A well-documented contribution to Black literary history.
How a group of Black feminists created a model for advocacy.
Thorsson, an English professor and “white woman scholar of African American literature,” offers a richly detailed account of a group of about 30 Black women who called themselves The Sisterhood. From 1977 to 1979, they met regularly at least once per month, kept minutes, collected dues, and worked to secure “publication, publicity, and recognition for Black women writers.” Co-founded by novelist Alice Walker and poet June Jordan, both already well-known writers, the group arose from a general despondency, in the early 1970s, over the failure of civil rights activism, as well as a personal need for a place where Black women intellectuals and activists could find common ground. Members included poets, playwrights (Ntozake Shange), novelists (Toni Morrison), editors, scholars, academics, journalists (Margo Jefferson), and critics. In an appendix, the author offers concise biographies of each woman who attended, however briefly. The Sisterhood’s efforts, Thorsson asserts, led to a burgeoning of Black women’s writing in magazines such as Essenceand Ms., which the group especially targeted, and in trade publishing. Moreover, they laid the foundation for Black feminist scholarship in colleges and universities. The group dissolved partly because of its success: With new opportunities—and pressures of day jobs, family, and creative work—some members found it hard to find time to meet each month. There was also dissent about the purpose of the group, with some younger members frustrated that the goals, and even the meaning of Black feminism, were not shared. Some members sensed a “pecking order” determined by age and career stage, which made others feel unwelcome. Even after The Sisterhood stopped meeting formally, Thorsson reveals, friendships among members provided moral and practical support, and its influence persisted by building “a cultural landscape of magazines, publishers, general readers, students, and teachers who were ready for their books.”
A well-documented contribution to Black literary history.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780231204729
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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