A strike pattern is a signature of violence carved into the land—bomb craters or fragments of explosives left behind, forgotten. In Strike Patterns, poet and anthropologist Leah Zani journeys to a Lao river community where people live alongside such relics of a secret war. With sensitive and arresting prose, Zani reveals the layered realities that settle atop one another in Laos—from its French colonial history to today’s authoritarian state—all blown open by the war. This excavation of postwar life’s balance between the mundane, the terrifying, and the extraordinary propels Zani to confront her own explosive past.
From 1964 to 1973,
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Ivy loves living in Applewood Heights. The family’s apartment is tiny, and her older sister, Rachel, won’t stop grumbling about sharing a room after their old house was lost to foreclosure. But for the first time, Ivy has friends. Lucas and Alice live close by, and every week all three watch their favorite cooking show and practice baking together (even if Ivy has to find creative substitutes for the pricey ingredients). But Ivy is a worrier, and this summer there’s plenty to be anxious about. Her parents can’t wait to move to a bigger, nicer place, which is the last thing Ivy wants.
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Paul Hansen is in prison. He’s been in this prison on the outskirts of Montreal for a couple of years now, sharing a cell with a murderous Hells Angel who often reminds Paul that he could kill him at any moment. What did Paul do to end up here? And why does he jeopardize his life and release by refusing to show remorse?
Before prison, there were his parents. There were his friends at the Excelsior, the luxury apartment complex where Paul worked as caretaker as well as restorer of souls and comforter of the afflicted. And there was his partner,
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A searching, sharply observed debut novel on the interconnection between work and life, loneliness and kinship, and the projects that occupy our time.
How do we take stock of a life—by what means, and by what measure? This is the question that preoccupies Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, Alice struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental, yearlong 1980s performance pieces. Meanwhile, she becomes the caretaker for her aging stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia.
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This program is read by the author.
From the New York Times best-selling author of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, a call to break through our limits and say yes to a life of infinite possibility.
You may know Emmanuel Acho as the host of groundbreaking video series “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man”. Or as a New York Times best-selling author. Or as an Emmy-winning television broadcaster. Or as a former linebacker for two NFL franchises.
What you probably don’t know is that Emmanuel defines his own life with just one word: illogical.
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My parents didn’t belong in Waitsfield, but they moved there anyway.”
For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families—the Cabots, the Lowells: the “first, best people”—by the tail end of the twentieth century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets.Forged in this frigid landscape Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. Hers is no picturesque New England childhood but one of swap meets and factory seconds and powdered milk. Shame blankets her like the thick snow that regularly buries nearly everything in Waitsfield.As she grows older,
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