Under a south-side el station, in a space small enough to blink and miss, there’s a door to a world where Black girls can live the fullness of an impossible, earthly bliss. Suppose you listen close enough, past the sound of the ghost train speeding by. You might hear Black girls laughing, crunching down on […]
Category: Book Review
Posted inBook Review
Inside Ling Ma’s darkly funny fiction
I don’t usually get ensnared by a book. But Ling Ma’s short story collection, Bliss Montage, was different. I started reading it Thanksgiving morning and literally could not stop. There was something urgent in Ma’s writing, something that demanded full attention. It might be her distinctive voice—wry, witty, relatable. Or her sentences—carefully crafted, but not […]
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The ten best Chicago books of 2022
Has there ever been a better year for funny books about Chicago? Thanks to a pithy rap memoir, an absurdist satire of the mayor’s office, and a pair of comedic novels, 2022 offered Chicago readers a refreshing dose of literary laughs. Per usual, I’ve limited this list to books with a strong focus on the […]
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Rethinking equity in the built environment
The house next door to mine was torn down. My neighbors don’t quite remember the year, but the resident local historian, Maurice, who has lived on the block since the late 60s, was shipped off to Vietnam and, upon his return in 1972, the house had vanished. The product of “slum clearance” on Chicago’s west […]
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Modeling vulnerability
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” —Zora Neale Hurston This quote has been on my mind recently. It is in the epigraph of a recent read: Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, a title which also appeared in the acknowledgments of the book at […]
Posted inLit Feature
Living on luck
Westley Heine never dreamed of singing for change on the streets of Chicago but life sometimes offers only stark choices. Getting by as a musician, artist, or writer is uphill barefoot through snowdrifts on a good day. Add a recession, a relationship going sour, some substance abuse, and a generous helping of self-doubt and few […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Performance anxiety
“The people who pick up flyers and show up to free classes tend to be restless searchers,” John tells his students, after remarking that there must be something wrong with them if they’re here. When one student takes offense, John assures her he means this as a compliment. This scene takes place early on in […]
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The extraordinary tragedy of daily life
Wolfgang Amadeus Aleksandr “Aleks” Fa has a lot of baggage. The protagonist of Joe Meno’s new novel Book of Extraordinary Tragedies has that name, after all—which also serves as a clue about what burdens the young man. Born into a perfectionist but impoverished Bosnian/Croat/Polish family in Evergreen Park on the border with Chicago’s south side, […]
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Mount Chicago tries hard, but fails
A novelist, writing professor, and covert comedian named Solomon Gladman wakes up one morning in Chicago, sometime in 2022. He and his French-born wife, Daphne Bourbon (would she be named Siobhan Single-Malt were she Scots-Irish?), plan to meet Gladman’s parents and sisters downtown for brunch. But Gladman begs off because of a hemorrhoid flare-up and […]
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The ghosts of the drowned villages
“Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink,” Coleridge’s sailor complains in the famous 1798 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The mariner is talking about the plight on his ship, but he may as well be describing the city of New York. That year, a yellow fever epidemic led to an outcry over […]
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It’s not just personal, it’s policy
Rates of suicide have skyrocketed since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and mental illness is more prevalent today than ever before. However, the societal causes of mental illness are still not widely recognized, so people who suffer mental illness are often treated as though the problem is entirely their own to solve. A new novel, released […]
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Method and madness
“My dear boy, why don’t you try acting?” Laurence Olivier’s quippy response to Dustin Hoffman’s story of how he stayed up three nights to fully inhabit the sleepless state of his character in the 1976 thriller Marathon Man may be the most oft-cited example of the absurd ends Method acting came to in America. But […]
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True biz? There’s a lot to learn in Sara Nović’s new book.
“Eyeth—get it? In the Deaf storytelling tradition, utopia is called Eyeth because it’s a society that centers the eye, not the ear, like here on Earth.” That’s the opener to “Ear vs. Eye: Deaf Mythology,” one of the many brief lessons sprinkled between the chapters of Sara Nović’s realistic fiction novel True Biz, released March […]
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Sweat equity, radical politics, and gentrification
Before Pilsen welcomed gallery spaces and Little Village became La Villita, the city’s Mexican population fought to make their voices heard and for places to live. Georgetown University historian Mike Amezcua chronicles this decades-long struggle in his compelling Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification, published in February by University of […]
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The business of circus
Balancing Acts: Unleashing the Power of Creativity in Your Life and Work (HarperCollins Leadership, January 2022, $28.99) by Daniel Lamarre is a book for those who need creative inspiration. Part business memoir and part self-help/motivational, the appeal of this book will land squarely on the aspiring businessman who needs an icon. It not only celebrates […]