A welcome, pocket-sized introduction to migration literature.
In an era in which immigrants are increasingly demonized, Penguin assembles a well-curated collection of literature about the migration experience.
Edited by Ahmad (English/St. John’s Univ.; Landscapes of Hope: Anti-Colonial Utopianism in America, 2009, etc.) and featuring an eloquent introduction by MacArthur fellow Edwidge Danticat (The Art of Death, 2017, etc.), this compact but eye-opening book provides a sampling of literature, memoirs, and other writings about the experience of being an immigrant. To that end, the collection is arranged in a sequence that mimics what immigrants go through, starting with a section about “Departures,” followed by “Arrivals,” “Generations,” and a single entry for “Returns,” penned by Egyptian migrant Pauline Kaldas called, fittingly, “A Conversation.” The breadth of Ahmad’s selections is impressive given that she doesn’t have a ton of space with which to work. “Departures” includes poetry from West Africa as well as more traditional and familiar entries from such authors as Salman Rushdie (“Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies”) and a selection from Mohsin Hamid’s bestselling novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. The “Returns” section is equally diverse and includes poetry from Jamaican Claude McKay, a selection from the late E.R. Braithwaite’s classic novel To Sir, With Love, and the celebrated writer and illustrator Marjane Satrapi’s poignant graphic memoir Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. Finally, in “Generations,” Ahmad presents poetry from Native American author Joseph Bruchac, two selections by David Dabydeen, and an excerpt from Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Given the breadth and depth of the genre, this is a first-rate starting point for exploring migration literature and is almost certain to be taught in schools in the near future. Don’t miss the “Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing” at the back of the text, which is also excellently curated. The book also includes work by Olaudah Equiano, Eva Hoffman, Dinaw Mengestu, and Hanif Kureishi.
A welcome, pocket-sized introduction to migration literature.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313338-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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