In response to the Trump administration’s efforts to erase historical and scientific information from our national parks—and just about everywhere else—we’re spotlighting books that accurately reflect and protect our past in our annual Indie issue. We’ve included excerpts from The Deliverance of Barker McRae, a historical novel starring hardheaded adventurers, and Entangled Tongues, a short study of the English language’s influences. Below are a few editors’ picks that set the record straight: an anthology of artists’ responses to the Holocaust, an insider’s take on Guantanamo, and a work about the proper maintenance of Black archives.
Two dozen scholars, artists, playwrights, poets, and writers expound on the ways the Shoah informs Jewish writing, music, and art in Stories of the Holocaust: Art for Healing and Renewal—Volume 1. “Remembrance is a sacred responsibility in Judaism,” note editors Karen Berman and Gail Humphries, whose series addresses the question, “Can art heal trauma?” The entries center on the idea that the Holocaust should serve as a continual reminder to fight against the “current political hate messages, antisemitism, and violence.” The book covers a staged production of The Diary of Anne Frank,children’s tales from a concentration camp, and LGBTQ+ persecution in Nazi Germany. Our reviewer calls it a “well-crafted work that highlights the value of the arts in remembering the past.”
From the title, readers may correctly guess that You Can’t Make This Shit Up! Leading the Fight for the Rule of Law in the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions is a snarky insider’s portrayal of the colossally fucked-up Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Mike Berrigan, a former judge advocate general (JAG), became a lawyer for the Military Commissions Defense Organization. The book describes how he and his associates attempted to navigate the legal gray area of Gitmo, where torture and the denial of human rights were the norm. “The author approaches this material with a thoroughly appealing, darkly comedic tone, relating incident after incident in which ‘the Prosecution was trying to peddle a lot of bullshit,’” says our reviewer. “Berrigan is refreshingly even-handed in his political criticisms: Nothing could equal the evil of an administration green-lighting torture, but, he notes, President Obama’s promise to end the military commissions upon taking office didn’t amount to much, either.… A gripping behind-the-scenes story of the embattled lawyers trying to defend Gitmo prisoners.”
Dorothy Berry, a preeminent archivist, notes that African Americans are “conspicuously absent” from managerial roles involved with Black archives. “Archives are an unfulfilled promise,” she says in The House Archives Built and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities, and are filled with holes and inaccuracies. Berry, born to a Black father and a Jewish mother, grew up in the Ozarks, where historians have often erased or overlooked the rich Black history of the region. But Berry’s father, who ran a museum, kept many African American artifacts safe. “This history is retold in the book through a powerful visual archive of photographs and scans of documents that defy standard archival categorization (such as a poem scrawled on an envelope),” notes our reviewer. Berry blends her own story with larger conversations about archival theory and African American history to create “a powerful, poignant reflection on the past and future of Black archives.”
Chaya Schechner is the president of Kirkus Indie.
