The Role of the Golem in Jewish Folklore (06/26)
In her debut novel, Odessa, author Gabrielle Sher reimagines the legend of the golem to explore historical persecution of Jews, as well as notions of power and control. In traditional Jewish folklore, a golem is a being formed of earth or clay, given life by its creator using ritualistic incantations and scripture.
The word 'golem' comes...
The Korean American Immigrant Experience (06/26)
Korean immigration to the US occurred in three waves: first from 1903-1949, second from 1950-1964, and third from 1965 on. The first wave was mostly comprised of laborers who were brought in from Korea to Hawaii to work on pineapple and sugar plantations. The second wave began after Korea's liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 and ...
Korean Language Loss Under Japanese Colonialism and Beyond (05/26)
In Susan Choi's Flashlight, main character Seok, later referred to as Serk, spends his childhood with his Korean family in Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea. He attends a Japanese school, where he speaks and learns to write Japanese. He believes he is Japanese until the occupation ends, leading to a humorous and emotionally ...
Gang Violence in Dublin, Ireland (05/26)
Djamel White's debut novel All Them Dogs follows gangster Tony Ward, who returns to Dublin after years away, and reintegrates himself into the crime scene that raised him. It's one of many novels set in Dublin's gangland, and the prominence of Irish crime novels can be seen as a reflection of a familiar cultural landscape for the books' ...
Harris Tweed (05/26)
The protagonists of Douglas Stuart's novel, John of John, are John and Cal Macleod, a father and son who live on a croft (a small, rural family homestead used for subsistence farming) on the remote Isle of Harris in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. In addition to raising sheep, the men are among the many individuals on the islands who weave ...
Poitiers, France (04/26)
In Marie NDiaye's The Witch, main character Lucie's husband, Pierrot, leaves Lucie and their two daughters—initially to visit his mother in the suburbs of the city of Poitiers, though it ends up being a longer absence. Poitiers is a university town (home to the University of Poitiers) in west-central France in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine...
Futoko (Non-Attendance) and Free Schools in Japan (04/26)
In the United States, the 'model minority' is a stereotype linked to Asian immigrants and diaspora. The myth speaks to a commitment to academic excellence while simultaneously diminishing experiences of discrimination. The stereotype and those who believe in it cherry-pick a racial group seen as embracing assimilation and pit them against...
Objectum Sexuality (04/26)
Linda, the narrator of Sky Daddy, is sexually and romantically attracted to commercial airplanes. This phenomenon could be viewed as a subset of objectum sexuality (OS) — defined as romantic or sexual attraction to an object — although Linda insists that her interest in planes is different from 'the woman who married the ...
Ojibwe Values Pertaining to the Natural World (04/26)
The Ojibwe are the most populous Indigenous tribe in North America today, encompassing several smaller bands, including the Turtle Mountain Band of of Chippewa, of which Louise Erdrich is a member. The Ojibwe people's connections to each other and to the environment are core details in the stories in her collection Python's Kiss.
In ...
The Pale in Ireland (03/26)
In Jo Harkin's new novel The Pretender, Lambert Simnel—a long-shot hopeful for the English throne—is taken to raise an army in the English Pale in Ireland, the last Tudor stronghold on the island. A small area encompassing the counties around Dublin, the Pale is intimately tied to the history of Ireland and the beginnings ...
Fort Sumter Today (03/26)
As Erik Larson recounts in The Demon of Unrest, the first shots of the American Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter, off the coast of South Carolina, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12th, 1861. Thirty-six hours later, Union Major Robert Anderson and his small force surrendered with no loss of life. Ironically, the only casualties sustained came ...
The Blue Mosque (03/26)
In Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel Theft, multiple characters dream of seeing the world, but only some have the privilege of doing so in reality. Badar, whose economic situation puts travel out of reach, keeps a photograph of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul on the wall of his rented room as a symbol of that dream. The Blue Mosque is one of the most...
Whidbey Island (03/26)
Whidbey Island, approximately 45 miles long with a total land area of 168.7 square miles, is situated in the Pacific Northwest, off the coast of Washington and nestled in the waters of Puget Sound. Its original, ancestral name is Tscha-kole-chy, used by the Native tribes that first inhabited it, including the Lower Skagit, Swinomish, ...
Parallel Histories in Ireland and the Basque Country (03/26)
In 'Amalur,' the second story in Liadan Ní Chuinn's debut collection Every One Still Here, a young Irish woman finds herself drawn less to her boyfriend than to his Basque family. Meals stretch late; anecdotes slip across generations. Through allusion and quotation, Chuinn traces a subtle symmetry between Ireland and the Basque ...
The Kingdom of the Happy Land (03/26)
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, which follows a group of formerly enslaved people who build a self-sustaining community on a mountainous plot of land in the Carolinas during the Reconstruction era, is based on a real-life historical place known as the Kingdom of the Happy Land. Perkins-Valdez stumbled upon the kingdom's history online...
The Institute in Basic Life Principles (02/26)
In the memoir A Well-Trained Wife, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) serves as author Tia Levings' gateway from mainstream conservative Christianity into patriarchal Christian fundamentalism. Readers may already be aware of the IBLP thanks to the popular Amazon Prime documentary Shiny Happy People, which focuses on the abuses ...
Women's Rights in Ireland (02/26)
In Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise, the titular protagonist flees from the US to Ireland in the 1990s, escaping an abusive upbringing. When she becomes pregnant, she intends to do what Irish girls have done for decades—take a ferry to England to have an abortion. But when she realizes her stolen passport has expired, she is trapped ...
Gravesend, Brooklyn Over the Years (02/26)
Gravesend is only an hour from New York City's Grand Central Station by subway, but Manhattan 'might as well be Mars' to the characters of Saint of the Narrows Street. It is a small neighborhood in south Brooklyn, just north of the better-known Coney Island and Brighton Beach.
The name 'Gravesend' sounds macabre, but its roots are...
Berlin Club Culture (02/26)
In Aria Aber's Good Girl, narrator Nila spends her teenage years in the labyrinths of Berlin's legendary techno clubs. Awash with drugs and unrestrained by straight-laced sexual mores, the Berlin club scene was hand-built by grassroots pioneers into a recognized cultural institution, eventually attracting visitors from across the globe ...
Bears in Indigenous Cultures and Legends (02/26)
Many Indigenous people view themselves as stewards of the land and nature and, in North America, have special relationships with bears. Tribes such as the Chippewa, Creek, and Mi'kmaq have Bear clans, while others perform a traditional Bear Dance. The Haudenosaunee Bear Dance, performed as part of a midwinter ceremony, imitates a bear's ...
Climbing at Joshua Tree (02/26)
In Gabriel Tallent's Crux, one of the novel's primary characters, Tamma, declares exuberantly, 'Get up, get up! It's Saturday and the rocks are a-warming! … Arise and go now, to a park I know, that sits upon the joining of three deserts, each more blighted and lonely than the last! Arise and go!'
Avid rock climbers like Tamma ...
Ni-chōme, the Hub of Tokyo's LGBTQ+ Community (01/26)
Shinjuku Ni-chōme, commonly referred to as Ni-chōme, is a lively, small neighborhood in the heart of Tokyo, and is said to have the highest concentration of gay bars in the world. It features prominently in Bryan Washington's novel Palaver as a key setting for one of its main characters. Known as Japan's LGBTQ+ cultural hub, the...
The Bribri (01/26)
Like brothers Max and Jay, the protagonists of her debut young adult novel Saints of the Household, author Ari Tison is Bribri American, descended from an Indigenous group native to the Talamanca region of Costa Rica. The characters' grandfather was raised among the Bribri people and their matriarchal society. His gentle, loving nature ...
Fado de Lisboa (12/25)
In Allen Levi's novel Theo of Golden, the protagonist moves to a small city in Georgia
where he forms friendships with many of the town's residents. Among these are a young
man studying the cello at a nearby university and a street musician who plays guitar for
tips; the three bond over discussions about music. Theo, who is from ...
The Myth of the Holly King (12/25)
Time of the Child by Niall Williams is rich with Irish lore and tradition. The story is set in the fictional Irish village of Faha, where holly branches adorn the homes, shops, and churches during the season of Christmas. The holly tree that sits at the top of the drive of main character Jack Troy's home is the best-looking in Faha. As ...
The Waiting Period: Mourning Tradition in Geraldine Brooks' Memorial Days (12/25)
On the worst day of her life, author Geraldine Brooks began to shake in her lower extremities. Above her thighs, she was frozen. No tears, no screams, no falling onto the floor with anger and rage. Her shock was suddenly buried and it all felt so surreal. Tony Horwitz, her husband of thirty-four years, had died, which felt impossible, ...
Christianity in Nigeria (11/25)
Before the Mango Ripens by Afabwaje Kurian focuses on the tensions between residents of a Nigerian town and white American missionaries based there. The book's Nigerian characters have a widely diverse set of reactions to the church: some adamantly oppose Christianity and persecute their Christian family members, others go to church in ...
History of the Summer Camp (11/25)
Liz Moore's mystery The God of the Woods begins with the disappearance of a girl from fictional Camp Emerson, a summer camp for children in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
For many children, attending summer camp is a rite of passage. According to a 2023 Newsweek article, there are over 12,000 summer camps across the United ...
The History of Go (11/25)
In Richard Powers' novel
Playground, best friends Todd and Rafi become obsessed with the board game Go (often capitalized in English to differentiate it from the common verb), and the pastime plays a large role in the narrative. According to
the National Go Center, 'Beyond being merely a game, Go can take on other meanings to its devotees...
The Magnetic Pull of Historically Black Colleges (10/25)
One of the first scenes in Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell takes place in Professor Charlie Brunton's lecture hall at Howard University. Howard is one of the oldest HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities), founded in 1867. Located in Washington, D.C., it has over the decades been a space safe from racial taunts and ...
European Spa Resorts (10/25)
Olga Tokarczuk's novel The Empusium is set in the mountain health resort of Görbersdorf (modern day Sokołowsko in Poland) in 1913. Renowned for its tuberculosis sanitorium, the town fit into a context of around 600 similar resorts in Europe that focused on recovery from then-incurable diseases, as well as overall wellness. The ...
Women's Hotels in 20th Century New York City (10/25)
In Women's Hotel, Daniel Lavery introduces readers to the fictional Biedermeier, which is based on the real-life phenomenon of residential hotels for women only that existed in New York City throughout the 20th century. As women began working outside the home on a mass scale, they traveled in droves to the city to make lives for ...
Chinese Moon Mythology (10/25)
In What a Time to Be Alive, the main character, Lola, starts a spiritual movement. Her signature event is parties focused on looking at the moon through a telescope, where Lola, a Chinese American woman, speaks about the moon's power and symbology. Part of her talk concerns Chinese mythology related to the moon, which is a hit with her ...
Rumspringa (10/25)
In Life, and Death, and Giants, the Amish rite of Rumspringa is a cause of great angst for Gabriel's grandmother Hannah Fisher. Rumspringa refers to a period of adolescence when young people are given more personal freedom. Gabriel was born into the 'English' (or modern-day secular) world of Lakota, Wisconsin. As a young boy he returned ...
The Gau Box (09/25)
In Kiran Desai's novel The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Sonia has a talisman, inherited from her grandfather, that she takes with her wherever she goes for protection and inspiration. She's told it's a gau box from Tibet, 'fashioned from tarnished, battered silver that was carved intricately with curly clouds swirling to dragons. It ...
The Prominence of Religion in Southern American Culture (09/25)
In Dominion by Addie E. Citchens, religion strongly influences both a family and the entire town of Dominion, Mississippi. The focus is on the Winfreys, whose patriarch is the reverend of the Seven Seals Baptist Church. Because of how important and widespread Christianity is in the South, this position brings power and high status to him ...
The Thunderous Òrìṣà Ṣàngó (09/25)
Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi repeatedly draws from mythology surrounding the Òrìṣà pantheon of deities from the Yorùbá religion, which is still practiced throughout southern Nigeria, other areas of West Africa, and the African diaspora. Ṣàngó, the bringer of thunder, is particularly ...
Black Utopias (09/25)
As Jasmyn Williams and her husband King arrive in the fictional Black utopian suburb of Liberty, California in Nicola Yoon's One of Our Kind, Jasmyn reminds her husband 'that Black utopias ha[ve] been tried with little success before.' She names two examples of real-world short-lived utopian experiments: Allensworth and Soul City. While ...
The Japanese Era Calendar (09/25)
The publication date of this review corresponds in the Japanese era calendar to Reiwa 7/09/10, or September 10, 2025.
Japan uses two dating systems: the Gregorian calendar, used in most Western societies and adopted in Japan in 1873, and the system of imperial eras (gengō 年号), which divides time according to the ...
Hutterites: An Anabaptist Branch (08/25)
Kate Riley's novel
Ruth takes place on a Hutterite commune in Michigan. Hutterites are a branch of the Anabaptist movement, a radical movement of the Protestant Reformation (other branches include the
Amish and
Mennonites). The primary tenets of the Anabaptists are adult baptism and the separation of church and state.
Hutterites were ...
Appalachian Granny Witchcraft and Folk Magic (08/25)
Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire is about a witch who saves an Appalachian town called Foxfire from a curse. The Appalachian mountain region has its own tradition of using native plants to perform magic and healing, which is also referred to as root work, granny magic, granny witchcraft, kitchen witchery, or Braucherei.
Appalachian ...
Weather, Film, and Television in Sunny Los Angeles (08/25)
In Colored Television by Danzy Senna, Jane, a novelist turned aspiring TV writer from the East Coast, reflects on her inability to get used to the warm springs of Los Angeles while also considering their utility: 'All that sunshine was said to be the reason the film industry had moved west back in the 1920s. Only in Los Angeles could they...
Shaanxi Cuisine and Biang Biang Mian (08/25)
Shaanxi cuisine, also known as Qin cuisine, originates from Shaanxi province in north-central China, a region historically significant as the starting point of the ancient Silk Road and home to Xi'an, one of China's oldest capitals. Its geography, straddling the Loess Plateau and bordered by the Central Plains, has contributed to a ...
Oracle Bone Script (08/25)
One of the short stories in Ed Park's collection An Oral History of Atlantis involves a research group made entirely of Tinas trying to unravel the meaning of an ancient script found on a mysterious island. While much of the story is fantastical, the writing they are trying to interpret is quite real. Oracle bone script, in use from the ...
Cuneiform and Ashurbanipal's Library (08/25)
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak begins with the story of King Ashurbanipal (c. 685–631 BCE) of Ninevah, an ancient city on the eastern bank of the Tigris in part of what is now Mosul, Iraq. Although cruel even by the standards of his day, Ashurbanipal valued learning, and sometime around 647 BCE he built a library to ...
Southside, Virginia (07/25)
The area where author Henry Wise's Holy City takes place—Southside—encompasses a swath of counties in the southern portion of Virginia's Piedmont region. Southside stretches from the James River south to the North Carolina border and extends as far east as Isle of Wight and Southampton Counties, bounded along the western edge ...
Redefining the Role of the Mythological Bacchae (07/25)
In ancient Greco-Roman mythology, the Bacchae—also known as Maenads—were female followers of Dionysus (also known as Bacchus), god of wine and revelry. While some devoted themselves to him voluntarily, others were said to be possessed, driven mad and forced into servitude by his intoxicating power.
Dionysus journeyed ...
The Seaside Resort Town of Bognor Regis (07/25)
The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff takes place in 1930 at the West Sussex seaside resort town of Bognor Regis on the south coast of England. The Stevens family is spending two weeks at the same holiday boarding house that they have been visiting since Mr. and Mrs. Stevens spent their honeymoon there two decades earlier.
For ...
Communal Utopias in Nineteenth-Century America (07/25)
In The House on Buzzards Bay, Dwyer Murphy's gothic thriller, a group of former college roommates reunite for their summer vacation in a beachfront mansion. The house, owned equally by all six friends, was built by the local Spiritualist community in the nineteenth century as a home for the many people coming to join the sect. As ...
