Book Reviews

Pushing against narratives of Appalachia that include only white, patriarchal, and heteronormative characterizations, the authors collected in Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future hope to open up new spaces of possibility for envisioning the region.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s latest book, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, offers a veritable smorgasbord of flavors and a multi-course menu of memories. Nezhukumatathil will appear at Novel in Memphis on May 4, and she’ll be in conversation with Margaret Renkl at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 7.

With The Backyard Bird Chronicles, novelist Amy Tan has put fiction aside in favor of drawing, observing, and pondering the multitude of birds that find refuge and refreshment at her California home. Tan will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 10.

Stan Isaacs stood at the forefront of a group of offbeat sports journalists in the early 1960s, at the start of an influential career that spanned half a century. A decade after Isaacs’s death, Memphis historian Aram Goudsouzian has masterfully edited Out of Left Field: A Sportswriter’s Last Word, a collection that works as both memoir and a showcase of great sportswriting. Goudsouzian will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on April 29.

Brendan Greaves’ Truckload of Art: the Life and Work of Terry Allen gives the lowdown on the esteemed country musician whose art has been exhibited around the globe.