Briefly Noted

“One of the largest challenges people living with diabetes face is taking care of themselves on a day-to-day basis, which means assuming responsibility that, in many other cases, is left up to the doctor. A Life of Control depicts 40 years of diabetic patients’ stories through the narration of the doctor and nurse practitioners who collected them, acknowledging the often complicated relationship between people living with diabetes and their doctors. A cleverly organized group of stories, which reveals the difficulties, both physical and emotional, that come along with diabetes, but leaves the reader feeling confident about taking control.”

“Hicks revisits U.S. treachery and deceit toward Native Americans in his study of John Ross, the Cherokee chief who for 20 years led his people in defense of their lands. As the population of the fledgling U.S. grew, so too did pressure on the Cherokees to quit their land. Foremost among the advocates of Cherokee removal was Andrew Jackson, who used every power at his command–including eventually the power of the presidency–to see Cherokee land settled by whites. Against this formidable foe stood an unlikely champion, trading post owner John Ross. Only a fraction Cherokee, Ross nevertheless felt a powerful connection to the people and their cause, journeying repeatedly to Washington to plead their case and gain some sort of protection from the depredations of settlers and overzealous politicians. Ultimately defeated, he turned to doing what he could to ease the brutality of the long, bitter, and–for many thousands of Cherokee–fatal march on foot into the West along what came to be called the Trail of Tears. Richly detailed and well-researched, the heartbreaking history unfolds like a political thriller with a deeply human side.”

“Drawing mainly on his own participant-observation experiences, Kelner situates the program in a context of political tourism, giving us new tools with which to understand the visceral, emotional and cognitive impacts on the participants. This provides a sophisticated lens through which to analyze what the Birthright program, and others like it, does, how it accomplishes its goals, what those goals are and why the mechanisms used may also limit its impact.”

“In interviews with 13 black writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nikki Giovanni, and Edwidge Danticat, Golden (Migrations of the Heart) celebrates the pleasure of reading and writing spliced with personal glimpses of the contributors (late reader, straight-D student, ex-prisoner, college professor, illiterate mother, bookstore-owning father) that reveal the extraordinary diversity in literary tastes and habits. Even as many of the writers mention reading the canonical Du Bois, Hughes, Morrison, Ellison, and Baldwin, others are drawn to Madame Bovary and Madeline, Catch-22 and Carlyle. Essayists testify to the inspiration of particular teachers, the encouragement of other writers (two mention Gwendolyn Brooks specifically), and most frequently parental enabling and support. Golden’s introduction is moving and often lyrical; her headnotes are succinct and helpful; her interviewer voice is muted, direct, and consistently directed toward letting the writer speak. ‘I tremble with anticipation each time I open a book,’ writes Golden. ‘I smile with satisfaction when I read the last page.’ Her readers will do the same.”

“The so-called New Negroes of the period between World Wars I and II embodied a new sense of racial pride and upward mobility for the race. Many of them thought that relationships between spouses could be a crucial factor in realizing this dream. But there was little agreement about how spousal relationships should actually function in an ideal New Negro marriage. Shedding light on an often-overlooked aspect of African American social history, Anastasia Curwood explores the public and private negotiations over gender relationships inside marriage that consumed upwardly mobile black Americans between 1918 and 1942. Curwood uses private correspondence between spouses, including her own grandparents, and public writings from leading figures of the era to investigate African Americans’ deepest hopes within their private lives. She follows changes and conflicts in African American marital ideals–and demonstrates how those ideals sometimes clashed with reality. In the process, Curwood shows how New Negro marriages are an especially rich site for assessing the interactions of racial, class, and gender identities.”