Reading Together Reading Apart

Often thought of as a solitary activity, the practice of reading can in fact encode the complex politics of community formation. Engagement with literary culture represents a particularly integral facet of identity formation--and serves as an expression of a sense of belonging--within the South Asian diaspora in the United States. Tamara Bhalla blends a case study with literary and textual analysis to illuminate this phenomenon. Her fascinating investigation considers institutions from literary reviews to the marketplace and social media and other technologies, as well as traditional forms of literary discussion like book clubs and academic criticism. Throughout, Bhalla questions how her subjects' circumstances, shared race and class, and desires limit the values they ascribe to reading. She also examines how ideology circulating around a body of literature or a self-selected, imagined community of readers shapes reading itself and influences South Asians' powerful, if contradictory, relationship with ideals of cultural authenticity.

A novel reminiscent of the works of Herman Koch and Rachel Cusk, in which a lesbian couple attempts to escape the secrets of their pasts. “[Mootoo’s] unsettling latest examines how secrets always come back to haunt us—especially the ones we’ve managed to keep from ourselves.” —Globe & Mail, one of the 100 Favorite Books of 2020 One of Autostraddle‘s Best Queer Books of 2020 Polar Vortex is a seductive and tension-filled novel about Priya and Alex, a lesbian couple who left the big city to relocate to a bucolic countryside community. It seemed like a good way to leave their past behind and cement their newish, later-in-life relationship. But there’s leaving the past behind—and then there’s running away from awkward histories. Priya has a secret—a long-standing on-again, off-again relationship with a man, Prakash. In Priya’s mind Prakash is little more than an old friend, but in reality things are a bit complicated. Why has she never told Alex about him? Prakash has tracked Priya down in her new life, and before she realizes what she’s doing, she invites him to visit. Alex is not pleased, and soon the existing cracks in their relationship widen, revealing secrets Alex herself would have preferred to keep. Into the fissure walks Prakash, whose own agenda forces all three to face the inevitable consequences of their choices.

The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart startled scientists by demonstrating that twins reared apart are as alike, across a number of personality traits and other measures, as those raised together, suggesting that genetic influence is pervasive. Segal offers an overview of the study’s scientific contributions and effect on public consciousness.

With eight short stories and a novella that travel from dusty city streets to humid beaches, Cristina Henríquez carves out a distinctive and unforgettable vision of contemporary Panama. The stories of Come Together, Fall Apart combine to create a seamless fictional world in which the varied landscapes and shifting culture of a country in transition—and the insistent voices of its young people—are vividly represented. In “Yanina,” a young man’s fidelity is tested when a new living situation strains his relationship with his girlfriend. For the young woman in “Ashes,” the very notion of fidelity is shattered—and her lover’s philandering is only one link in a chain of traumatic events that begins with her mother’s death. In “Mercury,” an American girl visits her grandparents in Panama while her parents divorce at home, and attempts to connect with her ailing grandfather in broken Spanish that he’ll never understand. Again and again, characters find their fates irrevocably tied to those of their families—in “Beautiful,” as fortunes rise; and in “Come Together, Fall Apart,” as they collapse. These are stories of family bonds and generational conflicts, youthful infatuation and genuine passion that are tender, ambitious, and unflinching, from a bold and original young writer who is not only an accomplished prose stylist but also an irresistible storyteller.

A collection of original contemporary love stories set during life in lockdown by some of today's most popular YA authors. Erin Craig "delivers" on a story about a cute pizza delivery boy, Auriane Desombre captures a girl trying to impress her crush on TikTok, and Bill Konigsberg takes readers along on daily walks where every step brings two boys closer to love. There's roommates-to-enemies-to-something more from Rachael Lippincott, a tale of a girl with a mask-making business and her potentially famous crush from Erin Hahn, and a music-inspired meet cute from Sajni Patel. Brittney Morris sparks a connection with the help of two balcony herb gardens, Jennifer Yen writes an unconventional romance that starts with a fortune reading and a take-out order, and Natasha Preston steals hearts when a girl meets up with the boy next door in a storybook oak tree. Romantic, realistic, sweet and uplifting, TOGETHER, APART is a collection of finding love in unexpected places during an unprecedented time . . . each with the one thing we all want: a guaranteed happy ending. In support of the book's publication, a donation will be made to Active Minds, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mental health education, research, and advocacy for young adults ages 14-25.

All students can learn about adding and subtracting fractions through text written at four reading levels. Symbols on the pages represent reading-level ranges to help differentiate instruction. Provided comprehension questions complement the text.

". . . by reconstructing the history/experience of Brzezany in Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish memories [Redlich] has produced a beautiful parallel narrative of a world that was lost three times over. . . . a truly wonderful achievement." —Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors Shimon Redlich draws on the historical record, his own childhood memories, and interviews with Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians who lived in the small eastern Polish town of Brzezany to construct this account of the changing relationships among the town's three ethnic groups before, during, and after World War II. He details the history of Brzezany from the prewar decades (when it was part of independent Poland and members of the three communities remember living relatively amicably "together and apart"), through the tensions of Soviet rule, the trauma of the Nazi occupation, and the recapture of the town by the Red Army in 1945. Historical and contemporary photographs of Brzezany and its inhabitants add immediacy to this fascinating excursion into history brought to life, from differing perspectives, by those who lived through it.

This study explores the relation of the Eastern European problematic to postcolonial critical practice, interrogating the extent to which postcolonialism can help illuminate instances of imperial domination in non-Third World contexts. It argues that colonisation is to be understood principally as a condition of ideological domination that has engendered similar forms of literary and cultural resistance; consequently, it offers a comparative framework which enables a reading in differential contexts of texts that ostensibly have little in common, but which, on close examination, reveal a shared imaginative space, rhetoric and narrative agency. The book consists of two interrelated parts. Part one is a critical discussion of the ideologies, cultural imaginaries and representational practices articulated in a diverse range of representative postcolonial and post-1945 East-Central European texts; these are shown to share, despite dissimilar conditions of production, uncannily related narrative modes and thematic emphases. Part two is a comparative literature case-study which discusses two authors whose work is both highly representative of the cultural formations discussed in the first part (Milan Kundera and Salman Rushdie) and, at the same time, highly controversial. The chapters dedicated to Kundera’s and Rushdie’s work examine the cultural geography of their novels, particularly in the writers’ use of memory and story-telling to reconfigure history and personal identity in conditions of literal and metaphorical displacement. While their novels thrive on ironic subversion and ambiguity, they simultaneously gesture towards a redemptive space of the imagination, transcending the constraints of both locality and history.