Book Review Archives - Chicago Reader

covers shows a color illustration of a torso wearing a white t-shirt and red flannel shirt. the t-shirt contains the title in black type.

Finding poetry in flyover country

by Kerry Cardoza September 8, 2023September 8, 2023

“A writer of nonfiction discovers their own authority by telling. The good essays tell. They pronounce. They manifesto. They ask and wonder and feint and layer.” So proclaims author Sonya Huber, in a few-years-old article for LitHub, about unlearning long-accepted rules of writing. Huber puts these proclamations into action in her forthcoming essay collection, Love […]

The cover is bright blue with black type with a yellow drop shadow. In the center is a large organ triangle, with a man and woman standing at the center, their backs to us, and their arms around each other.

Arts & Culture

The couple at the center of Wellness are in love with an illusion

by Atavia Reed September 7, 2023September 7, 2023

On a bone-chilling night in 1993, Elizabeth Augustine stands in a cramped Ukrainian Village venue sipping cheap beer, counting down the seconds until her date with a boy she has a razor-thin connection with can finally end. As the aforementioned man, with middle-parted hair and John Lennon glasses drones on—because she may like music, but […]

The purplish grey cover shows a circular gold portal opening into an emerald city, showing the Sears Tower at the center. the title is in green text and the author name is In yellow.

Arts & Culture

I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times follows its road home

by Reema Saleh September 7, 2023September 4, 2023

With vivid imagery and a staggering wit, Taylor Byas paints portraits of her childhood on the south side and the city in warm hues. I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times leads her quest for self-discovery with grief, longing, and the late-night monologuing of a seasoned writer. With poems modeled after the likes of Patricia […]

In this black and white photo, a Black man stands center stage aboard a ship, a captain's wheel is to his left. He is surrounded by women bearing a stick, white men with guns, and other players.

Arts & Culture

‘Because we are black, we are making black music’

by Hannah Edgar September 6, 2023September 4, 2023

Out of their place. Out of their depth. Out of their minds. Composer and researcher George Lewis has lost track of the times he’s heard those tropes lobbed, implicitly or explicitly, at Black composers of classical music. These artists, he argues, too often slip through the cracks in academic and cultural discourse: They’re shunted to […]

Cover is half white, half red with black type. It shows two silhouetted figures with long shadows, one standing in the white and the other in the red.

Arts & Culture

‘Parole presupposes that change—a correction—is possible.’

by Shawn Mulcahy September 6, 2023September 1, 2023

Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia, opened its doors in 1829. Often considered the world’s first true penitentiary, its hallmark six-spoked, wheel-shaped design radiates outward from a central tower, where guards could keep watch over some 500 prisoners. The prison’s creators believed that, through penitence and solitude (now widely considered a form of torture), people would […]

Book cover is bright pink with white and yellow text. There are doodles around the cover and on the right there is a handful of colorful gel pens held together with a scrunchie.

Books Issue

For all the 90s church kids

by Emily McClanathan September 5, 2023September 1, 2023

I didn’t expect a book with chapter titles like “Nothing’s Funnier Than Naked” and “Welcome to Ass Planet” to make me tear up on public transit, but Lillian Stone’s Everybody’s Favorite: Tales From the World’s Worst Perfectionist accomplished this feat. Amid the bodily humor, cringey anecdotes, and irreverent one-liners, the Chicago-based comedy author and reporter […]

The author sits at a table, holding up a copy of her book and smiling at the camera. She wears a pink shirt. The table holds copies of her book and a vase of flowers.

Arts & Culture

Teatime with Lisa Low

by Luz Magdaleno Flores August 24, 2023August 24, 2023

On the warm summer night of Lisa Low’s recent chapbook release, I trekked on foot from Pilsen to Taylor Street’s Living Water Tea House, where many poets from Chicago and beyond came together to drink tea and celebrate the release of Crown for the Girl Inside. The Chicago-based writer’s poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, […]

illustration of a whale's head with mouth open and something falling into it

Arts & Culture

In the belly of the beast

by Janet Potter August 7, 2023August 16, 2023

Daniel Kraus’s Whalefall, which comes out on August 8, is a scientifically accurate thriller about a teenage boy swallowed by a whale—an idea that originated on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago. In November 2020, Kraus and two friends met for a socially distanced hangout at the Jarvis Avenue beach, where they discussed a […]

A black and white photo showing Miss Major with a platinum blowout. To the left is a glass storefront with a Neon sign reading Escape. She holds a mannequin head depicting herself.

Arts & Culture

The mother of a movement

by H. Melt July 5, 2023July 5, 2023

It’s increasingly rare that a day goes by, at the bookstore where I work, without someone asking for books on trans culture and stories reflecting our lives. People are always searching for literature as a guide on their path to freedom. Talking with trans youth about their days at school, recommending books to loving family […]

Cover image is a black and white photograph showing a small Black girl sitting on the shoulders of a young Black man. Other people can be seen in the back and foregrounds. The subjects are dressed in the clothes of the 1960s. The title is in bright blue text.

Arts & Culture

Rediscovering Frank London Brown

by Reema Saleh June 27, 2023July 12, 2023

This Is Life: Rediscovered Short Fiction by Frank London Brown collects the forgotten writing of a Chicago Renaissance writer at his height, showcasing vivid vignettes of Black life in the city 60 years ago. Published this June by From Beyond Press, This Is Life compiles Brown’s flash fiction written for the Chicago Daily Defender in […]

The book cover is yellow with a sepia-toned illustration of Smith's face. Smith wears a suit and glasses.

Arts & Culture

Wendell Smith’s legacy

by Max Blaisdell June 27, 2023June 27, 2023

For the first time in more than 50 years, Chicago’s avid sports fandom can refamiliarize themselves with the insightful and generous writings of Wendell Smith, a pioneering sports journalist who served as the first Black president of the Chicago Press Club, in The Wendell Smith Reader, edited by Michael Scott Pifer. Smith is most known […]

The author stands in front of the courtyard of a brick apartment building. She has dark hair and wears glasses, red lipstick, and a black short-sleeved sweater.

Arts & Culture

The limits of solidarity

by Mai Tran June 23, 2023June 27, 2023

I’ve often described my advocacy and communications work as “translation,” learning a person’s story and molding it into a form—a news article, an op-ed, an action toolkit, or an application—in an attempt to fulfill needs by way of words. Translation can build connections and prompt material change, but it can also exclude and yield toward […]

Book Review

Family secrets with a touch of the supernatural

by Emily McClanathan June 22, 2023June 26, 2023

In Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home, a new collection of seven short stories by Ana Castillo, family secrets inspire several characters to travel to Mexico and retrace their relatives’ footsteps. Sometimes the answers they find feel like “flying sacks loaded with surprises that hit you right in the chest and [leave] you gasping for air.” Others […]

The cover is black with purple text. It shows a close up, blurry image of a building in the background, seen at night with yellow lit windows.

Arts & Culture

Born inside a vulnerable brutalism

by Maxwell Rabb June 19, 2023June 14, 2023

Like a brutalist architect, Toby Altman is working with unrefined materials. In Discipline Park, his second full-length poetry collection, Altman choreographs a dynamic dance between sentimentality and brutalism by documenting the wounds of architecture—fixating on his birthplace: Chicago’s demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital. “Wagering that concrete or plywood might serve as the entrails of the world,” […]

The author is onstage at her book event at the Mundelein Center for Fine and Performing Arts. She is turned to smile at the crowd with her hands under her chin. Irby wears glasses and red lipstick. Her new book is propped on a book stand on a coffee table on the stage.

Arts & Culture

Samantha Irby is midwest fancy

by Erin Toale June 8, 2023June 14, 2023

Samantha Irby, the midwest’s most lovable misanthrope, triumphantly returns with her fourth collection of personal essays, Quietly Hostile. Spoiler alert: just like the other three, it is both reliably and painfully funny. The prolific author has churned out four hilarious books in ten years in addition to amassing a growing number of television writing credits […]