Elevate Difference

Reviews of University of Michigan Press

Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing

We live in an age in which the memoir has become the preeminent genre. Writers of the contemporary memoir are not required to be a “somebody” or famous personality before publication. This is the age of the “nobody” memoir—the writings of individuals who tell stories of lives that in previous ages would have remained untold.

An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots

In An Angle of Vision, we are presented with a series of extraordinarily well-written essays centered upon one of the most taboo topics in U.S. culture: class. More specifically, we are presented with first-person, female-centered examinations of two groups who are steadily disappearing from both the public discourse and the popular culture of the United States: the poor and working class.

The Songs of Blind Folk: African American Musicians and the Cultures of Blindness

Terry Rowden’s book is that rarest of gems, a work of critical theory that should appeal to a broad audience and that contributes simultaneously, in an original and exciting way, to the fields of Disability Studies, Ethnomusicology, and African American Studies.

Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC

Sometimes when I read autobiographies and biographies of revered artists, pioneers, and notables, I often become absorbed in their beginnings as if they were happening in the present moment and their endings as if they had just passed. This is done easily when the writer blends eloquence with knowledge as is the case with Karen Chilton.
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