

(Havendale Press)

WalkingEagle co-wrote Kept for a Purpose with Jean Bosco, who was 14 years old when he fled the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In the chaos that ensued, Bosco was separated from his family and forced to trek through the forest to a neighboring country. Like WalkingEagle’s last book, Bless, the narrative examines how Bosco’s Christian faith saw him through an escape from a refugee camp in Uganda and imprisonment in Kenya. A harrowing story of one boy’s survival, though, ultimately, one of hope.

Poetry

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A Long Essay on the Long Poem

by Rachel Blau DuPlessis ’63

(University of Alabama Press)

In assorted literary criticisms and essays, DuPlessis considers — without categorizing — the elusive legacy of the elusive long poem. She is informed by creative work as well as criticism, having recently published Selected Poems 1980-2020, and in Life in Handkerchiefs, a collection of collage poems fashioned on handkerchiefs. For DuPlessis, the long poem is not rigid but a dynamic genre whose lively heritage can be tracked across several renowned authors and traditions.