Chapter 16 - Part 88

The Worthless Servant

Novelist Ann Patchett takes a ride with Charlie Strobel, Nashville advocate for the homeless

By Ann Patchett | May 20, 2022

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Nashville’s Room in the Inn serves individuals experiencing homelessness by providing a winter shelter program, recuperative care, education and workforce development, and solutions for permanent housing. In the summer of 2012, novelist Ann Patchett made the rounds with Room in the Inn’s founder, Father Charles Strobel, and wrote an essay about the experience, which appears in Not Less Than Everything: Catholic Writers on Heroes of Conscience, From Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero, edited by Catherine Wolff.

“To See Small Fish in High Branches”

Book Excerpt: Small Fish in High Branches

By Annette Sisson | May 19, 2022

Nashvillian Annette Sisson’s first book of poetry, Small Fish in High Branches, was released this month by Glass Lyre Press. Her poems have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Nashville Review, and One. Her chapbook, A Casting Off, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019

Southbound

Imani Perry explores the South’s centrality to the American story

By Kim Green | May 18, 2022

Imani Perry’s South to America weaves history, travelogue, and memoir to argue that the U.S. South is not a place apart, but central to the American story.

Defining One’s Place in the World

A rare map points the way to a dreamlike — yet deadly — destination

By Tina Chambers | May 17, 2022

When a young woman’s estranged father is found dead, her investigation into a seemingly insignificant vintage map in his possession leads her down a path fraught with riddles, conspiracies, secrets, and lies. Peng Shepherd’s The Cartographers is an otherworldly thriller that will appeal to fans of V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library.

Faction Jackson

David S. Brown places Andrew Jackson in the partisan politics of his time

By Aram Goudsouzian | May 16, 2022

In The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson, biographer David S. Brown explains the world that shaped the seventh president of the United States, while illustrating how Jackson’s brand of raucous, divisive politics changed the new American nation.

Sex, God, and Politics

By recounting historic debates over sex and morality, R. Marie Griffith explains our political divides

By Aram Goudsouzian | May 13, 2022

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Moral Combat, Chattanooga native R. Marie Griffith tells the history of the twentieth-century United States through religious debates over issues of sex and morality, exploring such topics as birth control, sex education, LGBT rights, and sexual harassment.

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker