New Books in Literature

Even for someone trained from birth to manage a farm, stepping into an inheritance at the age of twenty is not easy. Yet this is the situation facing Promise Mears Crawford when Sunday’s Orphan opens in 1930. Trouble comes at her from many directions. Her adoptive uncle, Taylor Crawford, constructed his farm according to the principles of racial equality, in defiance of the Jim Crow laws in effect all around him. Taylor had the standing to resist opposition from his neighbors, but Promise lacks both his stature and the resources she needs to fulfill the obligations he took on. Her financial constraints land her in conflict with the farm’s foreman, Fletch Hart, a long-time friend whose dreams of becoming a physician she cannot support due to lack of funds.But the potential loss of Fletch’s friendship pales in comparison to the threat posed by the arrival of Daffron Mears, a self-appointed Jim Crow enforcer whose propensity for vigilante violence is well known throughout the county. Daffron wants a job—in fact, he wants Promise’s farm, which he regards as stolen from him by Taylor—and he is not above manipulating Jim Crow laws to get his way. He implies that he will report Promise to the authorities if she turns him down while giving work to Fletch, a Black man.To protect her friend, Promise agrees to Daffron’s demand, if only for a week. But Daffron’s return to the farm that he left twenty years before sets off a series of crises that cast doubt on everything Promise thought she knew about herself and her origins.Catherine Gentile admits in our interview that this was a difficult novel to write. For the same reasons, it is a difficult novel to read. But its exploration of a topic too often buried beneath platitudes about the need for change and its particular relevance to the questions of racial injustice that have been front and center the last two years make it an important book.Catherine Gentile is the author of The Quiet Roar of the Hummingbird, a fictionalized memoir, and Small Lies: A Collection of Short Stories, as well as Sunday’s Orphan. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her next book, Song of the Sinner, will appear in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

An interview with Kalani Pickhart, I Will Die in a Foreign Land (2021), a New York Public Library Best Book of 2021. Russia is again amassing troops on the Ukrainian border. There are threats of more sanctions from the US and the EU, but those come with a tacit understanding that there is likely little that the world can do to stop Putin should he decide to invade. It is within this frightening context that Kalani Pickhart’s extraordinary novel, I Will Die in a Foreign Land, enters the scene. The novel itself is a beautiful pastiche of forms: novelistic plots mix with songs and folktales, manifests of passengers killed in downed planes or in the melee of protest, diaries and recordings, all working to build a feeling, the urge for a democratic voice to speak against violence and despair. Kalani and I discuss the burden of writing true in a work of fiction, and so much more!Books Recommended in this episode: Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner God Shot, Chelsea Bieker The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, Katya Apekina The Power of the Dog (Film), Jane Campion Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In 2016, the city of Mumbai was blanketed in toxic smog. The source? Fires at the nearby dumping ground of Deonar: the country’s oldest. The Deonar fire became an embarrassment for Mumbai, coming right before an international expo meant to announce the city to international investors and business.Law enforcement immediately blamed scrap dealers who lived alongside the landfill. The pickers are men and women–poor, sometimes very young–who comb the mountain for waste that can be resold: metal, plastic, cloth and, if they’re lucky, gold and jewelry.Saumya Roy’s Mountain Tales: Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings (Profile Books, 2021) looks into the lives of a few of these pickers, as they try to survive among the mountains of trash, as government officials and judges squabble above them trying to figure out what to do. More of Saumya’s work on landfills can be found here.In this interview, we talk about the trash mountains of Deonar, the families that live there, and how they navigate life on the fringes of one of India’s largest cities.Saumya Roy is a journalist and activist based in Mumbai. In 2010, she co-founded the Vandana Foundation to support the livelihoods of Mumbai's poorest micro-entrepreneurs; through this she met the community who depend on Deonar. Her writing has appeared in Forbes India Magazine, wsj.com and Bloomberg News among others, and she has contributed a chapter to Dharavi: The Cities Within (HarperCollins India: 2013), an anthology of essays on Asia's largest slum.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Mountain Tales. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Ghastly Tales from the Yotsuya Kaidan (Chisokudo, 2020) is a newly revised and corrected translation of what is perhaps the most famous and oft told tales of horror in Japan. The legend of Iwa and her curse blurs the lines between fact and fiction as it spins its terrifying tale of ghostly vengeance. For nearly three hundred years in the repertoire of itinerant storytellers, in dramatic performances on stage, and in modern adaptations for anime and film, Iwa’s story has lost none of its intoxicating power over the imagination.Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Stoking Hope (D.X. Varos, 2021), C.K. McDonough’s debut novel, opens in an early 1900’s southwest Pennsylvania coal town. Nineteen-year-old Martha gets pregnant, her father banishes her, and she’s sent to a home for unwed mothers in neighboring West Virginia. She gives birth, and when her daughter Frances is taken from her six years later, Martha agrees to marry her widowed boss with hopes of getting her daughter back. The loveless marriage allows Frances to stay in school and pursue her dream of becoming a chemist, until long-held secrets cut that dream short. Stoking Hope is a family saga that travels through five decades of challenges and heartache with moments of unexpected generosity and joy. The novel culminates with the creation of Kevlar, a life-saving fabric.A Uniontown, Pennsylvania native, C. K. McDonough has a journalism degree from West Virginia University’s Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, and twenty years’ experience in the communications industry. She says writing video scripts and advertising copy is fine but writing a novel is bliss! A self-proclaimed history nerd, Caren has turned her love of research and the written word into Stoking Hope, her first novel. When not writing, Caren is reading, devouring books of every genre. She also loves to ski, hike, and garden but her favorite pastime is hanging with her pets.G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

One of the first members of Albert Samaha’s family introduced in his memoir Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes (Riverhead Books, 2021) is his uncle Spanky: a baggage handler in San Francisco’s airport. Spanky emigrated to the United States from his home country, the Philippines, where he lived a very different life as a rockstar: one of the founding members of VST & Co., one of the country’s most famous bands.That’s merely one of the family members Albert Samaha profiles in Concepcion which traces the lives of generations of Filipinos, and Filipino-Americans, trying to find a better life for themselves and navigating the ups-and-downs of American society and politics.Albert Samaha is an investigative journalist and inequality editor at BuzzFeed News whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly, and the Riverfront Times, among other outlets. A Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient, he is also the author of Never Ran, Never Will: Boyhood and Football in a Changing American Inner City (PublicAffairs: 2018), which was a finalist for the 2019 PEN/ESPN Literary Sports Writing Award and winner of the New York Society Library’s 2019 Hornblower Award.We’re also joined by Helen Li. Helen is a freelance journalist originally based in Asia, and has since relocated to the United States. She joined us previously for our interview with Amish Mulmi on All Roads Lead North.The three of us talk about immigration, U.S.-Filipino relations, class and how that all relates to the immigrant experience: both in general, and regarding the many members of Albert’s family.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Concepcion. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Night Came With Many Stars (Godine 2021) ebbs and flows with people who only take or destroy, balanced by those who give or heal. And everything centers on a family. A Kentucky father treats Carol, his thirteen-year-old motherless daughter like a servant up to the moment he loses her in a poker game. It’s 1933, and Carol’s aching heart begins a novel of stories filled with heartache or joy that weaves back and forth across decades. Carol gets rescued on the side of the road and finds a home with two women who help pregnant teenagers, a woman survives a botched self-induced abortion, a Black family saves a starving white boy, and Carol’s grandson wins money playing poker. In this beautifully-written novel, characters are defined by what they do, not by what they are.Simon Van Booy is the award-winning and best-selling author of fifteen books that include: The Secret Lives of People in Love (short-listed for the Vilcek Prize), Love Begins in Winter (awarded the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award), Everything Beautiful Began After, The Illusion of Separateness, Tales of Accidental Genius, Father's Day, The Sadness of Beautiful Things (short-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize), two novels for children, Gertie Milk & The Keeper of Lost Things and Gertie Milk & The Great Keeper Rescue, along with three anthologies of philosophy, Why We Fight, Why Our Decisions Don't Matter and Why We Need Love. He has has written for The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, National Public Radio, the BBC, and the Chinese edition of ELLE. His books have been translated into many languages and optioned for film. In 2013, he founded Writers for Children, a project which helps young people build confidence in their storytelling abilities through annual awards. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

As Jinny Webber explains in this interview, a “bedtrick” is a literary device through which a character is deceived into spending the night with someone unexpected, trapping that character into an unwanted commitment. William Shakespeare used the device in All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. So it is a fitting title for this novel about the gender-bending that was so much a part of Shakespeare’s comedies—most notably, Twelfth Night. There were practical reasons for having female characters appear as men throughout much of a play, but Webber takes this historical reality and twists it into the essence of her plot.Her main character, Alexander Cooke, is a gifted actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the company where Shakespeare serves as playwright. Sander, as Alexander is known to family and friends, specializes in female roles, which in Elizabethan times could be played only by males—usually pre-pubescent boys. Only a select group of confidants knows that Sander was born Kate Collins, a village girl who fled her home to avoid an unwanted marriage and found her place among the traveling actors of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.When Sander’s brother—Johnny, another member of the acting company—gets his lover pregnant and refuses to marry her, Sander steps in to protect the mother-to-be, Frances, and her unborn child. Although it is illegal for two women to marry in sixteenth-century London, Sander persuades a priest to perform the ceremony. Frances’s position as Elizabeth I’s Silkwoman is secured, but the story of Sander and Frances is just beginning. Like all married couples, they must find a way to live together, even as England itself suffers from unrest and uncertainty caused by the aging queen’s reluctance to name her successor. Filled with quotations from Shakespeare and an insider’s view of his plays, this is a charming story of love triumphing in the midst of intolerance. A longtime college teacher, Jinny Webber has always been fascinated by the theater and society of the Elizabethan era, and in particular its complicated gender roles on stage and off. She has written short stories, screenplays, and novels, of which Bedtrick is the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

A conversation with booksellers from three of the most dynamic, exciting, and community-oriented independent bookstores in the country. Lisa Swayze of Buffalo Street Books (Ithaca, NY), Michelle Malonzo of Changing Hands Bookstore (Tempe, AZ), and Alena Jones of Seminary Co-op Bookstores (Chicago, IL) join me and my special co-host, professor Kasia Bartoszynska for a roundup of their favorite books of the year, and a fascinating look into indie bookstores during the pandemic.Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Mary O’Donoghue speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Safety Advice for Staying Indoors,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Mary talks about crafting a story that explores two points of view within the same Irish family, both stuck inside during a strong storm, both coping with loss. She also discusses her work translating Irish-language poets, her interest in stories that require the reader to connect their own dots, and what it’s like to edit fiction for AGNI while writing her own short stories, too.Mary O’Donoghue is a writer from the west of Ireland living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, and elsewhere. She is fiction editor at AGNI. Read her story in The Common at thecommononline.org/safety-advice-for-staying-indoors.The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag.Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Say hello on Twitter @Public_Emily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature