Writers—even if working in fiction—are often concerned about what is happening in the larger world. Though it takes time to see a book through from manuscript to hitting the shelves, the ones featured here have a finger on the pulse of our contemporary moment and take time to explore the deeper nuances of human connections.
From the tragedies of American history and the terrors of dictatorship, to reality television’s roots in home video to connections with spirits, ancestors, and families, these works embody the human condition. People are weird, people are mean, people are complicated, and people are beautiful.
Every time I compile a list, there are so many books left out. This is only a small sample of what small presses are publishing. Still, these titles are an invitation to consider the world we live in, our historical contexts, and how reading can offer insights into our own lives.
The Feminist Press: The Gloomy Girl Variety Show by Freda Epum
In short, episodic essays and images largely of the author’s own visual artwork, Freda Epum has crafted a memoir that not only interrogates her identity as both a Nigerian American and as someone who has spent significant time in treatment for a life-threatening illness, while shaking up the idea of what memoir can be. Gloomy Girl is set against a backdrop of makeover and house-flipping shows—and the idea of houses appears thematically in the book, including opening with the unfortunately common Millennial experience of home-buying being out of reach. There is an effective contrast between televisions blaring popular broadcasts of a particular era—Maury, MTV’s The Real World, the Kardashian heyday—and Epum’s self-portraits and self-examination, making meaning out of fragmentation. A culturally relevant and emotionally impactful book.
Dzanc Books: In Our Midst by Nancy Jensen
After the First World War, Nina and Otto Aust emigrate from Germany and settle in a small Indiana town. They raise their two sons, run a restaurant, and live in community with their neighbors. Yet, as World War II breaks out, Germans by birth like the Austs come under suspicion. In 1941, the restaurant is seized and Nina is arrested, and most of their friends and neighbors turn their backs. Haunted by the threat of deportation to Hitler’s Europe and with their lives thrown into disarray, the family fights to stay connected, even as the sons and Otto are placed in separate internment camps. The Austs are tight, bound by their love of music and their genuine affection for one another, but as their situation becomes desperate, Nina must make a terrifying choice to reunite the family. Beautiful and chilling.
Kallisto Gaia Press: Alternative Facts by Emily Greenberg
Probing cultural touchpoints from Paris Hilton to B.F. Skinner, from Kellyanne Conway to Thomas Pynchon, and from The Tonight Show to Mevlüt Altıntaş, Greenberg fictionalizes the inner lives of figures who have contributed to the American cultural zeitgeist for better or, more frequently, for worse. In these seven stories, Greenberg utilizes press releases, mathematical equations, and diner menus to create a texture in the pages that mirrors the noise, disconnect, and the sense of just continuing on even when the world feels terrible that encapsulates much of our modern experience. Despite some of the absurd situations and clear satire, there is a disarming seriousness in Greenberg’s stories. Thoughtful and compelling.
Tin House: The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole
In Ibandan, Nigeria, instead of marrying the man she loves, Esther is coerced into a union with another man; and while the marriage does not last, the bond with her daughter, Amina, does. Esther has spent much of her life searching, and when she visits a traditional Yoruba iyanifa, the woman cautions Esther that Amina must never go to America, where danger awaits. Yet, Esther, who was constrained by convention in her own life, is loath to restrict Amina—Esther believes the iyanifa’s prophecy, but she also believes in her daughter Amina, who moves to New Orleans to make her own way. As a hurricane bears down on the city, Amina is evacuated to the Superdome and disconnected from her local family with no way to reach her mother. This multi-generational novel is an insightful testament to the power of bonds between mothers and daughters.
Monkfish: My Mother in Havana by Rebe Huntman
Before Rebe Huntman takes a month-long trip to Cuba to learn about and research deities and saints representing mother figures, she has already had a career as a dancer and as a teacher, and has raised her son on her own after the dissolution of a marriage entered into young. While Huntman has ideas about what she is searching for in Cuba, which includes reaching for connection between herself and the mother she lost at only nineteen, she approaches her journey with an openness, rather than an agenda, and the result is an exploration of memory, spirituality, loss, the relationship to the body, and to people who have passed to the other side. The idea of the veil that lifts between life and death is thematic to this memoir, and one of Huntman’s true talents as a writer is the grounding she brings to the spiritual. Emotionally compelling.
Schaffner Press: The Lives and Deaths of Véronique Bangoura by Tierno Monénembo, translated by Ryan Chamberlain
Atou is barely a teenager when she murders her father, a police officer who raped her, and then flees. In the slums around Conkary, the capital of Guinea, she is taken in by a group of women and their oft-drunk matriarch; they do not judge Atou. As she grows up with the women, learning how to hustle tourists and diasporic Guiana’s who see the country as only a place to flout their wealth, Atou finds a home of sorts. When she is in trouble and leaves Guinea for France, she adopts the identity of Véronique Bangoura, and begins a friendship with an older woman, Madame Corre, who claims to know her—and has her own connection to Guinea. Set during the terrifying twenty-six year dictatorship of Sekou Toure, the novel addresses generational trauma, abuse, and what it means to live in exile. Gripping.
Regal House Publishing: Play, With Knives by Jeanette Horn
A dramatic troupe crosses the Midwest by train, hitting stops like Lisbon, Kansas and Milan, Nebraska to perform for sparse audiences in once-opulent theaters now in disrepair. The lead, Ava, is married to another actor, but he has left her for bigger stages. Her budding relationship with set-designer Edgar makes her wonder about her estranged husband and what their status really is. The leader of the troupe, Fallon, writes the company’s original plays. As the train rattles from stop to stop, elements from Fallon’s scripts start appearing in the actors’ off-stage lives. Fact and fiction muddle: the characters in the novel blur with the characters they play on stage. Play, With Knives is an inventive book which breaks the third wall via readers seeing everything behind the curtain. Horn incisively captures the comedy, the tragedy, and humanity of backstage and beyond.
Sagging Meniscus Press: The Summer We Ate Off the China by Devin Jacobsen
A young teen impregnates herself with the sperm captured in a condom from her older sister’s boyfriend; a man prints and hangs three hundred flyers to locate a woman he believes is a love at first sight missed connection; and in the title story, a woman trained as a lawyer but working as a server returns to her Scottish village for a family friend she wants to help but cannot. In this wide-ranging collection, the stories move from the American South to Europe and are knitted together with an indelible sense of longing. The characters have wants and needs, yet they are often as dissatisfied as the tourists who visit the Dalí Museum in Florida, and leave in a state of bewilderment. In The Summer We Ate Off The China, Jacobsen captures the human impulse to hope, and our inevitable disappointments.
Clash Books: VHS by Chris Campanioni
An auto-fiction pastiche of video recordings, VHS splices the experience of being the child of political exiles from two different countries into an impressionistic book that reads like a YouTube algorithm that truly knows what you want to see next. Not exactly a novel and not exactly a collection, Campanioni crafts everything from getting a new pair of glasses to swiping a metro card into a seminal experience. Indeed, these are the moments that make up life; he captures the sense we’ve all had when doing something ordinary—like riding the train, or wondering if it’s better to be a back or a belly sleeper—and it suddenly, because of the right light or the perfect background music, feels like a movie. Deft, poetic, and surprising.
Santa Fe Writers Project: The Death and Life of August Sweeney by Samuel Ashworth
Dr. Maya Zhu is an ambitious young pathologist who—much to the dismay of her Chinese immigrant parents—has chosen autopsy as her specialization. When August Sweeney, a man for whom the only thing larger than his body is his reputation as a celebrity chef, comes across her table, Dr. Zhu is immediately interested professionally. Yet, just as he was a complicated person in life, August creates complications even after his death, and Dr. Zhu’s autopsy becomes personal, as she realizes she and August are connected in surprising ways. This novel is written with the lushness of a decadent meal and the sharp precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, making it both sensory and exacting. In telling the story of August Sweeney’s life and death, Ashworth creates a world that is as outlandishly raucous as it is deeply personal. Utterly unique.
Ig Publishing: The Queer Allies Bible by NV Gay
In this guide for anyone who has questions about or actively practices allyship, NV Gay provides a reference that answers questions some people might be afraid—or not know how to—ask. The book is contextualized around both Gay’s own experience with gender identity, and in the lived experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community. Topics include negotiating religion, managing assumptions, creating inclusive spaces, and handling discriminatory remarks. Taken alongside the outrageous developments in the current political landscape of the US—for example, the misgendering or non-renewal of passports for trans people—Gay’s measured tone and fact-based writing is welcome, useful, and compelling.
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