Does history repeat itself? Or does it rhyme? These books from authors with New England ties remind us the current moment is just a reprise and a remix of things humanity has seen and endured before. I hope these spring reads inspire hope, resilience and action.
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‘Reprise‘
By Golden
March 25
Golden is back with an incisive sophomore collection of poetry and photography, equal parts tender wound — “& When They Come for Me (Reprise) — and live wire (“Every Day is a Chance to Revolt”). As a Black gender-nonconforming artist tired of history’s repetition, Golden’s appropriately titled “Reprise” is a bloody-knuckled vice grip of joy and liberation despite America’s overwhelming yet predictable oppression seeping through the collection’s red pages. Golden’s creative experimental poetic forms are a rewarding and immersive 360-degree experience. I highly recommend reading side-by-side with “A Dead Name That Learned How to Live” to explore the rich callbacks, poignant updates and bone-chilling reprisals. With intimate portraits spanning from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to bedrooms across America, the words and photographs of Boston’s 2020-2021 artist-in-residence demand to be felt.
Golden celebrates the “Reprise” book launch at Beacon Hill Books & Cafe on April 11. Poets Imani Davis, Aurielle Marie and Zenaida Peterson will also be in attendance.
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‘The Lilac People‘
By Milo Todd
April 29
This beautifully wrought historical novel about a trans man’s resilient survival through the promising Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany to the still-oppressive Allied occupation is a poignant reminder that history may not repeat itself, but it surely rhymes. In 1932, Bertie and his girlfriend Sofie live in Berlin’s thriving LGBTQIA+ community. But this utopia crumbles as Hitler rises to power, Nazis burn research about gender identity and work promoting queer rights from the Institute for Sexual Science and persecute queer people, forcing Bertie and Sofie into hiding on an isolated farm. Yet even as the war comes to a close, the Allies continue to jail queer individuals and Bertie and Sofie must make an impossible choice. Do they continue living in a country hellbent on their inhumane imprisonment, or should they hide their authentic trans identities to flee to the United States? Author Milo Todd paints a rich portrait of this often-overlooked period of queer history with protagonists who might be fictional, but represent the tenacity and hope of queer individuals past and present. Todd is a Massachusetts Cultural Council grantee and an instructor at the GrubStreet Center for Creative Writing in Boston.
Crystal Ballroom in Davis Square is hosting “A Night at the Eldorado” in honor of Milo Todd’s book on April 29 with dance performances, musicians, hoops veils and more. The author will be in conversation with Julie Carrick Dalton at Porter Square Books Boston Edition on May 1.
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‘Spent: A Comic Novel‘
By Alison Bechdel
May 20
Will the real Alison Bechdel please stand up? Bechdel is famous for graphic memoirs like “Fun Home,” but her latest work “Spent” is a graphic novel — despite the close resemblances to her life in Vermont. Bechdel’s fictionalized version of herself is also a lesbian cartoonist who garnered fame through queer comics and critically acclaimed autobiographies. Paralyzed by her professional success, the protagonist wants her next project to help people live more ethically in a modern society plagued by climate change and on the brink of civil war. As long as she doesn’t get distracted by her girlfriend’s pygmy goat sanctuary/influencer career, her friends’ foray into polyamory, or the absurdities of late-stage capitalism. This tongue-in-cheek graphic novel is a pointed commentary on how privileged people who claim to want to lead the revolution can easily opt out of doing the real work.
Alison Bechdel will discuss her graphic novel “Spent” at the Harvard Book Store on May 22.
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‘By the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine‘
By Danielle Leavitt
May 20
When an invasion is knocking on your door, do you flee or fight? As the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance, postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Danielle Leavitt examines the realities of war for seven individuals starting from the first winter and now entering the second spring. (Although, Leavitt argues, the war “really started” in 2014 when Ukraine asserted its independence from Russia.) Vitaly had just opened his own coffee shop when a rocket split his apartment in two. Maria is terrified for the life of her baby and her husband, who felt it was his duty to join the resistance. Through the perspectives of Vitaly, Yulia, Tania, Maria, Anna, Polina and their families, Leavitt is really telling the story of more than 100 years of Ukrainian history and dissent.
Danielle Leavitt will be at Harvard University for a book talk on April 30. The event is in-person and online. Advanced registration is required to attend online.
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‘Harmattan Season‘
By Tochi Onyebuchi
May 27
Even in a fantastical reimagining of West Africa teetering between colonial control and Indigenous resistance, there’s something comfortingly familiar about a hard boiled private eye who is reluctant to heed the call of adventure. When a bleeding young woman stumbles into Boubacar’s doorway and then vanishes, he becomes drawn into a tangled web of political corruption, supernatural powers and personal reckoning. The Harmattan winds churn dust through streets riddled with mysterious bombings and unexplained dead bodies hovering in the air. As Boubacar descends into the city’s seedy underbelly in search of answers, he’s forced to examine his own role in the clash between the Indigenous people and the French oppressors. Whose future is he fighting for? Author Tochi Onyebuchi, winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction and a Yale University alumnus, is a virtuoso of creating unique speculative worlds drawn from West African history and mythology that wholly immerse readers in his exhilarating stories.
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‘Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change‘
By Cristina Jiménez
May 27
Cristina Jiménez is the co-founder of United We Dream, an organization fighting for the dignity and fair treatment of immigrants in the U.S. that helped usher in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy in 2012. “Dreaming of Home” is a memoir following Jiménez’s journey as an undocumented Ecuadorian immigrant who became one of the country’s most well-known advocates for undocumented youth. Weaving together her family’s personal challenges with the larger struggles of the immigrant communities in the U.S., Jiménez highlights the real-world impacts of both systemic racism and community organizing. “Dreaming of Home” is a hopeful roadmap that underscores the power of coming together to fight for a common goal. Jiménez won the Robert Coles “Call of Service” Award from Harvard University in 2019.
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‘Devils Like Us‘
By L.T. Thompson
June 3
Three queer young adults must save their friend from an occult secret society in this thrilling historical novel from former Boston librarian L.T. Thompson. The first time Cas Sterling has a prophetic vision, Cas vows never to tell another soul about the gruesome deaths depicted. After all, Remy DeWindt ended her friendship with Cas rather than believe her father is dead, and anyone else in Cas’ upper-class 1800s Massachusetts society circles would believe Cas was mad. But when Cas’ friend Henry is suspiciously spirited away by the same religious order that Remy believes kidnapped her father, the two must forge an alliance with Irish maid Fionnuala Robinson and a crew of openly queer smugglers before Cas’ next prediction comes true. “Devils Like Us” delights just as much in the self-discovery of Cas, Remy and Finn as it does in the swashbuckling adventure.
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‘Flashlight‘
By Susan Choi
June 3
A haunting family saga unravels in the years surrounding a young girl’s near-drowning and her father’s mysterious disappearance. Louisa is a whip-smart 10-year-old who completed the fourth grade twice — once in America and again in Japan — so she knows that the meeting allegedly about her grade level is really an appointment with a child psychologist. This doctor, her estranged aunt and all the other adults in her life have behaved the same way since her father vanished, “with a combination of hearty attention and squeamish discomfort.” “Flashlight” explores the lives of Louisa and her parents — Korean-born, Japan-raised Serk and American Anna — their difficult marriage, challenging upbringings and fracturing secrets. Why did Serk really move Anna and Louisa to Japan? Is he really dead, or just missing? This literary novel is both a deeply personal mystery and an illumination of the long-lasting impacts of Japanese imperialism on the collective Korean psyche. Author Susan Choi went to Yale University.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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