11.09.2020

Allison K. Lange, PhD

November 2020

By Hannah Weisman

On the day Allison Lange and I spoke on the phone, she was working on a lecture about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president in the United States, as part of a series of lectures on 12 important women in American history for The Great Courses. She said, “It feels incredibly fitting to think about a past presidential race while we’re thinking about our current one. She’s fascinating! So radical early on in her life…She was also a spiritualist and the first woman to edit her own weekly newspaper. She did so many cool things!” 

And just as it felt fitting to Lange to be focused on Woodhull in this election season, so too did it feel fitting to me to be talking with Lange, who is a leading expert on the history of the women’s suffrage movement (and also does “so many cool things!”).

Like so many others, Lange had heard of the BA, but needed a little extra push to come through the door. That necessary push was a fellowship from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium in 2012 to conduct research for her doctoral work at Brandeis University. She arrived at 10½ Beacon Street having previously earned her MA from Brandeis and her BA from the University of Georgia, both in history. 

Lange dove headlong into the Athenæum’s collections, examining a wide range of visual materials such as prints, photographs, and illustrated advertising cards to understand the images of gender that people were encountering on a regular basis. Over the course of her research, she studied a published account of Susan B. Anthony’s trial for voting, which became one of her favorite items in the collection. “The BA’s copy is…signed by Susan B. Anthony. It shows how proud of it she was—she wasn’t ashamed. She was proud of her arrest for voting and happy to share it with her friends and activists.”  

In 2017, Lange returned to the Athenæum as a Mudge Teacher Fellow to develop a bibliography of the BA’s collections related to women’s suffrage (and the case against it). Her bibliography has informed the subsequent work of BA fellows, interns, and staff.

But lest you think Lange is the BA’s in-house historian (we could dream!), she has extensive accomplishments beyond the walls of the Vershbow Special Collections Reading Room. She served as historian for the United States Congress’s Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, helping to shape the national conversation about the centennial into a broad discussion on voting rights and making historical research accessible to general audiences. Locally, she curated exhibitions related to the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment at the Massachusetts Historical Society and Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, and has lectured at multiple venues, including at the Boston Athenæum. She teaches history at Wentworth Institute of Technology, helping her students understand how the past influences current events. 

Lange’s research at the Athenæum and work promoting and teaching women’s history, specifically the history of the women’s suffrage movement, has enabled multiple organizations to create exciting projects, including the BA’s 2020 Primary Sources in the Classroom workshop for educators and (Anti)SUFFRAGE exhibition. Lange embodies the legacy of the suffragists she studies, laying groundwork for others to succeed.

09.21.2020

STAFF BOOK SUGGESTIONS AUTUMN 2020

John Buchtel

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

(Library of Congress Classification CT275.S8421 A3 2014)

Powerful: gripping narrative interlaced with thoughtful reflections on the failures of our criminal justice system. Disturbing, yes: but also inspiring and hopeful. A must-read. I haven’t seen the movie yet.

The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

(Library of Congress E185.615 .T57 2019)

Tisby provides a concise, clear history from the origins of American slavery to the development of segregated suburbia. Instead of merely offering an indictment, however, he issues a ringing call for repentance, reconciliation, and real unity, with practical ideas on how to achieve them.

Carolle Morini

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

(Library of Congress PZ4 .B28138 Ni 2019)

In a Port of Algeciras waiting room of the ferry terminal, two aging Irishmen, partners in smuggling drugs, sit together and wait for the arrival or departure of someone. They are not sure. As they wait, you read about the messy tangle of their lives and you may think half way through the book: why isn’t this a mini series on Netflix?

Artforum by César Aira

(Library of Congress PZ4.A293 Ar 2020)

Do you have a stack of your favorite periodicals at home? Is that stack more of a tower? Do you wait by the mailbox for a new issue? Do you live in fear of accidentally leaving a window open in your home when you leave—because what if it rains?! Are you behind in your reading goal for 2020 and need a short book to bump up your numbers? If you said yes to any of these questions, this little novella is for you. A funny and insightful story about a man and his passion for Artforum. Oh, and you may want to check out the actual Artforum in the Art Department or even a back issue or two or three or four…

Elizabeth O’Meara

Vincent’s Books: Van Gogh and the Writers Who Inspired Him by Mariella Guzzoni

(Library of Congress ND653.G7 G94 2020)

Along with many people, I’ve always been drawn to Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings and life story.  Several years ago I began Naifeh and White’s biography Van Gogh: The Life but didn’t finish it because I found it too sad. Guzzoni’s book was a pleasure to read. Van Gogh was a voracious reader and prolific letter writer. Guzzoni did a wonderful job pulling together his reading, writing and painting. It was a pleasurable journey into that piece of Van Gogh’s life.

Autumn by Ali Smith

(Library of Congress PZ4.S64231 Au 2017)

This is the first book of Ali Smith’s Season Quartet book series, Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer.  It seemed like a no-brainer suggestion for our autumn book recommendations.  I read this book last year but decided to reread it, and I’m so glad I did. I read it much too quickly that first go around. This book’s prose calls out for a careful, attentive pace. The structure, such as it is, centers on the caring relationship between two neighbors, a young girl and an old man. It was published in 2017 and has as its background the political disturbances of the time in Great Britain, which also resonates in 2020 America.

Leah Rosovsky 

Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

(Library of Congress TX652 .C714 1988)

My recommendation is Home Cooking by the late Laurie Colwin. During the pandemic, many of us have found ourselves producing many more meals. This series of charming short essays and recipes, originally published in Gourmet Magazine, contemplates the role of food in our daily lives and in our families. It’s a lovely read that may even add a new dish to your rotation!

Mary Warnement

Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby

(Cutter Classification 8AB1 .N429)

Newby is best known as a travel writer, a genre especially appealing now that armchair travel must suffice, but I started with his last book, a memoir about his time as a prisoner of war in the autumn and early winter of 1943–44, which seemed appropriate as we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII. (My colleague rewards—figuratively rather than literally—book recommendations evoking the season; I point out that mine not only takes place from September to December, but my edition sports pumpkin-hued cloth boards.) Newby amusingly describes the operation in 1942 in which he was captured, and that tone prevails, although it borders on Kafkaesque humor.

Early on I wondered how he could possibly write with so much detail over 25 years later, but he was taking notes. He even had a few books: Boswell’s Tour of the Hebrides (which he regrets leaving behind at one point), a Lunario Barba-Nera (an almanac belonging to a farming family that harbors him), one volume of Gibbons’s Decline and Fall, a Bible, and something he called Mr. Sponge.

I wasn’t entirely sympathetic to Newby in the first 50 pages or so. His writing about women passing his prison as if they had no other existence but to appear in his imaginings put me off, but once he met a woman he fell in love with that attitude petered off. It didn’t disappear, look at his descriptions of Rita and Dolores who live and work on the farm where he’s given refuge, but it faded. I could appreciate his story and his manner of telling it. 

Rachel Wentworth

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wung

(Library of Congress RC514 .W36 2019)

I made a few false starts before I was able to read this collection of essays through to completion. There is something about the way Wung wields her pen from inside the experience of her illness that is jarring. It feels naked and vulnerable, like an open wound. Although at times almost academic, this collection weaves deeply intimate confessional prose with cultural criticism to profound effect. To quote The New Yorker, there is something radical about this collection. Wung confronts various interpretations of mental illness with a level of incisiveness that is only attainable with an #OwnVoices writer. She doesn’t promise clarity, instead sitting comfortably inside her uncertainty and inviting the reader to join. Anyone can benefit from this mold-breaking, mind-bending, eye-opening read, but I encourage those with direct experience with mental illness to treat themselves kindly when deciding whether to read it in its entirety.

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

(Library of Congress PZ4 .S3362 Gr 2019)

I came to this book in the last days of my (seriously procrastinated) 2019 reading goal and, boy, did I read it quickly. Despite my panic-read, this quirky little novel made a huge impact. Ultimately a lifelong conversation between a set of grammarian twins, one a die-hard prescriptivist and the other an improvisational descriptivist, this text takes its reader on a wild ride. The way the twins (and this author) play with language like one might play with Play-Doh is a joy for grammarians and goofs alike. It is clearly a love letter to language, and its author makes her joy shine through every page. Read this if you live for the thrill of spotting a typo in the New York Times.

08.13.2020

Alondra Bobadilla

September 2020

Interview by Daniel Berk

Alondra Bobadilla is Boston’s first ever Youth Poet Laureate. The selection process was a joint effort between the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, the current Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola, and the Boston Public Library, among other institutions. After holding preliminary applications in October 2019, Bobadilla was selected from a pool of ten semifinalists for her two-year term as Youth Poet Laureate. Bobadilla will work alongside Olayiwola in order to promote poetry and arts in Boston, particularly by connecting young people to each other through poetry. Hailing from Hyde Park, Bobadilla is currently a high school student and proud new member of the Boston Athenæum [And we are proud to have her on board! —ed.]. We are sure to hear much more from this talented poet in the future.

Q: How did you discover your passion for poetry?

ALONDRA BOBADILLA: I have always had a knack and an interest in writing, but I sort of “discovered” poetry randomly. I used to write a lot of songs and short stories, but I was looking for a style of writing I felt better suited me. I had that with music but I wanted to branch out. I believe I read a poem online somewhere and that’s how my interest came about, but I can’t quite point to a particular moment in time. I just know I was 12. From then on, I wrote poetry all the time. I didn’t write in particular styles, it was all free verse (before I knew what free verse really meant). 

Q: What appeals to you about poetry?

AB: How similar it is to music. I was always interested in writing, but poetry flowed in a way prose did not. I could rhyme and put the words together like a song but without a melody, which was usually where I got stumped with song writing—pairing the words with a melody or a melody with the words. The rhythm was up to me. There were no rules. If I wanted to change it I could. This was completely open range and I loved that liberty to express what I pleased as I pleased to do so. I saw it at first as lyrics without music.

Q: What does your writing process look like?

AB: This question is always a funny one to me. I have no process! Prior to the outbreak, I got inspiration at random. I was always writing and my mind was consistently producing ideas. Even if I didn’t immediately write something down, I’d practice remembering to get back to it later. Whatever motivated me to write a poem, I simply went with that impulse. If I had to leave class to write, I would before I would forget (I took many “bathroom” trips) and I would stand or sit somewhere and let God guide the words. I have no idea how I never missed train stops or tripped or anything because when the words are flowing, I need to stay glued to the screen or paper or else I’ll lose it! I can only retain the words for a certain amount of time unfortunately since there is always something new pushing at whatever is currently at the forefront of my thoughts. Now, my “process” so to speak is a little more organized since I am not out as often. I take more inspiration from reading the plenty of books I have been sent since the beginning of the outbreak and I use them as tools to develop inspiration. I can write just as easily in noise as in silence. I don’t need to be comfortable. I don’t usually experience writer’s block. 

Q: As a high school student yourself, how do you feel about the way poetry is being taught at the middle school and high school levels?

AB:  I like how my school incorporated poetry as a method for projects. They didn’t necessarily teach us how to write styles of poetry, or the history, but they allowed that freedom of creativity, which was nice. But I wish that we had lessons on contemporary as well as historical poets and poetry styles. In middle school we had a lesson on poetry and prose but it was about Shakespeare and it felt so outdated and the students felt so disconnected from his work. Learning about these famous poets is important by all means but we need to tie the past to the present and show the students the evolution of poetry throughout time. What was once maybe an exclusive male-dominated art form is now accessible to wider varieties of individuals and poetry is widely returning to a more spoken platform, which really changes the way broader audiences respond to the style. Schools need to make poetry as accessible as the streets and other institutions do. We spend most of our time in school, at the very least resources to these programs can and should be provided. No excuses. 

Q: What do you feel are some of your responsibilities as Boston Youth Poet Laureate?

AB: This question is intriguing. I have highlighted responsibilities (per the job role) but because I am the first, I am creating my own shoes instead of filling someone else’s. I feel a sense of responsibility on a personal level since before this position (and now more than ever while in the position) to make poetry accessible to everybody, but especially young people. I want them to find a safe space in poetry, and if not as an outlet, as a relatable space in which to listen if they don’t want to write themselves. I want this to become an art form that is embraced by the youth in Boston like they have embraced music. Poetry and music are relatives in my eyes and I want the youth to see that and have an appreciation for poetry in that manner. I want to cultivate opportunities and spaces to practice the art form and develop skills. And most of all I want my voice to be a mouthpiece for other people’s narratives that are largely ignored in civic conversations. Art has a place at the table and I want to encourage other artists to use their voices to engage civically and politically as well as to encourage and sustain the community through their creativity. Art is for the artist but also for the audience—and a variety of audiences at that. 

Q: Do you feel that people’s perception of you changed after you were named the Poet Laureate?

AB: Yes, in a way. And no in other ways. People seeing me differently is inevitable. I believe strongly that through our actions we can influence the lens through which others see us. At school, I was known as “the poet” before I was ever the Youth Poet Laureate. The way my peers saw me never changed. They congratulated me yes, but I never changed my attitude. I remained the girl who walked the halls at odd hours, sat on the staircases, laughed too loudly and gave good advice. I was still just Alondra and I worked hard to stress that to those around me to avoid them seeing me any other way than who I was. People have tried, but I always redirected the conversation. After my time as the Youth Poet Laureate, I am still Alondra. Whatever your role, the work you did while under that name has nothing to do with the name itself but with the person who holds it. I am not a title. So I live my life in a way that is of course mindful of my position but even more mindful of myself. The Youth Poet Laureate is not an alter ego. Sometimes people have a tendency to make an identity out of a title. If I don’t do that, people most likely won’t treat me any differently. The way you show up is important. You can’t completely control how others respond to you, but by your choices you can succeed in influencing the responses.

Q: As you know, the BA is Boston’s oldest private library. What role, if any, have libraries played in your life as a student of literature?

AB: Libraries were my favorite places to be. Especially in elementary school. I loved just passing my hands over the bindings and reading all the titles, authors, and backgrounds. I remember I would ask my librarians all the questions in the world. A library was a place made for reading so I would take full advantage of that as a kid. I’d sit in a corner and let the time pass as I read and read and read. My librarians loved me so much that I could take more than two books at a time. So getting this membership at the BA was a blessing. I have not had that sort of luxury access to a library ever before and to have that now? It feels so special. The BA truly is such a special place.

Q: What is your favorite poem you’ve written?

AB: I have a lot of favorites! My spotlight poems usually change with the seasons I’m in. But as of now one of my favorites is a poem I wrote while on a mini vacation to Plymouth Beach. I was sitting on the sand as I wrote this, looking out at the ocean.

7/26/2020 10:11 a.m.

the mouth of your plyth

ocean draws back sand
appearing to be the veins of the sea
tracks like seal slither 
leading back to earth’s greatest wonder
and slickest deception
domestic surface becomes roaring waves in one blink
an explosion of water atom to water atom
iridescent blues to green to clear in cupped hands
the sun kissed ocean becomes the enemy
swallowing you whole with no trace of you left
but clothing articles
and jewelry passed from generations
that one day a blessed swimmer will come to find in the treasure burrows of the floor

rocks leading to waters edge
are everywhere 
like warning signs
or maybe monuments of the ages
homes to creatures only known to sand depths 

its so inviting 
where sky blue meets it’s mirror image
but just a step in and icy cold crawls up your legs to your spine to the the edge of your neck 
paralyzing beauty

this is not Boca Chica
this is not palm tree coco delights
or tropic drizzle
and dry heat

this is 
the mouth of Americas plight
pilgrims refuge
and natives doom
this costal graveyard 
decorated by cloud
still God blessed
for sun rises upon these waters
and it rose upon every evil and every love held on this land

creation still loves us enough to rise on God’s command. 

ocean draws back sand
the veins of the sea

the arteries that pump back life into us
caresses these tired eyes with a breeze.

07.31.2020

New Books: August 2021

Picture Books

Harlem Grown by Tony Hillery, Illustrated by Jessie Hartland (Children Picture Book + HILLE)

With wonderfully detailed illustrations, Harlem Grown tells the story of Tony Hillery and the students he worked with to create an operational farm in their NYC neighborhood. Through their hard work, the community gained beauty, conection, and healthy food.

The Oldest Student : how Mary Walker learned to read by Rita Lorraine Hubbar, illustrated by Oge Mora.
(Children Picture Book + HUBBA)

You are never too old to learn something new, and Mary Walker is proof of that. Mary Walker was born into slavery in 1848. At age 116, she learned to read. This biographical picture book brings her amazing story of perseverance to life.

Zonia’s Rain Forest by Juana Martinez-Neal
(Children Picture Book + MARTI)

Peruvian-American Author Juana Martinez-Neal tells the story of Zonia, a young girl who lives in the Amazon rainforest. Through following Zonia as she meets with her animal friends, readers can begin to learn about how and why we should care for the rainforest.

Eyes that Kiss in the Corners by Joanna Ho, iIllustrated by Dung Ho.
(Children Picture Book + HO)

In this tale of self-acceptance and the beauty of diversity, a young girl learns that while her eyes are different from those of her peers, they reflect her family’s history and strength.

Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o, illustrated by Vashti Harrison
(Children Picture Book + NYONG)

Lupita Nyong’o crafts a beautiful story about the harm of colorism and how one little girl goes on a magical journey to learn to see her own beauty. With illustrations as beautiful as the night sky, this story is equal parts heart wrenching and heartwarming.

You Matter by Christian Robinson
(Children Picture Book + ROBIN)This bright and colorful picture book shows readers that everything and everyone in the world is connected and important.

Who wet my pants? by Bob Shea, illustrated by Zachariah OHora.
(Children Picture Book + SHEA)

This silly book follows Reuben the bear who tries to figure out who put a wet spot on his pants in a rather embarrassing area. As he investigates and starts to realize it was his own accident, he learns about how to handle embarrassment with empathy.

The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish by Lil Miss Hot Mess, illustrated by Olga de Dios
(Children Picture Book LIL)

From founding member of Drag Queen Story Hour, Lil Miss Hot Mess, comes this fun and fierce take on “the wheels on the bus” that demonstrates the power and joy of being yourself.

Classified : the secret career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee aerospace engineer by Traci Sorell, illustrated by Natasha Donovan
(Children Picture Book + SOREL)

Mary Golda Ross worked as an engineer in the classified department of Lockheed Air Corporation. This inspirational biography follows her journey as a female Cherokee engineer and mentor.

Fry Bread : a Native American family story by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal
(Children Picture Book + MAILL)

Food and family are always close together. This beautiful picture book explores the importance of Fry Bread to a modern Native American family and the culture they share.

Beginning Reader

I’m on it! by by Andrea Tsurumi and Mo Willems(Children Picture Book TSURU)

Have some fun with prepositions in this animal filled book.

Yasmin the Librarian by Saadia Faruqi, illustrated by Hatem Aly
(PZ7.F2466 Yal 2021)

Yasmin loves books and helping out at the library. When she brings her favorite book from home to show the librarian, she loses it! Will she be able to find it among all the library books?

I Will Race You through this Book! by Jonathan Fenske
(Children Picture Book FENSK)

Book-It Bunny breaks the fourth wall in this adventure story. Can you beat him to the end of the book?

Chapter Books

The Lion of Mars by Jennifer L. Holm

(PZ7.H732226 Li 2021)

Bell is just a regular kid, aside from living in a colony on Mars. When a virus reaches the colony and all the adults get sick, it is up to Bell and the other children to save their families, the colony, and perhaps the whole planet.

From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
(PZ7.M333 Fr 2020)

On Zoe’s twelfth birthday, she receives a letter from the father she has never met. In the letter, he claims he is innocent of the crime that placed him in jail for her whole life. Zoe then investigates, determined to find out the truth. Can she balance school, her baking internship, and her budding career in investigation?

The Animal Rescue Agency : Case file: Little claws by Eliot Schrefer, illustrated by Daniel Duncan
(PZ7.S37845 An 2021)

Former notorious chicken snatcher, Esquire Fox has given up her life of crime to run the Animal Rescue Agency. In this first instalment of the upcoming series, Esquire and company head to the Arctic to rescue a polar bear cub from one of the biggest threats to nature: humans.

Telephone Tales by Gianni Rodari, illustrated by Valerio Vidali, translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar
(PZ7.R5987 Te 2020)

Though he travels for work, Mr. Bianchi never misses a bedtime story for his daughter. He calls her every night from payphones around the world to tell her a story. Each story must fit in the time a coin can buy. Mr. Bianchi’s travels frame this wonderful collection of short stories.

Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams
(PZ7.W65585 Ge 2019)

This powerful and ultimately uplifting exploration of internalized racism and colorism follows thirteen-year-old Genesis as she learns to love herself despite the verbal abuse she has faced from her peers and her own family.

Graphic Novels

Twins / written by Varian Johnson ; illustrated by Shannon Wright(PZ7.J6355 Tw 2020)

There are times when friends begin to drift apart. For Maureen and Francine Carter, that time was at the start of sixth grade when one of the twins became interested in popularity. This boldly colored graphic novel explores what it means to be a friend and a sister when interests and personalities are always evolving.

Stargazing by Jen Wang, color by Lark Pien
(PZ7.W18 St 2019)

Although Moon and Christine grew up in the same Asian-American neighborhood, they are nothing alike. Sometimes being different is what makes a friendship strong. As the girls grow closer together, Moon shares her deepest secret: she can communicate with the stars, which tell her she does not truly belong on earth. Moon has always been there for Christine, will Christine be able to support Moon when an emergency arises?

Beetle & the Hollowbones by Aliza Layne, coloring by Natalie Riess and Kristen Acampora
(PZ7.L442 Be 2020)

Twelve-year-old goblin-witch Beetle, would rather not study witchcraft. She would much prefer to spend her days with her best friend, Blob Ghost. When Beetle’s former best friend, Kat returns to town her days of hanging out with Blob Ghost are threatened. Kat has returned for an apprenticeship with her sorceress aunt. Beetle’s jealousy of Kat quickly changes to worry when she learns of the sorceress’s evil plan that could destroy Blob Ghost and his fellow spirits. Can Beetle harness the magic she so wished to ignore in order to save the day?

Memior

This Promise of Change : one girl’s story in the fight for school equality by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy
(F444.C68 B69 2019)

This autobiography tells the story of Jo Ann Allen, one of the “Clinton 12,” the first group of Black students to integrate into an all white public high school in the American South. The eastern Tennessee town’s bigotry was masked with false southern courtesies. That is, until the school integrated and a much darker side of the town’s white population came to the surface. The Clinton 12 faced extreme bigotry and violence as they tried to attend the school. This heartbreaking personal account brings a new light to this historic moment, highlighting that among this national attention and historic pressure, Jo Ann also wanted to live life as a normal teenager. She wanted to play music, hang out with friends, and learn as white students were able to do without combating bigotry.

Indian No More by Charlene Willing McManis with Traci Sorell
(PZ4.M2312 In 2019)

Semi-autobiographical historical novel follows Regina Petit, a ten year old Umpqua girl. She has lived all her life surrounded by her tribe on the Grand Ronde reservation, but in 1957 the federal government signed a bill that states Regina’s tribe no longer exists. Regina is “Indian no more” in the eyes of the government. Her family then moves to Los Angeles in search of better jobs for her father. There, she makes friends with children of other races who have never met a Native American. It is also in this new neighborhood that Regina faces the vicious racism of the era for the first time. Umpqua author Charlene Willing fills this novel with her own tribal history and experiences as she tells the story of Regina discovering her identity during the Civils Rights Era.

Young Adult Books

The Sea-Ringed World : sacred stories of the Americas by María García Esperón, illustrated by Amanda Mijangos, translated by David Bowles
(+ PZ7.G161 Se 2021)

The phrase “Sea-Ringed World” comes from the Aztec term for the area of North and South America. In this collection of sacred stories, you will find tales of creation, nature, the universe, and more from Native communities all across the Americas.

Historically Inaccurate by Shay Bravo
(PZ7 .B738 Hi 2020)

Soledad “Sol” Gutierrez’s life was thrown into upheaval when her mother was deported last year. She lives in a new home and has started at a new community college. In an effort to fit in, she joins her school’s history club and participates in their odd initiation: she must steal a fork from the oldest house in town. When she sneaks in, she is caught by the homeowners’ grandson, Ethan. After this moment, Sol’s life is once again dramatically altered. She will soon learn that fitting in matters less than being your authentic self.

07.30.2020

Christopher Bing

August 2020

By Samantha Gill

Considering himself a “political illustrator,” Christopher Bing’s career spans four picture books and countless political cartoons and illustrations showcased in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Bing’s first published picture book, Ernest L. Thayer’s Casey At the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888,  earned him the coveted Caldecott Honor in 2001. Imbued in his illustrations of every one of his four picture books is a staggering amount of research—research often done at the Boston Athenæum. Even the casual reader will notice how this research translates into rich, intentional detail that deepens the reading experience. I had the great pleasure of speaking with Bing about his life and art. 

Born in New Mexico, Bing spent his childhood as a “corporate brat,” moving from New Mexico to Florida to Alabama following his parents’ job opportunities. He finally landed in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he graduated high school. Of his regional association and upbringing, Bing remarks, “I have definitely been, yes, a child of America as opposed to of the South or of the North. Lived in Alabama, really lived in the middle of nowhere. And on a river. And basically grew up at that point, you know, had the life of Huck Finn…we were one of the last houses down a mile long dirt road, which was off another dirt road which connected up to a highway that was only a two lane highway, which then led into town, which was another ten miles out. As soon as I got off the school bus, I’d be running towards the Tennessee River and all my clothes off and jumping in and really having the life of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in the woods. It was great.”

Bing’s career as a political and picture book illustrator might have been predicted by his early interests. “I cannot remember a time I haven’t drawn or been drawing. Aside from reading, I really enjoyed drawing.” He remembers the works that sparked his imagination including classics like Twenty Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne and comics like Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. These passions were supported by his parents, who’re “both academics and my father was the head of the math department at Newton South. My mother was a social studies teacher at Brookline High. They were both very much into books and academics.” 

After graduating high school, Bing took time to focus on what his future might hold. “I had a year off and then went to the Rhode Island School of Design. I didn’t actually intend to apply in my year off! I guess the best way of putting it is that I’m a very high-functioning Asperger and classrooms just were not structured for me and I’m definitely on the visual end of the spectrum more than the calculating or mathematical end. One day this application came in the mail. I don’t know where it came from. And it was, ‘do a set of drawings’ and I did…so OK. Here’s a challenge. We sat down and did it, and that was in the fall. Then in the springtime my mother called up crying, ‘When did you apply to RISD?’ And I said that I didn’t know I had applied! ‘Well, we got your acceptance.’ Wow. Wonderful. OK. Because I’d never gone down to do an interview. I’d never filled out forms. And I know that my parents didn’t apply for me. So there’s this wonderful individual out there somewhere who actually did all of the applications and everything. I feel kind of bad because there was a fifty dollar application fee. Very generous person. But it wasn’t my parents. And nobody ever came forward.”

This anonymous, benevolent act set Bing on the path to his distinguished career as an illustrator. After a brief attempt to join the Marines to fly planes, specifically a Harrier Jet, Bing built a career of drawing cartoons and other images for numerous publications. He also concentrated on nurturing his growing family of three children, two daughters and a son.

A devoted father, Bing loved reading to his children as often as possible, especially a family favorite, the Harry Potter series. While reading the books to his kids, Bing took particular joy in bringing the characters to life through distinct voices. After seeing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with his eldest two children, they exclaimed how the screen’s Hagrid was not up to Bing’s rendition of the character. “I couldn’t believe that my voice had had that much of an impact. I mean, I’m a visualist, so to me, it’s visuals that really make the marking. Just a great moment for me.”

Bing brings his visualist lens to his picture book illustrations infusing each image with a depth of meaning and detail that comes from dedicated research. This research brought him to the Boston Athenæum, where various resources helped bring realism and nuance to his second published book, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “Doing the research for The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, I was looking at very old books and seeing how they were designed, how they were laid out. And there is a difference. I get so focused on designing the book that actually having a historic reference for them…I love sinking into research. When I contract out a book it’s for a year. The work itself really doesn’t take that long. The work is really about five to six months of just sitting down and taking the photo reference, canceling out everything, thinking through everything, and then making sure the design and the color are placed properly.”

As Bing discovers new information, he weaves important historical context into his art. “When I did the research for The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, there was a freed slave who fought the Battle of Lexington named Prince Estabrook. There is a daytime image in my book, which is a key battle scene. On the left hand side of the page, you’ll see Prince Estabrook, a Black Minuteman, fighting back. It’s those details. The funny thing is, the vast majority of people will skim over it. They won’t see it. There were stories I read to my kids over and over again because they would say that I’m onto something. And I always wanted my books to be so entertaining that a kid could glom onto it. 

Bing’s imagination and love of research work together beautifully to help produce layered, meaningful images that compliment and deepen the words on the page. Bing subscribes to the theory of another beloved illustrator. “I definitely live by Maurice Sendak’s philosophy of doing picture books. He says the text tells one story, the pictures should tell another. There should be things in the pictures that are not in the text and things in the text that are not in the pictures. And when you put those two together, you have a complete third.”

Attention to historical accuracy translates into subtle creative details. “When you’re looking at Casey at the Bat, it looks like a scrapbook, 1888, all the memorabilia.” The realism of these illustrations have led to some amusing confusion. In his first published work, Ernest L. Thayer’s Casey At the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888, an ersatz library card included in each copy prompted “a couple of calls from librarians laughing, saying that ‘when we opened up the book, we were trying to pull the line because we thought it’d actually gotten stuck in there.’ And I was like, yes, I did my job.” 

Furthermore, Bing’s research helps him add positive representations of marginalized communities. “With Casey at the Bat, I found out that 1888 was the last year that Black baseball players were allowed to play with white ballplayers. Because in 1889, what we would consider the professional baseball leagues stopped signing up Black ballplayers and wouldn’t renew their contracts. In 1888, there was what is called a pitcher/catcher battery. This team pitcher and catcher were Black and they were really amazing. So, my pitcher and catcher in Casey at the Bat are both Black.”

Bing’s commitment to inclusion extends to the projects he hopes to publish in the future. One such idea is a visual and allegorical representation of the Bill of Rights featuring figures drawn from real-life dancers of varying backgrounds. The goal of this project is to present this founding document “in such a way that it would make it accessible to everybody.” This is just one of many projects Bing hopes to take on in the future. Other ideas include a meticulously researched imagining of Charles Dickens’s beloved novella, A Christmas Carol, as well as breathing new life into the folklore of Darby O’Gill, and secular illustrations for the beloved poem “The Night Before Christmas.”

Christopher Bing aims to layer his illustrations so that readers discover something new each time the book is read. Every reading will uncover a different dimension and deepen your understanding of the images, text, and overall story. Next time you open up a picture book consider how the illustrator conveys meaning. Bing spends the time and thought to “put several layers into it so that it’s not just a picture book. I’ve always wanted depth in my books that would have people coming back, and back, and back. I want my books to come off the shelves.”

06.01.2020

STAFF BOOK SUGGESTIONS SUMMER 2020

John Buchtel

Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman by Peter Korn

(Library of Congress TT149 .K67 2013)

Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

(Cutter Classification 65 .P669)

Having recently enjoyed Peter Korn’s Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman (Boston: Godine, 2015), I’ve turned to a book he recommends that I’ve been meaning to read for years: Robert M. Pirsig’s classic Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (first published 1974). I never imagined a disquisition on Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy, scientific method, fixing bikes, and being a better person could keep me on the edge of my seat, but Michael Kramer’s superb reading of the narrative did exactly that. (Yes, your Curator of Rare Books does sometimes opt for audio books, however much he loves the heft of a physical book in his hands….)

Maria Daniels

Starlight Detectives: How Astronomers, Inventors, and Eccentrics Discovered the Modern Universe by Alan Hirshfeld

(available through Interlibrary Loan)

BA docent Scott Guthery recommended this terrific work of science history. I enjoyed the connections between nineteenth-century astronomers’ explorations and the role of photography. Those impressively creative people built technologies to peer into the skies and record what they saw. It’s the lively story of a quest to see the universe in its vast complexity.

Libby Miserendino

Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook

(Library of Congress CT275.R666 C66)

My family’s history intertwined a bit with the Roosevelts and it would seem our fascination with Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor has been passed down from generation to generation. Cook’s volumes on Eleanor are incredibly insightful. By the first chapter you feel close to her, and by the third volume, you’re not totally convinced you haven’t known her your whole life.

Carolle Morini

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

(Library of Congress PZ3.H53985 Tal)

I am sure many of you have seen one of the film adaptations of The Talented Mr. Ripley….but have you read the book? No! Well, you must, as it is the perfect read under the hot sun. No one will know if you’re sweating from the sun or from the building suspense Highsmith creates. And as you close Ripley #1 you must then lean over your lounge chair, hammock, or bed, and pick up Ripley#2, Ripley Under Ground. When you find yourself finished with Ripley #2 don’t fret because there are five Ripley books that can easily fill up the dog days of summer. Nothing to fear.

KL Pereira

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

(On order but not yet in catalog)

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

(Library of Congress NEW PZ7 .A1822 Wi 2019)

I’ve been on a novel kick, so I’ve been jamming to the very vital titles: The Poet X and With the Fire on High, both by Elizabeth Acevedo. The Poet X is a novel-in-verse about a young Latina poet who is finding her voice and her place within her family and her community in Harlem, N.Y. This story has so much beat, passion, and fierce pride that I couldn’t stop devouring it. With the Fire on High reminds me of Laura Esquivel’s classic Like Water For Chocolate with its interspersed recipes and vulnerable, strong characters that never give up. Positive and inspiring, both books encourage you to live deliciously and follow what makes you feel alive. 

Kaelin Rasmussen

Imperium in Imperio by Sutton E. Griggs

(On order)

Discovering this novel was my first encounter with Sutton E. Griggs (1872–1933), a Black writer, minister, and activist from Texas. Imperium in Imperio was Griggs’s first novel, which he published and sold himself in 1899, and in it, he explores the themes of racism and Black Nationalism through a fictional (but very powerful) lens. The story follows two young Black men from Texas and their encounters with racism and white supremacy, and their involvement in a secret society whose aim is to establish the state of Texas an all-Black republic. Like Griggs himself, his characters grapple not only with the racism of whites, but also with the dual forces of conciliation and nationalism within the Black community of the time. Though in later life Griggs would become disenchanted with his early spirit of activism, Imperium in Imperio embodies powerful ideas and paints a vivid picture of the all-pervading damage caused by racism. Read more about Griggs here.

Leah Rosovsky 

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

(On order)

This short novel tells an unusual coming of age story. Set in Britain, it focuses on seventeen-year-old Silvie, whose father is obsessed with the study of the island’s ancient residents. The family spends their summer holiday re-enacting Iron Age life in an encampment filled with university students. Her situation there leads Silvie to consider a new set of possibilities for her own life. Complications ensue.

Carly Stevens

Waking up White: and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debbie Irving

(Library of Congress NEW E185.615 .I778 2014)

Many of the popular anti-racist books are sold out at independent book shops across the country. A lesser known title, but available online is Waking up White. Irving’s story begins with her childhood and extends into her adult life to explore how racism is learned and reinforced in White Americans through various systems and societal values. She confronts her own discomfort around race and demands readers do the same. Included after every chapter are writing prompts and reflection questions for the reader’s engagement. It’s an important read for anyone looking to engage with anti-racist titles. 

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

(Library of Congress PZ4.W85962 In 2013)

I particularly enjoyed this read because Wolitzer is skilled at creating wonderful characters and constructing meaningful relationships. The Interestings focuses on a group of friends who form a lifelong bond at a New York summer camp in 1979. The chapters jump back and forth in time juxtaposing childhood creativity and ingenuity thriving in the heat of summer with the practicality and banality of adulthood. In the time of COVID-19 where connection can be difficult this book transported me to times of friendship and summer. It reminded me that life is nothing if not interesting.

Mary Warnement

Shooting at Chateau Rock by Martin Walker 

(On order but not yet in catalog)

Martin Walker is in good form: good food, good characters, a good read. I can’t go to France—or pretty much anywhere—right now, so I was pleased to travel to the world of Bruno, Chief of Police. The links between this village cop and world events stretches belief, but Walker clearly believes what anyone does can have far-reaching effects. Walker was particularly kind in his acknowledgments’ conclusions: “And we’d all be in trouble without the booksellers, book reviewers, librarians, bloggers and book clubs, who bring the books to the most crucial people of all—readers like you.” I could not resist that praise or his convivial imagined world. If you like mysteries and the Mediterranean, then this is for you.

Hannah Weisman

The Girl Before by JP Delaney

(Library of Congress PZ4.D3365 Gr 2017)

The enigmatic architect and landlord of One Folgate Street asks prospective tenants, “Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.” The intrusive application question is just the smallest hint of the manipulation Jane and Emma, successive residents of the house, find themselves embroiled in. This thriller is perfect if you’re looking for a fast read for the beach or for sitting on the porch with a cold drink.

05.12.2020

Danna Lorch

June 2020

Interview by Arnold Serapilio

Danna Lorch was immersed in a literary world from an early age. When she was nine, her father and mother Jim and Randy Weiss started a storytelling company that created and sold audio cassettes of classical literature and Greek mythology in northern California’s Bay Area where Lorch grew up. Many of her earliest childhood memories involved following her father to his storytelling performances or visiting bookstores and libraries.

As a teenager, Lorch’s parents enrolled her in the University of Virginia’s Young Writers’ Workshop, a summer program she attended during her high school summers. “For the first time I was around other kids like myself who thought it was a great idea to sit around quoting Sylvia Plath and other angsty things.”

Lorch has a master in peace studies from the University of Notre Dame, Massachusetts and a master in Middle Eastern studies from Harvard. A prolific interviewer and writer, she has chronicled arts and culture for over a decade, first in Jordan and Dubai (more on that below), and more recently here in Boston, where she currently is a freelance writer focusing mainly on New England art, design and architecture in addition to Middle Eastern art.

Anyone looking to connect with Lorch to ask questions, write together, or commission potential stories, can do so through her website, or on Instagram, @dannawrites. 

Q: How did you find the BA?

DANNA LORCH: I was looking for interesting things to write about in Boston when I moved here. I connected with Maria and began to hear about the Hayden albums, then wrote that story for Smithsonian about the acquisition of the Hayden albums. Whenever I visited the Athenæum I found it to be charming and magical but also really grounding. That so many people who’ve done incredible things have walked through those doors and had great thoughts inside. And just being among so many older books and publications is really exciting for a writer! Especially after having been in the Middle East. There aren’t many older institutions in Dubai, the excitement of Dubai is that everything is new and developing.

To be in a historic part of Boston, in a historic library, with collections dating back hundreds of years is really very thrilling. I feel like I know everyone there, even though I’ve never spoken to them, do you know what I mean? I appreciate the industriousness with which people are dedicating themselves to their research or their writing here, and it propels me not to waste my time. I arrive and see that everyone is so focused and it forces me to be focused and take risks and be daring and go places I’ve previously been perhaps too fearful to go creatively.

Not to mention how much the Athenæum has come to mean to me in such short time. I also want to give a shout out to the librarians! One of the reasons I joined was because of the research opportunities. I find it tremendously helpful to be able to book an appointment with a librarian and have someone help you with your research tasks and offer ideas. As a writer, I can’t even say how much time that saves, how reassuring it is to know there is someone who can help you find obscure texts or resources.

Q: Everyone’s writing process is different. What does yours look like?

DL: It’s changed since I became a parent. Parenthood has forced me to be a lot less precious with my words. I have these boundaries of time and I can’t cross them: I can’t be late to the preschool pick-up, and once I get home I’m usually exhausted and can’t necessarily think very creatively at night. It’s changed the way I structure my time.

I try to have one to two major deadlines a week and then set aside one afternoon (this is pre-pandemic) to go to the Athenæum and write something I’m working on for myself. I’m really protective of that time.

In general, most of my work involves interviews. I write a lot for arts publications, so most of my work involves either going to see a space, or going to see an exhibition, or visiting an artist’s studio. I get a lot of energy and structure from that. I like to record an interview, transcribe it, and write immediately after the interview. I find that if I wait any amount of time, I lose the energy of that connection and then have to retrace that feeling. And, so much of writing is also what’s not said, so if you visit an artist’s studio, it is about looking, seeing what she has on her desk, or how her books are arranged, or listening to the music she’s been playing while she works on her most recent series, or noticing that there’s silence.

Post pandemic—whatever that means—is going to be really different, because so much of my writing comes from visiting other people and spaces [laughs].

Q: What are the great struggles of your writing projects? The great joys?

DL: The biggest struggle is always hitting “send” and submitting something to an editor. I almost always have this horrible feeling of loss. Second to that is this feeling that I’ve missed something, that the piece isn’t done.

Some of the best moments come with really great editors. There’s so much to be said for editors who ask insightful questions. I really appreciate editors who edit. Editing is a craft. The author’s job is to write the piece they’re commissioned to write—not to question it or to look back at it and think it’s not ready. That’s the editor’s job.

One lovely thing about being a writer who covers visual arts is the marriage of visuals with your text. When we’re children we get to read picture books that have these beautiful images. Then, as we become adults, somehow our books aren’t supposed to have visuals, like it demeans them or makes them seem less intellectual or academic. I feel privileged to get to write in response to and in dialogue with powerful visuals so often.

Q: How did you wind up living in the Middle East?

DL: It was the post-9/11 Bush era. The CIA was recruiting and wanted people from our class who spoke Arabic to just go and sit in State Department offices and dictate how the Middle East should be run. I considered diplomacy, but I didn’t think I should do that unless I actually spent some time in the Middle East, really seeing how people lived, listening to people and learning from their stories.

Q: Your instinct to want to live the experience before passing judgment on it—did it seem like you were alone in this approach?

DL: So many of the people I graduated with went straight into counter-terrorism having never once set foot in a mosque. They would go to these very elite language immersion programs during the summers and would socialize with a very distinct class of individuals in those countries, but maybe would miss the feeling of walking down the street and talking to the average person and really listening and learning.

While at Harvard I spent a lot of time doing research in mosques. Right out of grad school I got a job as a nonprofit manager in Amman, Jordan with the Canadian outfit Right to Play. My job was, basically, to help several thousand Palestinian refugee children play [laughs]. I hired a local staff and worked with UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and spent a crazy year and a half working in refugee camps trying to get this program off the ground.

During that time I met a friend who edited the magazine Viva. When I wasn’t in a refugee camp she would send me for these crazy spa appointments where I would have to review the spa facilities at, say, the Four Seasons Amman, or whatever. The cognitive dissonance between being in a refugee camp where people sometimes couldn’t even afford shoes, to going to the Four Seasons and having a gratis $300 seaweed wrap was really confusing.

That seems like a very jarring head space to constantly occupy. Being yanked between two extremes like that.

DL: It was jarring. It was exhausting. And it was confusing! There were many powerful lessons about that time. One of the most powerful was, I lived by myself and many of my colleagues were refugees themselves and lived in what we here would consider very impoverished circumstances. And yet, they felt like I was the impoverished one because I was alone, I was without my family, I was not married—

Different priorities.

DL: Totally different priorities—that was another thing that was quite jarring and fascinating about that time. I journaled a lot about this era, and I always thought I would write something larger about it.

When that ended, I worked for Operation Smile, another nonprofit and they sent me to Cape Town. I eventually got really burned out. Seeing that amount of suffering and poverty gets to you. I wrote full time for three months and started to get published. Then I fell in love with the man who’s now my husband. He was in Dubai so I moved there, thinking I’d get another nonprofit job, but none were very transparent. Plus most of the work involved heavy duty fundraising and development, which I had done previously, but it wasn’t what drew me to the nonprofit world. I loved sitting on a floor of a refugee camp listening to women tell their stories, helping to make those women feel heard. The idea of raising money in a non transparent way was depressing.

One day I was in an industrial area of Dubai called Al Quoz, where the art galleries are. I was at this compound called Alserkal Avenue, which now is really well-known, but at the time was still developing. It was a former marble factory that a generous patron of the arts had given over to creatives and gallerists at subsidized rental rates so they could have a community.

So I was there and had booked an interview with Syrian artist Tammam Azzam for my Jordanian friend’s magazine Family Flavours. Just before we did the interview, one of his photographs, “Freedom Graffiti,” went viral—it was all over CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. He had superimposed Klimt’s The Kiss on a bombed out wall in Damascus which was where he was from. It had caught on as this message of hope and beauty during a really bleak time in the Syrian conflict. And I had the first interview with him since we’d already set up this time to speak! We were sitting in this little alley on this little bench and he’s chain smoking his cigarettes and the Ayyam Gallery phone inside is ringing off the hook. I realized then that this was the same thing I had done at the nonprofits: listening to people’s stories and bringing them to a wider audience.

The art scene happened to be rising in Dubai when I was there, and I became one of the first English writers to cover the art scene there and the Middle East at large. I started with blogging, then started writing for local publications, then regional publications and the newspaper, and then eventually international arts publications over the seven years I was there.

Q: I imagine living through all of this must change your worldview. Do you feel your brain is more wrinkled these days?

DL [laughs]:Right now, to me, the world actually feels larger than it has felt in a long time because borders have been clamped down due to the pandemic.

Previously though, I felt like the world was a village. Living in Dubai especially, where it’s so international and so cosmopolitan, and wherever you go you see people from so many different cultures all working together, in peace—that really is happening there. It just changed the way my brain works. But while it’s strange to now be in a place that isn’t terribly diverse, it’s also beautiful to come back to your own culture after being away for so long.

Now that I’m back here, so many times I mention having lived in the Middle East for many years, and the first thing people ask is, “Weren’t you scared?” I’m trying to get brave enough to write something about that, because I actually felt safer there than I do here, in many ways. The amount of welcome and graciousness that people gave me, as a foreign guest, was so overwhelming. The number of times people invited me into their homes, whether that was a grand home or a simple home. Also, in Dubai, we did not need to lock our doors at night. You would walk at night by yourself. If you left something at a restaurant it would not disappear.

Right now I am working on something about being a religious minority in a Muslim majority country. That’s what I’ve been doing on the fifth floor when I get brave enough to write.

Q: You’ve mentioned or alluded to creative bravery a few times. What does that mean to you specifically? Is it about forcing yourself to think really deeply about certain ideas and get lost in them? Is it simply the act of sharing your work with other people?

DL: I think there are two kinds of bravery. The first is commercial bravery. If you earn a living based off your writing you have to have so much courage to pitch things, and you have to be best friends with rejection. You can’t be too precious about sending your ideas out into the world and seeing someone ignore them or twist them or reject them. Knowing that may happen most of the time, the time your idea is accepted is exhilarating.

There’s also courage required to face down the blank page. Just the act of sitting down and forcing out that first draft is really the hardest part. When I start something I generally expect the first draft will be truly dreadful. Once I have something, even if it doesn’t feel right, I can start over, but that initial push is really frightening.

Q: Were there any particular rejections that were more formative or edifying?

DL: I don’t have a formal art history background; I do have a Middle Eastern studies background, though. When I first started writing, I didn’t really know how to approach arts publications and I didn’t really feel qualified, and I would get ghosted. So I started a blog. It was the days of the blog and I amassed quite a social media following. People were obsessed with social media in the Gulf. I don’t know if this is still the case, but while I was there the largest stats in the world for social media engagement came from the Gulf.

I think the way I initially got around rejection was by just publishing my own thoughts. I was really lucky that the gallerists and artists in the region took my work seriously and gave me space to interview really inspiring artists and creatives.

Q: Is it fair to say your experiences have made you more optimistic?

DL: I think so. Especially when I lived in Jordan, one of my projects was in Zarqa, where Zarqawi was from. I have really vivid memories of doing a teacher training with my staff and some really passionate UNRWA educators. Several of the women were fully covered, just their eyes showing. The men were mostly in traditional Islamic dress. I played children’s games with them—we were trying to figure out how we would teach their elementary school students some physical education concepts for the first time—and we laughed so hard trying to pretend to be little cars turning on our signals in a traffic jam. And how to help them, through play, learn about peace and human rights. I realized that everyone is the same, you know? I interacted quite a lot with members of various royal families in the Middle East and I don’t really see any difference in the way that people behave, or the way that people are, fundamentally. Everyone is the same.

04.16.2020

Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg

May 2020

Interview by Carolle Morini

The author Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg was born in 1965 in Philadelphia, PA, raised until high school in Westchester County, NY and then in Newport Beach, California. After graduating from Newport Harbor High School, she came back east to Smith College where she graduated in 1987 before working in finance for many years. Her first novel, Eden, came out in 2017 and her second novel, The Nine, was published in 2019.

Q: How are you doing during this quarantine?

JEANNE MCWILLIAMS BLASBERG: I am one of the lucky ones for sure. Even so, the need to quarantine hit me with shock, then frustration and anger, then sadness and now finally acceptance (as well as a good portion of worry). My family is making donations to those most in need through the Boston Resiliency Fund and I am trying to see the positive every day, making the most of the time and the fact that I am able to be home with my loved ones.

Q: What is your writing process? Are you finding it has changed now? If so, how are you adjusting?

JMB: I am a morning writer and the crazy thing is the quarantine allows, schedule-wise, for an ideal writing life. The worry and preoccupation with the future do not help with the writing life. To combat those distractions, I am grateful for a well-established meditation and journaling practice. I use both these tools for clearing my mind before sitting down to work on my fiction. Having no appointments outside the home means I can sit at my desk for long stretches. I have decided my work-in-progress must incorporate the present moment, so every day of the pandemic and the emotions that go along with it are being channelled into two of my characters’ development.

Q: What are you reading right now? Do you find your reading list or tastes have changed, being inside longer?

JMB: My reading over the past month has included: Devotion by Dani Shapiro, Fairyland by Alysia Abbott, Writers & Lovers by Lily King, and Severance by Ling Ma…I love memoir and contemporary fiction—and no, my taste hasn’t changed. I do have a couple of non fiction books about the brain and the body I am dipping in and out of, but basically I am using this time to tackle a very high TBR pile.

Q: What is your work experience?

JMB: After graduating from Smith College, I embarked on a career in finance, working as an investment banking analyst at The First Boston Corporation. While I worked primarily with numbers, I always had an interest in writing. After a stint on Wall Street, in the treasury and strategic planning departments at Federated Department Stores (later Macy’s), I wrote case studies at Harvard Business School before turning seriously to fiction. I’ve kept a journal throughout my life and was inspired by a pervasive theme in those journals around what it means to be a daughter and a mother as I wrote my first novel, Eden. I am a founder of the Westerly Memoir Project, which offers classes in memoir and community readings in Westerly, Rhode Island. I am also a board member of the Boston Book Festival. I am a student and board member of GrubStreet, one of the country’s preeminent creative writing centers, where I wrote and revised The Nine and am currently developing my next novel.

Q: Can you elaborate on the importance of being part of a writing group?

JMB: I have been fortunate to find a community of writers at GrubStreet as well as a writing group. Writing is a solitary pursuit, so having peers to offer feedback makes the work more efficient. I have found that accepting and using feedback is also a very important skill to cultivate.

The Nine by Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg, image courtesy of https://jeanneblasberg.com/

The Nine, She Writes Press, 2019, from website.

Q: What were the great struggles of working on Eden? The great joys?

JMB: Being my first novel, the great joys of Eden were that I would write and write with abandon and get lost in the characters and scenery. I loved the writing life and the important themes I was able to express in my fiction. The great struggle came when I first showed the behemoth of a manuscript to an editor and realized it would need to be rewritten—several times! You can say I learned the craft of novel writing on the job. I started taking classes at GrubStreet and went through multiple revisions. Eden took me ten years to complete. In the midst, I was even so discouraged that I started writing another book. That would later become The Nine, my second novel, which came out last August.

Q: Would you like to add anything about The Nine and the writing of it?

JMB: Whereas Eden is a multi-generational family saga, The Nine is a contemporary literary thriller with three main characters set over a period of five years. It is a suspenseful book with a scandal on a New England boarding school campus keeping the reader turning the pages, but the core theme is, again, about motherhood. Instead of mother and daughter, The Nine focuses on the mother/son relationship.

Q: How did you find the Athenæum?

JMB: I have lived on Beacon Hill for 25 years with my husband who has lived on the hill most of his life. We raised our three children on Hancock Street and then Chestnut Street. I first discovered the Athenæum through the children’s story time and children’s library. It was a weekly treat for all of us. The librarians even assisted my children with research papers over the years! When I stopped working outside the home, I used the Athenæum as a refuge—a place to sit and write as well as to borrow many books. I am an avid reader and I absolutely love the collection.

Q: What appeals to you about the Athenæum?

JMB: The environment is like no other. There is a sense of history and tradition and something about the seriousness of study, reading, and research that is contagious.

Q: Any projects on the horizon you’re able to talk about here?

JMB: Besides keeping up my blog, and writing book reviews, I am happily working on my third novel, which is set in contemporary New York City. Like my first two novels rich with biblical metaphor, this will be a modern retelling of the David and Bathsheba story. I had intended for this timeless story to be set against a #metoo backdrop and now, of course, it is set in the midst of a pandemic as well.

03.23.2020

Kathy Nilsson

April 2020

Interview by Carolle Morini

I first met Kathy Nilsson in the poet Lucie Brock-Broido’s poetry workshop in the early 2000s and I have been a fan of Nilsson’s poems ever since. From Poetry Foundation, “Nilsson earned a BA in English Literature from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and The New York State Writers Institute. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Boston Review, Poetry Daily, Columbia, Volt, and other literary journals. Her chapbook, The Abattoir, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. Her manuscript, Black Lemons, was a finalist in the Tupelo First Book Award. The manuscript The Infant Scholar was selected for Honorable Mention in the Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies and was published by Tupelo Press in 2015. She is a recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Robert H. Winner Award.” We conducted this interview by email in March 2020.

Q: Do you remember when you first learned about poetry? 

KATHY NILSSON: My parents read poetry to me from children’s books. I studied English Literature at Mount Holyoke but it never occurred to me to write poetry. Only when I took Lucie Brock-Broido’s workshop in 1990 did it dawn on me that beautiful books by living poets sold at the Grolier Bookstore should be read and not just held as gifts. 

Q: I understand you grew up in the Worcester area like the poet Stanley Kunitz. Did growing up there influence your writing in any specific way? Did you learn about Kunitz in school? Was he considered a local celebrity? 

KN: I knew nothing about Kunitz until I went to a reading of his at Harvard long after I left home. His sadness as a kid was easy for me to place in Worcester because I had been sad as a child there. 

Q: Is there a particular author you studied as an undergrad at Mount Holyoke College that you were influenced by? 

KN: Poetry by Dickinson, Hopkins, Keats, Shakespeare, Milton and Plath (images of a red heart blooming through a coat—tulips like dangerous animals behind bars) made a deep impression on me. T.S. Eliot baffled me until I met Lucie.

Q: Would you like to talk about the MFA program at Bennington Writing Seminars? Any teachers you worked with that helped form the poet you are?  

KN: I liked my teachers at Bennington—April Bernard, Liam Rector, Ed Ochester and Thomas Sayers Ellis.We were steeped in writing for two weeks which felt good when my son was little because I didn’t get out much. I loved summer as much as winter out in that bucolic setting. 

Q: What is it about the medium you like? Or what is it about creating that you enjoy or simply cannot seem to get rid of? 

KN: If I could I’d write a little novel, but it goes against my instincts to think in narrative lines. Writing poetry was a revelation. Marianne Moore said she wrote it on a clipboard while doing the wash. All of a sudden my interest in books on lobsters, Egyptian mummies, weather, eclipses, Brigitte Bardot and the Dictionary of International Slurs among others, all came together.

I started out as a painter at the Art Students’ League in New York so I understand Elizabeth Bishop’s real wish to be an artist and declaring it wasn’t by choice she wrote poetry, something like that. When a poetry critic told me the moment she realized she wasn’t a poet was when reading a line in a biography of one of the great poets in which he described his life as “the continuum of a dream” I burst into tears.

Q: What I admire about your writing is your use of subtle dark humor. Sometimes humor balances out the horrors of life. What do you think? 

KN: My mother was very loose with the term “horse’s ass” while she was off paying a bill—while in the same department store my father would be looking for wands for his magic show. He used to say he’d retire to go on the road and saw my mother in half. Their first Christmas card before I was born was a cartoon with my father’s head superimposed on a stick figure of a magician—and my mother’s head superimposed on a silver platter. 

Q: A fair number of animals make appearances in your poems. Do you think that some animals encapsulate and/or express particular emotions?

KN: In a way animals have it all over us humans in terms of endearment and sense. The longer I live with dogs and marvel from a distance at horses, donkeys, pigs, goats, ducks, the more I kind of wish I’d grown up in Romania where animals are still the mainstay of people’s lives. The older I get, the more I worry about them.

Q: I know you are a well read and curious person. I always like to know what you are reading. Who are some of the authors you read most recently? Any particular literary journals you like to read? 

KN: On my table I keep books of poetry by Paul Celan, Wallace Stevens, Lucie Brock-Broido, Frank Stanford, Thomas James, Louise Gluck, Sylvia Plath, Franz Wright. I read poetry in the morning. Afternoons and evenings, I read fiction—Clarice Lispector, Bruno Schulz, Adalbert Stifter, Gerald Murnane. I love little novels—A Pale View of the Hills and Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro), November (Flaubert), The Left-Handed Woman (Handke), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Bauby), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Jackson). I like reading literary journals to see what’s out there.

Q: Are there any books that you re-read? Any particular reason why?

KN: Trollope I read every day—all his novels—over and over—many times—so I can live in that century.

Q: I have often listened to the poems you recorded for the Poetry Magazine and Poetry Foundation website. How was that experience? I find I understand the poem better when I hear the author read it. What do you think is added to the work when hearing the voice of the poet? 

The Abattoir, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown Kentucky, 2008, from website

The Abattoir, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown Kentucky, 2008, from website.

KN: I loved recording the podcast for Poetry Magazine. In a soundproof booth at WBUR I felt like Lady Gaga. Christian Wiman and Don Share had such different takes on my work it opened my eyes to the possibilities. I remember submitting those poems thinking—this is the best I can do—if they don’t take these they won’t take any, ever. Their insightful discussion of my poems made me feel ordained as a writer. I do love hearing the voice that goes with a writer—it’s like seeing inside them, being inside someone else’s head.

Q: The cover of The Infant Scholar makes me laugh and also it makes me want to cry—the baby is so adorable and also vulnerable. What made you think of this title and how did you decide on the cover? 

KN: The baby on the cover of The Infant Scholar is my husband, Claes, from Sweden. He is one of the infant scholars, along with Richard Howard and Helen Vendler. I love smart babies and those who show vulnerability in their facial expressions. Claes’s baby picture plus the beauty of an old Swedish photograph—I had a visceral reaction to it. So did editors at Tupelo Press.

Q: Anything you would like to add about this collection of poems? 

KN: The Infant Scholar took me 25 years to write, assemble and publish. It’s a good thing I wasn’t in a rush. Lucie kept reminding me about the importance of the first book.

Q: What is the best writing advice you received? Is there any advice you found to be simply unrealistic?

KN: What I remember most is Lucie Brock-Broido nipping me in the bud, telling me to put everything into a poem—no holding back—give yourself away, she would say. And her definition: a poem is an egg with horses in it (or a blue egg with two purple horses, as in the case of a toy my son John pulled out of a gumball machine at a supermarket one day many years ago which just might still be floating around Lucie’s office at Columbia University).

Q: If you were not a poet what would you be? 

KN: If I were not writing poetry I might be incarcerated in one of the American prisons—or I’d be back tending sheep and counting them at night which is what I assume I was doing before I ever wrote a poem.

Q: Any upcoming projects you would like to tell the readers about? 

KN: I’m finishing a second manuscript and sending out poems to literary journals. For the first time, after 30 years, I feel to some extent that finally I know what I’m doing. Writing for me is like taking a little black square of cloth and making a skirt for the Metropolitan Museum, or putting down equations and having them all come out right without really trying, or cutting whole trees out of a piece of gold foil from a chocolate bar. There’s something very mysterious about a finely written poem. Something that almost seems to have nothing to do with the author.

Q: Any last words?

KN: The best line of poetry ever: The world is gone. I must carry you—by Paul Celan.

03.13.2020

Staff Book Suggestions Spring 2020

Christina Michelon

Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World by Zara Anishanslin

(Library of Congress E18.82 .A55 2016)

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

(Library of Congress PZ3.R3494 Wi)

By day I’ve been reading Zara Anishanslin’s Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World and by night, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. Both books take beloved and familiar cultural products (colonial portraiture and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, respectively) and examine them from a different perspective. Both authors sensitively probe the enduring legacies of slavery, gender, and power dynamics through a panopoly of historical actors (real and fictional). Anishanslin follows the threads presented by one portrait; they lead her to London’s Spitalfields and its textile manufacturers, to high society in Philadelphia, and into the professional nexus of a New England artist. Rhys gives us a poetic but unvarnished glimpse into the life of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway, offering a thought-provoking alternative to Bronte’s story. Ultimately, both texts reveal the complex networks and varied experiences of the British Atlantic World in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—reading them in tandem has been particularly enriching.

Carolle Morini

Patterns: Inside the Design Library by Peter Koepke

(Library of Congress + NK8805 .K64 2016)

Such joy to step inside this book, absorb the patterns, and learn about this wonderful library and what they do. Just as fun as walking through a colorful garden. 

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley

(Library of Congress PZ4.P158 Li)

Some of these stories are over 60 years old, yet still so resonant and fervent today. Paley said it best: “The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story.” In this collection of stories Paley is as careful as a surgeon selecting the precise instruments to make the story live and breathe. 

House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson

(Library of Congress PR9265.9.H85 A6 2016)

Hutchinson writes powerful, stunning, thought provoking poems that will not leave you in a hurry. You will put the book down and become a different kind of listener to the world around you (near and far). These poems will not be ignored nor will you be able to shake the waves of truth afterwards. 

Elizabeth O’Meara

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

(Library of Congress HV6574.G7 K44 2019)

I found this a riveting story of the so-called Troubles that took place in Northern Ireland during the seventies. Keefe uses the story of the disappearance of a mother from a family of ten children as a framework to look at these tragic times and tragic lives of people in Northern Ireland. There is also an interesting Boston connection to Keefe’s story. After the Good Friday Agreement, Boston College collected oral histories from the participants which were to remain sealed until after their deaths. The portrait of Jerry Adams and the betrayal felt by many of his fellow IRA members that Keefe learned from that archive has stayed with me.

The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch

(Library of Congress PN452 .D36 2019)

This was such a fun read. Damrosch paints a fascinating portrait of English life in the late eighteenth century with brief character sketches of members of a club created to help Samuel Johnson cope with one of his bouts of depression. A number of the men in the club went on to have very distinguished careers. Joshua Reynolds was the friend who first proposed the idea of a group of friends getting together for drinks, food and conversation. Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke were part of the original group and the club expanded out to include James Boswell, David Garrick and Adam Smith. Although there were no women in the club, Johnson was quite close with a number of women who we meet in the book. Damrosch did a great job of bringing all these people to life.

KL Pereira

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

(Library of Congress PZ4.W3292 Ni 2006)

I can’t get enough queer historical fiction, so obviously I’m a fan of Sarah Waters. I’ve been revisiting her gorgeous novel of London in the 1940s, The Night Watch (shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes). Centered around four protagonists, this novel (which begins in spring 1947 and ends in 1941) moves between very different characters and their common experiences of love, death, and survival during and after wartime. Rather than confusing the reader, the backward motion of the text builds tension and a delicious dramatic irony. The prose is both lush and sharp with Waters’s trademark eye for historical detail and keen description. A fantastic examination of the inner worlds and growth of those on the front lines of a world crisis, and of course, the power of friendship. 

Kaelin Rasmussen

The Magazine Novels of Pauline Hopkins, with an introduction by Hazel V. Carby

(Library of Congress PZ3.H777 Ma)

One of my BA colleagues alerted me to the existence of the novel Of One Blood by Pauline Hopkins (1859–1930), having seen the book highlighted as part of the recent Ancient Nubia Now exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. I was immediately intrigued by their description and was very pleased to find the Athenæum had a copy as part of a collection of Hopkins’s serially-issued novels published in 1988. So far, I have only read Of One Blood. Set in the early 1900s, the book tells the story of Reuel Briggs, a brilliant young Harvard medical student with a mysterious past, who although himself lacking funds, has social ties with his wealthy, high-society classmates. In their company, Reuel attends a performance of a company of jubilee singers (African American performers singing spirituals of the old South) and there encounters a beautiful young woman of mixed race who will change his life forever. Reuel’s adventures take him from Boston mansions and hospitals all the way to Africa, where he discovers that the legacy of the Ancient Nubian civilization is not dead and gone, and it is up to him to help it rise again. Pauline Hopkins (born in Portland, Maine) was known for her use of the romantic novel to explore social and racial themes, and this amazing book is an example of that. The plot has elements of the romantic, fantastic, and melodramatic, but the novel’s portrayal of the all-encompassing menace of racism, the long shadow cast by slavery, and the desire to restore the deliberately obscured significance of Nubia in the ancient world ring all too true. As I read Of One Blood, I became astonished and angry that I had never known about it before. So I am spreading the word and recommending it now!

Mary Warnement

Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade

(On order but not yet in catalog)

If you’re a fan of Bloomsbury—both the area of London and the literary set that populated it—then you’ll enjoy this book from Faber and Faber. I recommend the British edition—its cover resembling a white line woodcut entices me to walk around the square and the “Hazlitt” endpapers designed by Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher both charm and suit the subject perfectly. The subjects are five writers who lived in Mecklenburgh Square: HD (Hilda Doolittle), Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power, and Virginia Woolf. I knew them all (although only a little about HD) and was intrigued at the grouping. I’ve read much (probably a small percentage of what I could) about Virginia Woolf, a biography of Dorothy Sayers, and Mary Beard’s biography of Jane Harrison. Eileen Power was the main attraction for me. I’d read that many of her papers were destroyed and had thought there was no bio. I now know there was one written in 1996, after my keen interest in Power whose stature as a historian caught my undergraduate eye. How pleased I was to pull my Penguin of Medieval People off my shelves and recall my younger self reading The Goodman of Paris and Medieval Women. Would Wade’s group treatment be more than a look at the coincidental, and non-concurrent, residential circumstances of five women? Yes.

I pre-ordered my copy for pick-up at the London Review Bookshop. I didn’t care that it was a signed edition, but I chose this as my main souvenir for a trip, months in the planning, for winter. I had bought a cheap airline ticket that allowed only a carry-on, necessitating a disciplined approach in bookstores and museum shops. I picked it up my first day and admit my first thought was mundane—it is much bigger than expected. I saved it to read for after the trip, when I wanted to return virtually. Travel is not advised right now, so if reading takes you away and you want to visit or revisit London, let Wade take you there in good company. Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own informs most of the chapters, a fact Wade acknowledges (338): “The story I’ve told in this book has been one of community: not only between Bloomsbury women, but also between past and present and across the wider world.” Wade satisfied my own search for a sense of community right now.

Hannah Weisman

A Shoemaker’s Story: Being Chiefly about French Canadian Immigrants, Enterprising Photographers, Rascal Yankees, and Chinese Cobblers in a Nineteenth-Century Factory Town by Anthony W. Lee

(Library of Congress F74.N8 L43 2008)

Originally I selected this book only to inform my Eye of the Expert presentation on the Chinese workers who came from the west coast to work at the CT Sampson Shoe Factory in North Adams, MA, in June 1870. I expected dry, academic writing that I would have to slog through. Instead I was delighted to discover that Lee weaves the story in a way that compels the reader to turn page after page. The incredibly unique story of Chinese shoemakers in western Massachusetts reveals universal themes of how we understand (or don’t understand) people who are different from us and how we cope with changes that are out of our control.

Rachel Wentworth

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

(Library of Congress PN6727.B3757 Z46 2006)

If all this warm weather and sunshine has you longing for the days when we could hole up inside with a good book without any guilt at all, I’ve got the perfect thing. Despite its readability, this graphic novel packs a huge punch. I finished it in just two commutes to the Athenæum and, each day, I left the train with my head spinning. It was one of those rapturous reading experiences where you’re left in the same confused and dissociated state you might wake up in at the beginning of Daylight Savings. I highly recommend listening to the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the soundtrack to the musical based on the book once you’re done reading. You’ll smile, you’ll cry, it’s an ordeal. No wonder it won so many Tonys. I might be a couple years behind the eight ball with this but I think it’s one that will last far beyond its initial success.