And They Said It Wouldn’t Sell
I haven’t read Eats, Shoots And Leaves, but I love the idea that a topic isn’t best-seller material until it becomes one. Look out for new grammar books in the same style to pop up in a bookstore near you.
I haven’t read Eats, Shoots And Leaves, but I love the idea that a topic isn’t best-seller material until it becomes one. Look out for new grammar books in the same style to pop up in a bookstore near you.
The new issue of Mizna is up, with poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye and Suheir Hammad, and fiction by Laila Halaby. Mizna is also hosting oud musician Simon Shaheen in Minnesota (!) in March.
Alice Walker is in to Cuba to promote the Spanish translation of her novel Meridian. And no, amigos, she’s not meeting with Fidel, so settle down.
How can disadvantage persist so long after most laws, minds and practices have changed? Thomas M. Shapiro argues in this sober and authoritative book that we should look to disparities of wealth for the answer. Whites are wealthier than African Americans, and whites’ wealth advantage is much bigger than their advantages in either income or education (the point of Shapiro’s earlier study, Black Wealth/White Wealth, co-authored with Melvin Oliver). Whites start out ahead because they inherit more from their parents, and America’s racially segregated housing markets boost whites’ home equities, while depressing those of African-American families. Shapiro, a professor of sociology at Brandeis, takes readers through the implications of these inequities and concludes that African Americans will not gain significant ground in the wealth divide until inheritance and housing policies change.
The Washington Post reviews Shapiro’s The Hidden Cost of Being African American.
To Americans, a bestseller in Canada is like a tree falling in the forest. Unless it’s written by Margaret Atwood, they don’t hear it and it doesn’t exist. A beautiful novel by Francis Itani followed that parochial rule last fall. No. 1 in Canada, “Deafening” barely made a sound on the other side of the border. This baffling literary disconnect between the world’s two most connected nations is about to be tested again. Guy Vanderhaeghe’s “The Last Crossing” was selected as one of the best books of the year by Canada’s major newspapers. The Canadian Booksellers Association chose it as their favorite novel of 2002, and readers there have sent it to the top of the bestseller list. If there’s any literary justice, any thirst for adventure, any love for a great Western, then “The Last Crossing” won’t just cross the Canadian border, but shatter it.
The Christian Science Monitor reviews The Last Crossing.
The BBC finds it useful to let its readers know that author Helen Fielding just had a baby. We are standing by for news on who Julian Barnes is dating, what Mark Haddon is wearing, and who’s doing Audrey Nifenegger’s makeup.