Q & A

Chantha Nguon’s Slow Noodles chronicles her life growing up in Cambodia and her family’s flight to Vietnam to escape persecution under Lon Nol, before Year Zero and the terror of the Khmer Rouge. The book also describes the comfort of the delicious food made by Nguon’s mother, her sister, and later, by her. Nguon invites readers to understand Cambodian culture through both the pain of the past and the delicious flavors that fed hope for the future. Nguon, along with her daughter Clara Kim and co-author Kim Green, talked with Chapter 16 about how the memoir came to be. 

In Our Secret Society, Tanisha Ford plumbs the inner workings of the Civil Rights Movement through the complicated life of a dazzling socialite named Mollie Moon. Ford will discuss Our Secret Society at the University of Memphis on February 5.

White Property, Black Trespass by Nashville scholar and activist Andrew Krinks examines mass incarceration and racial hierarchies through a spiritual lens, with a perspective rooted in the belief that “there is life beyond the present order of exploitation, dispossession, and death.”

In Before Elvis, acclaimed writer Preston Lauterbach digs into the deep culture of Black Memphis, finding the origins of the superstar’s music and style.

Immigration, Policy and the People of Latin America, a new book by attorney Bryce Ashby and historian Michael LaRosa, combines history, policy, and personal profiles to illuminate the diverse experiences of migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Colombia.