World Literature Today最新文献

{"title":"The Dissident by Paul Goldberg (review)","authors":"A. Willemse","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904301","url":null,"abstract":"GROUNDGLASS IS A LYRIC ESSAY collection through which Kathryn Savage grapples with the idea of home and belonging in a world where we have caused these places to become toxic to all life. Savage confronts the grief of losing her father to one such place, and how, through the lens of that experience, she views other toxic places, walking them, taking them in, breathing them in, becoming one with them. Groundglass entangles the reader with a series of reflections upon the land that she and so many others reside upon, yet one that, due to the actions of our society, is now poisoned. She spins these discreet pieces together, creating something greater than its parts. Savage asks us, Can we love what poisons us? Can we willingly drink from the cup, savoring the flavor of it, doing what we can so that whomever we pass the cup to may suffer a lesser fate? Savage takes us along with her to different brownfields and superfund sites, places so polluted that the EPA has declared them some of the worst sites of uncontrolled and/or abandoned toxic waste in the United States. Through the medium of the lyric essay, Savage explores her ideas in a unique way, creating something inexplicably moving through her mixture of memoir and poetry. Having put her heart and soul into Groundglass, she requires the same of her reader. Evoking a broken mirror to reflect a broken world, she invites readers to dwell on who is staring back at them and on what has gone into making them who they are. Savage has achieved something remarkable in Groundglass, something worthy of meditation and deep thought. Sohrab Boldaji Orono, Maine PAUL GOLDBERG The Dissident New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2023. 410 pages.","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":" ","pages":"71 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47748854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Two Poems from Zoque","authors":"Mikeas Sánchez, W. Call","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904267","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"97 1","pages":"38 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41472658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Green Feather Books","authors":"Olivia McCourry","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904310","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":" ","pages":"80 - 80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45261857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When Your Sky Runs into Mine by Rooja Mohassessy (review)","authors":"Tay Stone","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904288","url":null,"abstract":"IT IS AN IMMENSELY personal thing to make a literary debut. Rooja Mohassessy embraces the vulnerability of this journey with a beautifully crafted collection of poetry, jeweled with imagery and phrases that illuminate vivid emotion. The Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies (San Francisco State) first introduced this captivating new release to me, and I was afforded time to converse with the author herself. Mohassessy was born in Iran and, during the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War, was sent abroad permanently to live with extended family. This brief childhood in Iran would later be carefully coaxed out of Mohassessy’s memories with access to her uncle’s striking artwork. Mohassessy was close with her uncle, Bahman Mohassess (1931–2010), a prominent contemporary artist in Iran whose sexuality stigmatized him, forcing him into exile. She lived with him for a time in Rome, where he spent the remainder of his life; she attributes her embraced artistry to their relationship. When Your Sky Runs into Mine is roughly hewn into four segments—seasons—of a life moving forward. Mohassessy’s ekphrastic poems meditate on a personal, surviving portfolio of her uncle’s collages. In the first portion of the collection, there is an acute observation of the suffering and change that accompanies war. The opening poem of this section and the book as a whole, “Iran Politics in First Grade,” creates a nightmarish vignette of uncertainty that, like memories themselves, display the delicate origin of the narrator:","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":" ","pages":"61 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47474394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How to Swallow a Colonizer: Or, What I Learned from Haunani-Kay Trask","authors":"No‘u Revilla","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904265","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"97 1","pages":"34 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43284814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Human Sorrow and Joy (Ren Jian Bei Xi) by Liang Xiaosheng (review)","authors":"J. Yajun","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904305","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"97 1","pages":"74 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42493053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The English Experience by Julie Schumacher (review)","authors":"L. Basu","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904290","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"97 1","pages":"62 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66557009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis (review)","authors":"Y. Yiyi","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904291","url":null,"abstract":"leaves for solo adventures in Europe. In one interaction, Fitger accuses a student who is in fact genuinely ill of exaggerating her health condition. For all his flaws, though, Fitger is capable of remorse and contrition, and he attempts to apologize to his group of students, only to face a major health emergency of his own at the precise moment of his apology. This brings Janet, Fitger’s ex-wife with whom he shares the custody of a dog, to England to salvage the rest of the trip. Fitger’s relationship with his ex-wife is a continuing trope through these novels. It is clear that although divorced, their relationship is far from over. One of the reasons that he has a near-death experience is the fact that Janet may be moving away to another job and taking the dog with her. At the end of this novel, Fitger’s sense of isolation is somewhat diminished by the arrival of Janet to England and the knowledge that she is still going to be at Payne, since her job offer did not materialize. Even though the study-abroad experience did not seem to change the worldviews of any of the students, it does create a community that lasts beyond the time frame of the trip. Through social media, the group of students keep in touch with and support one another. One student begins to work at Payne after graduation. Perhaps this group experience and bonding are offered as a lasting gain of the study-abroad experience. A pair of twins, who are art majors, end up living in London permanently. However, the implicit critique of the study-abroad experience offered in the novel is that it is often an overwhelming experience for faculty, who are not adequately supported by the studyabroad office and often have to negotiate unpredictable situations without any prior training. Of course, this is great material for comedy. Although there are many excellent writers of the campus novel, Schumacher’s contribution to this genre is unique because of her ability to use familiar genres like the recommendation letter and undergraduate response essay in surprising ways as powerful tools for character development and situational comedy. Even though she depicts many problems in higher education through the character of a somewhat out of touch, bumbling protagonist, Jason Fitger, she also imparts on him several redeeming qualities, particularly his genuine compassion for students. In a similar vein, even though students are presented as self-absorbed and only going through the motions of higher education, they often exhibit leadership and maturity; one student’s expertise in EMT skills saves Fitger’s life. They also show remarkable care for one another, helping one student facing writer’s block to finally complete the final course assignment. This particular novel, among the others Julie Schumacher has written, ends on a more hopeful note with the image of Jason and Janet caring for a young puppy a few years after bickering over custody of their dog. Lopamudra Basu University of Wisconsin–Stout","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":" ","pages":"63 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43195236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Downtime by Gary Soto (review)","authors":"Ron Mcfarland","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904306","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"97 1","pages":"75 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42301888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Forest Brims Over by Maru Ayase (review)","authors":"Erik R. Lofgren","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a904292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a904292","url":null,"abstract":"both hard steps on the road to discovering the meaning of life and self-existence. Like Kevin’s desert-island book The Great Gatsby, Girlfriend on Mars tells “a story ostensibly about love but really about soul-crushing decadence. Ostensibly about decadence, but really about love.” Through this dark rom-com, Willis illustrates the eternal propositions of human beings— love, freedom, and faith—against the context of an absurd capitalist society and prophesies a new promised land: since it is unsuitable for survival on frozen Mars, we might as well turn attention to our own garden and explore the inner universe. Yang Yiyi Nanjing Normal University","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"97 1","pages":"64 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42612833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}