Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan's Imperialism, 1895-1945

Mark Driscoll, an associate professor of Japanese and International Studies at the University of North Carolina, here presents a very thorough reassessment of Japanese imperialism of Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. Driscoll focuses his attention on the fringes of the colonized Asian peoples, writing about the Chinese coolies, Korean farmers, Japanese pimps and trafficked women of various Asian nationalities that moved Japan's empire along and provided the behind-the-scenes energy that created such an empire.

How We Got Barb Back: The Story of My Sister’s Reawakening After 30 Years of Schizophrenia

“There is a truism in the mental health community that says that troubled families focus on the sickest member, even welcoming the sickness, to avoid dealing with other problems,” writes Margaret Hawkins on page 77. By this time, I had been fully introduced to her family and was struck by the truth of this statement. Margy’s family story began as so many others did in the mid-twentieth century. Dad is a professional, Mom stays home with the children, three children live in a safe suburb, walk to school, argue with each other, and clamor for more freedom.

The Mikvah Queen

In The Mikvah Queen, the mind of Jane Schwartz bursts with a surprising mixture of Talmudic stories, ‘70s popular culture, and the stream of consciousness impulses of a preteen girl. Author Jennifer Natalya Fink gives us the story of a young woman who turns to her cultural and religious heritage for tools to aid her in approaching adolescence and beginning to understand herself in new ways.

Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

Beautiful Thing is an eponymous title. It is journalist Sonia Faleiro's first book, about the dancers and not-so-secret prostitutes of the “dance bars” of suburban Bombay (Mumbai). These now-illegal establishments offered the tripartite pleasures of alcohol, enticing women, and Bollywood music. Their dancers were “bootiful” young girls, sometimes in their initial teenage years, and well aware that their “booty”—pun unintended—is what defines them, and keeps them fed and clothed.

Untold: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad

Although the wives of the Prophet are held up as examples for Muslim women to follow, little is told about the human beings behind the women on pedestals. We all get told the same stuff—how Khadija supported her husband, Aisha’s work as a jurist and teacher—but the discourse focuses on their actions, not their persons. Tamam Kahn’s Untold aims to tell the human stories of the Prophet’s wives—and succeeds. In the preface of the book, Kahn touches on her intentions: upon meeting strong Muslim women in Morocco, she wanted to tell the stories of strong women, including the back story. Indeed, what makes for a strong woman isn’t just her praiseworthy behavior, but also her imperfections, her humanity.

Best Lesbian Erotica 2010

The photo on this anthology’s cover, of two near identical women in rapturous embrace serves to convey the collection’s reoccurring theme: sex with one’s doppelganger. While the majority of stories in this collection do not adhere to this theme, two of the most unusual tales in this collection do. As one would assume, the stories within this collection often veer outside of the clichéd, cookie-cutter lesbian erotica setups.

Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality, and Popular Culture

Shayne Lee, an Associate Professor of Sociology and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University, sets out to make feminism more “chic” and release black women from the shackles of respectability in his latest book Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality, and Popular Culture.

World and Town

It is really tough to review Gish Jen’s World and Town. The novel is, on the one hand, drawn through an interesting narrative focalizer who often takes on the “wordspeak” of the characters that the narrator observes the representational terrain through. So when the narrative is concentrating on the Cambodian American teenager Sophy, we have the narrator constantly employing words such as like and whatever. Typical teenspeak, we might say. On the other hand, the novel has an exceedingly complex and varied topography in terms of its character webs, where Hattie Kong, one of the ostensible protagonists, is looking after a new family that has moved to the area, a small town in the New England area known as Riverlake (somewhat reminiscent of the continuing movement of ethnic minority populations to such towns as Lowell, MA).

Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women

As we entered our hotel after a day of sightseeing while on vacation in New York City in September 1984, my father lifted me onto his shoulders so I could see what the fuss was all about in the lobby. The lights were bright and there were lots of tall men in suits all around us. With my father’s direction, I could see the backs of the heads of the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates trying to navigate the crowd. I can still picture the back of Geraldine Ferraro’s head; all I remember from that moment was that her hair was blond and in a hairstyle similar to my mother’s.

Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented

Everything good these days seems to be coming out of Brooklyn, so I wasn’t surprised to find that Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, authors of Baked Explorations, have a tremendously successful bakery in Brooklyn that is garnering national attention—not to mention a whole lot of love for from the food-centric blogosphere.

Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade

Who was Sam Steward? Influential professor, ballet enthusiast, S/M practitioner, author of paperback pornos and serious novels, and tattoo artist are just a few of the roles he played in his life. Among his friends were many important cultural and literary figures of the time including Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Thorton Wilder, Ed Hardy, and Alfred Kinsey, yet he remains virtually unknown today.

Best Lesbian Romance 2010

This is a light, sweet collection of short stories featuring women in love with women. I'm thoroughly impressed by the diversity of the stories' characters. Each story is very different from the next. I read about the lives of queer teenagers, figure skater dykes, gay cattle ranchers, and butches racing their cars. There were women of different ages, races, and personalities. There was even a story with vampires and shapeshifters. Some characters were traveling.

The Hole in the Wall

I don’t generally read a lot of children’s literature, but I’m glad I stepped outside my normal routine and read The Hole in the Wall. Sebby and his sister Barbie live in a town that is practically deserted after Stanley Odum starts buying up the land to mine it. Their parents are constantly fighting, their older brother ran off a while back, and they’re pretty much opposites even though they’re twins.

Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC

Much has been written about the courage and tenacity of the male ministers, activists, and young turks of the Civil Rights movement: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael, and others. About the role of women, we know less. Now, six women who were active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) have rectified this omission by compiling their own testimonies and those of their colleagues in Hands on the Freedom Plow. Each of the fifty-two narratives acknowledges the centrality of women’s experience in the struggle for human rights in the southern United States in the late twentieth century. Weighing in at almost 600 pages, these compelling, at times harrowing personal stories recast the history of the Civil Rights movement from the perspective of women who lived it day by day.