Books

Natasha Knoblauch

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba--the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people--and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.

Minor Detail a book by Adania Shibli and Elisabeth Jaquette

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In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that Freedom is a constant struggle. Angela Y. Davis is a political activist, scholar, author, and speaker. She is an outspoken advocate for the oppressed and exploited, writing on Black liberation, prison abolition, the intersections of race, gender, and class, and international solidarity with Palestine. She is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class and Are Prisons Obsolete? She is the subject of the acclaimed documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners and is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. One of America's most provocative public intellectuals, Dr. Cornel West has been a champion for racial justice since childhood. His writing, speaking, and teaching weave together the traditions of the black Baptist Church, progressive politics, and jazz. The New York Times has praised his ferocious moral vision. His many books include Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his autobiography, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. Frank Barat is a human rights activist and author. He was the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and is now the president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. His books include Gaza in Crisis and Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement a book by Angela Y Davis, Cornel West, and Frank Barat

"Everybody's talking about the wrong Sam Bankman-Fried book."--Wired Compared to Going Infinite by Michael Lewis, reviewers say Number Go Up is "more nuanced" (The Washington Post), "more entertaining" (Los Angeles Times), and "far superior" (Wired), not to mention "rollicking" (The Economist), "laugh-out-loud funny" (Fortune), and "shrewdly skeptical" (The New York Times). In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it, and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked--but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named "digital asset"? As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging question: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity--with a dash of FOMO--would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world's new financial machinery. Faux's investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires. Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to "ApeFest," an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. And in an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring. When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF's penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade "our great poet of crime" (Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine), Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall a book by Zeke Faux

Black Box is a riveting, sobering memoir that chronicles one woman's struggle for justice, calling for changes to an industry--and in society at large--to ensure that future victims of sexual assault can come forward without being silenced and humiliated. In 2015, an aspiring young journalist named Shiori Ito charged prominent reporter Noriyuki Yamaguchi with rape. After meeting up for drinks and networking, Ito remembers regaining consciousness in a hotel room while being assaulted. But when she went to the police, Ito was told that her case was a "black box"--untouchable and unprosecutable. Upon publication in 2017, Ito's searing account foregrounded the #MeToo movement in Japan and became the center of an urgent cultural and legal shift around recognizing sexual assault and gender-based violence. As international outlets covered every step of her story--even documenting it in the BBC film Japan's Secret Shame--this book launched a societal reckoning. At the end of 2019, Ito won a civil case against Yamaguchi. With careful and quiet fury, Black Box recounts a broken system of repression and violence--but it also heralds the beginning of a new solidarity movement seeking a more equitable path toward justice.

Black Box: The Memoir That Sparked Japan's #Metoo Movement a book by Shiori Ito and Allison Markin Powell

Dead-End Memories: Stories a book by Banana Yoshimoto and Asa Yoneda

Combining feminist theories, X-Files fandom, and memoir, Enjoy Me among My Ruins draws together a kaleidoscopic archive of Juniper Fitzgerald's experiences as a queer sex-working mother. Plumbing the major events that shaped her life, and interspersing her childhood letters written to cult icon Gillian Anderson, this experimental manifesto contends with dominant narratives placed upon marginalized people, ultimately rejecting a capitalist system that demands our purity and submission over our survival.

Enjoy Me Among My Ruins a book by Juniper Fitzgerald

An intersectional primer for saving the planet: place-based perspectives and community-led tools for fighting climate change--for readers of The Intersectional Environmentalist and All We Can Save "An essential, inspired chorus of voices echoing the urgency of action in the fight against climate change." --Kirkus Reviews In Climate Resilience, climate justice and resilience strategist Kylie Flanagan invites us to see and act beyond status-quo solutions, Big Tech promises...and everything we're usually told about how to save the planet. Centering the voices of Native Rights activists, queer liberation ecologists, youth climate-justice organizers, Latinx wilderness activists, and others on the front lines, Climate Resilience urges us toward a vision of climate care that invests in place-based, community-led projects focused on: Relationship Repair Ecological Restoration Economic Regeneration Collective Care Community Adaptation Cultural Strategy People Power Each section offers practical blueprints for engaging with different aspects of climate-change action through mutual aid, seed-saving, community-owned energy, community safety plans, and more, and includes a range of ideas for readers to apply these strategies in their own communities.

Climate Resilience: How We Keep Each Other Safe, Care for Our Communities, and Fight Back Against Climate Change a book by Kylie Flanagan

Octavia E. Butler's final novel is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted--and still wants--to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. "A master storyteller, Butler casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of human nature." --The Washington Post

Fledgling a book by Octavia E. Butler

The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life"A giddy, bold, mind-blowing tour de force by one of our most important literary writers."--George Saunders, Booker-Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo "Profound and bawdy and deeply human, a brilliant work of art from a completely blown open and fearless mind."--Emma Cline, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest "A frank and delirious ode to love in all its forms... just as brilliantly funny and strangely touching as you might expect." --Vogue A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.

All Fours a book by Miranda July

A New York Times Notable Book - BuzzFeed 50 Books We Can't Wait to Read this Year - New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice - National Bestseller"Brilliant and incendiary." -- Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times Book Review"Stunning. . . . Yuknavitch understands that our collective narrative can either destroy or redeem us, and the outcome depends not just on who's telling it, but also on who's listening." -- O, The Oprah Magazine"[A] searing fusion of literary fiction and reimagined history and science-fiction thriller and eco-fantasy." -- NPR BooksThe bestselling author of The Small Backs of Children offers a vision of our near-extinction and a heroine--a reimagined Joan of Arc--poised to save a world ravaged by war, violence, and greed, and forever change historyIn the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet's now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. The changed world has turned evolution on its head: the surviving humans have become sexless, hairless, pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin.Out of the ranks of the endless wars rises Jean de Men, a charismatic and bloodthirsty cult leader who turns CIEL into a quasi-corporate police state. A group of rebels unite to dismantle his iron rule--galvanized by the heroic song of Joan, a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her and communes with the earth. When de Men and his armies turn Joan into a martyr, the consequences are astonishing. And no one--not the rebels, Jean de Men, or even Joan herself--can foresee the way her story and unique gift will forge the destiny of an entire world for generations.A riveting tale of destruction and love found in the direst of places--even at the extreme end of post-human experience--Lidia Yuknavitch's The Book of Joan raises questions about what it means to be human, the fluidity of sex and gender, and the role of art as a means for survival.

The Book of Joan a book by Lidia Yuknavitch

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "Inferno is a disturbing and masterfully told memoir, but it's also an important one that pushes back against powerful taboos. . ."--The New York Times Book Review "Explosive"--Good Morning America When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip's end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She masterfully interweaves these parts of her past with a vivid, immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward. The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience--of how we love, live, and understand ourselves in relation to each other.

Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness a book by Catherine Cho

Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco a book by Savannah Shange

Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest's The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest's maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques--all killed at Auschwitz.Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne's family, her country, and herself.