Matt Baer @matt

6 posts4 participants1 post today

**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · 4h

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books: Prosthetic Memories by Hyaesin Yoon (Duke UP) https://www.dukeupress.edu/prosthetic-memories -and- Strange Flowers, poems by Bryan Byrdlong (YesYes) https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/strange-flowers
Alt-text for details.

Book cover for Prosthetic Memories: Postcolonial Feminisms in a More-Than-Human World by Hyaesin Yoon (Duke UP), with ceramic ovals that suggest flowers or organs branching off from a white ceramic structure that suggests bones or flower stems. Hyaesin Yoon examines the entanglements of humans, animals, and technologies across South Korea and the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. Interrogating a variety of body-technology interfaces, Yoon outlines an emergent mode of prosthetic memory in which human memory is extended into both machines and animals and narrates the countermemories of racialized, gendered, diasporic, queer, and marginalized human and nonhuman others that work against the violent and isolating biopolitical and neoliberal forces in contemporary society. https://www.dukeupress.edu/prosthetic-memories

Book cover for Strange Flowers, poems by Bryan Byrdlong (YesYes Books), with dried wildflowers artfully falling from a black sculpture of a human with a large head and tiny body. Strange Flowers fashions a kind of suit, an armor, a disguise out of the folk and pop cultural creation of the zombie. In response to historical prejudice, but more specifically in response to fear of Black people in America, the poetry in this collection uses the idea of the zombie to offer an unbiased view of Black struggle, the zombie being a suit sometimes forced upon Black people and sometimes worn willingly. https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/strange-flowers

#bookstodon #DSPBposts

**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · 1d

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books: Dreaming Alongside by Monique Gray Smith (Orca Book Publishers) Alt-text for details. https://www.orcabook.com/Dreaming-Alongside-%c3%aa-paw%c3%a2tamahk

Book cover for Dreaming Alongside by Monique Gray Smith (Orca Book), with a child reaching for a large dragonfly. On the English-only version of this book, available at https://www.orcabook.com/Dreaming-Alongside, the dragonfly's wings say Dreaming (top) and Alongside (bottom), but on the bilingual Plans Cree and English version pictured and available https://www.orcabook.com/Dreaming-Alongside-%c3%aa-paw%c3%a2tamahk, the dragonfly's wings say Dreaming Alongside (top) and e-pawatamakh (bottom, with a circumflex over the e and second a). This children's book follows your winged guide to visit the places and things that can help you find strength in the present and imagine your amazing future.

#DSPBposts #bookstodon

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · 3d

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books: Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood by Bradley Sides (Montag Press) https://www.montagpress.com/books-1/crocodile-tears-didn%E2%80%99t-cause-the-flood
The Body Papers by Grace Talusan (Restless Books) https://restlessbooks.org/bookstore/the-body-papers Alt-text for details. 4/4

Book cover for The Body Papers: A Memoir by Grace Talusan (Restless Books), with a paper doll torn out of graph paper and police records. At the bottom, text says "Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing". Grace Talusan’s critically acclaimed memoir, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse. https://restlessbooks.org/bookstore/the-body-papers

Book cover for Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood by Bradley Sides (Montag Press), with drawings of crocodiles with their mouths hanging open and tears falling from their eyes. Bradley Sides merges the South with the weird in his latest collection of magical realism short stories: a boy creates a guide to his beloved pond monster, a parent weighs the consequences of the coming apocalypse, a young woman rejects ownership of her vampire family’s farm. https://www.montagpress.com/books-1/crocodile-tears-didn%E2%80%99t-cause-the-flood

#DSPBposts #bookstodon

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · 3d

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books: Three Worlds by Avi Shlaim (Oneworld) https://oneworld-publications.com/work/three-worlds/ -and- Unapologetic by Charlene Carruthers (Beacon Press) https://www.beacon.org/Unapologetic-P1385.aspx Alt-text for details. 3/4

Book cover for Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene Carruthers (Beacon Press), with bold text against strips of bold colours in orange, green, and black. A manifesto from one of America's most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition. https://www.beacon.org/Unapologetic-P1385.aspx

Book cover for Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew by Avi Shlaim (Oneworld Publications), with text against green, turquoise, and orange backgrounds opposite photos of the author and his family in black and white. Quotes on the bottom say, "Enchanting" David Abulafia, Financial Times and "Remarkable" Max Hastings, The Sunday Times. In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing their beloved Iraq to the new state of Israel. This memoir breathes life into an almost forgotten world. Weaving together the personal and the political, Three Worlds offers a fresh perspective on Arab-Jews, caught in the crossfire of Zionism and nationalism. https://oneworld-publications.com/work/three-worlds/

#DSPBposts #bookstodon

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · 3d

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books:
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) (Pluto Press) https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745347851/elite-capture/ -and- Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe v. Wade ed. by Krystale E. Littlejohn and Rickie Solinger (University of California Press) https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520396777/fighting-mad Alt-text for details. 2/4

Book cover for Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe v. Wade ed. by Krystale E. Littlejohn and Rickie Solinger (University of California Press), with a raised fist meeting a judge's gavel, in bold white and yellow text against a red background. A fierce and galvanizing reminder that resistance is everywhere in the fight for abortion and reproductive justice in the United States. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520396777/fighting-mad

Book cover for Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) (Pluto Press), with bold black and white text against a red background. A powerful indictment of the ways elites have co-opted radical critiques of racial capitalism to serve their own ends. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745347851/elite-capture/

#DSPBposts #bookstodon

**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · 6d

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books:
A Witch’s Guide to Burning by Aminder Dhaliwal (Drawn & Quarterly) https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/a-witchs-guide-to-burning/ -and- Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times by Tamara Lea Spira (University of California Press) https://www.ucpress.edu/books/queering-families/paper Alt-text for details.

Book cover for Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times by Tamara Lea Spira (University of California Press), with a large red circle against strips of varying colours (from bottom, brown, green, blue, purple, red, orange, yellow), suggestive of a sun and sunset sky, with silhouettes of birds in flight along the bottom blue/green strips. Envisioning queer futures where we lovingly wager everything for the world’s children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in increasingly precarious times. https://www.ucpress.edu/books/queering-families/paper

Book cover for A Witch’s Guide to Burning by Aminder Dhaliwal (Drawn & Quarterly), with a black silhouette of a witch standing in the midst of a roaring fire. A blend of prose and comics, this is an adventure story and a whimsical and humorous allegory for burnout in a society in desperate need of self-care. https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/a-witchs-guide-to-burning/

#DSPBposts #bookstodon

**Stelliform Press** @StelliformPress@mastodon.online · Apr 17

Apr 17

Stelliform Press @StelliformPress@mastodon.online

We are thrilled to share the cover of Syr Hayati Beker's queer af novella in fairytale retellings. Art by the inimitable Carly AF. This book is a journey, so get ready to leave the world (and your ex) behind on September 4!

Pre-orders are available direct from the publisher: https://www.stelliform.press/index.php/product/what-a-fish-looks-like-by-syr-hayati-beker/

A cover reveal graphic with the book cover of Syr Hayati Beker's WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE in a gold frame. Art by Carly AF features a gender-ambiguous merperson embracing a reverse merperson while surrounded by golden shimmering kelp tendrils that merge with the merperson's hair. Text below the cover reads: Leave the world (and your ex) behind: September 4 2025.

#coverreveal #preorders #sciencefiction

**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 17

Apr 17

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books: Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin (Soft Skull Press) https://softskull.com/books/code-noir/ -and- The Loneliness Files by Athena Dixon (Tin House Books) https://tinhouse.com/book/the-loneliness-files-2/ Alt-text for details.

Book cover for Code Noir: Fictions by Canisia Lubrin (Soft Skull Press), with a black square with yellow crazing against a purple moon, tan ground and chalkboard-grey sky. Groundbreaking, dazzling debut fiction from one of Canada’s most exciting and admired writers, winner of the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize. https://softskull.com/books/code-noir/

Book cover for The Loneliness Files by Athena Dixon (Tin House Books), with a grid of black rectangles with central purple dots, separated by white lines. What does it mean to be a body behind a screen, lost in the hustle of an online world? In our age of digital hyper-connection, Athena Dixon invites us to consider this question with depth, heart, and ferocity, investigating the gaps that technology cannot fill and confronting a lifetime of loneliness. https://tinhouse.com/book/the-loneliness-files-2/

#DSPBposts #bookstodon

**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 16

Apr 16

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books: Wrong is Not My Name by Erica N. Cardwell (Feminist Press): https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/wrong-is-not-my-name -and- Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora (Copper Canyon Press): https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/unaccompanied-by-javier-zamora/

Book cover for Wrong is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art by Erica N. Cardwell (Feminist Press), with a folk-art-style painting of a dining table set with various covered dishes and baskets of fruit. A dazzling hybrid of personal memoir and criticism, considering the work of Black visual artists as a means to explore loss, legacy, and the reclamation of life through art. https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/wrong-is-not-my-name

Book cover for Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora (Copper Canyon Press), with a photo of a long, tall border wall against a cloudy sky, and an orange sticker saying, "Winner of the Whiting Award." Sometimes poetry is able to convey depth and rawness of emotion in ways that prose simply cannot. Such is the case with Javier Zamora’s Unaccompanied, which is his reflection on his own immigration story of crossing the border alone to meet his parents in the U.S. at the age of 9. https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/unaccompanied-by-javier-zamora/

#bookstodon #DSPBposts

**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 15

Apr 15

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books: We're Alone: Essays by Edwidge Danticat (Graywolf Press) https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/were-alone-0
& Remembering Che by Aleida March, trans Pilar Aguilar (Seven Stories) https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4425-remembering-che
Alt-text for details.

Book cover for We're Alone: Essays by Edwidge Danticat (Graywolf), with a black woman in a peach-coloured dress standing in water to her thighs, facing a shower curtain on metal rods floating in a featureless white space. Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience. https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/were-alone-0

Book cover for Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara by Aleida March, trans. Pilar Aguilar (Seven Stories Press), with a photo of Che and March. Che Guevara’s widow remembers a great revolutionary romance tragically cut short by Che’s assassination in Bolivia. https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4425-remembering-che

#DSPBposts #bookstodon

**Stelliform Press** @StelliformPress@mastodon.online · Apr 15

Apr 15

Stelliform Press @StelliformPress@mastodon.online

Cover reveal incoming! Don't miss this + more info on Syr Hayati Beker's debut novella, WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE - a queer af story in fairy tale retellings. This book is beautiful, weird, surprising, tender, experimental and so so so good. Prepare yourselves!

Cover reveal: April 17
Book out: Sept 4

Cover reveal teaser image, with the text "Cover drop" at the top and a book wrapped in brown paper ripped through the middle to reveal part of an illustration in blue. At the bottom the text reads "coming April 17"

#coverreveal #bookcover #ecofiction

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 14

Apr 14

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books #DSPBposts: alt-text for details/links. Becoming Story: A Journey Among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors by Greg Sarris (Heyday) & Good Dress: Poems by Brittany Rogers (Tin House)

Book cover for Good Dress: Poems by Brittany Rogers (Tin House Books), with a black woman in a black dress with red detailing holding a bouquet in front of her face, against a bright yellow background of painted wood. Brittany Rogers’s Good Dress documents the extravagant beauty and audacity of Black Detroit, Black womanhood, community, class, luxury, materialism, and matrilineage. https://tinhouse.com/book/good-dress/

Book cover for Becoming Story: A Journey Among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors by Greg Sarris (Heyday), with black ravens silhouetted against a yellow and green sky. Now in paperback: a gently powerful memoir about deepening your relationship with your homeland. https://www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/becoming-story-paperback/

#bookstodon

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 14

Apr 14

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Daily #SmallPress #books #DSPBposts: alt-text for details/links. Blue Marrow by Louise Bernice Halfe (Kegedonce) & Encounters with Men by Bob Ostertag (Black Lawrence)

Book cover for Blue Marrow by Louise Bernice Halfe, Sky Dancer (Kegedonce Press), with women in long dresses dancing around a bright sun, over ground covered in snakes. A beautifully redesigned new edition of the critically acclaimed poetry collection by Canada's new Parliamentary Poet Laureate. https://kegedonce.com/books/blue-marrow/

Book cover for Encounters with Men by Bob Ostertag (Black Lawrence Press), with a drawing of two naked men kissing while standing in waist-high water. Both men are superimposed with a map of North America. Bob Ostertag writes of the men he has known in stories shot through with deep love and deep violence, sex often at the core. Here, we encounter the worst of the AIDS epidemic and the best of human behavior. https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/encounters-with-men/

#bookstodon

**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 14

Apr 14

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Didn't get around to posting #DSPBposts over the weekend so here's three! Alt-text for details/links.

Daily #SmallPress #books: The Familialists by T. T. Madden (Off Limits Press LLC) & Village Weavers by Myriam J.A. Chancy (@tinhouse.bsky.social)

Book cover for The Familialists by T. T. Madden (Off Limits Press LLC), with a drawing of a suburban bungalow with a red sportcar in the driveway and an American flag furled on the lawn, and a man in suit pants and shirt on the lawn in front of a white picket fence, surrounded by overturned and broken furniture and blood stains. Sorrel follows the calls for help from her ex, Maud, to Trinity Springs, an uncanny Americana neighborhood that she cannot find any record of actually existing. A place that defies the laws of physics. A place of eerily smiling faces, white-picket fences, and manicured lawns. A place where she, and only she, is warned not to go outside after sundown. To free Maud from the grip of the town, and to escape a personal and terrifying subjugation, Sorrel must face a monster out of America’s past, and the people who are helping that monster claw its way back to the present. https://www.offlimitspress.com/shop-1

Book cover for Village Weavers by Myriam J.A. Chancy (Tin House Books), with lush sunflowers and leaves against a coral background. In 1940s’ Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship—until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. https://tinhouse.com/book/village-weavers/

#bookstodon

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 11

Apr 11

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Hummingbird / Aamo-binashee (Jennifer Leason, trans. Norman Chartrand, Orca), Flight of the Wild Swan (Melissa Pritchard, Bellevue), The Last Axolotl (Víctor José Palacios, Editorial Resistencia) & From Lone Mountain (John Porcellino, Drawn & Quarterly)

Book cover for From Lone Mountain by John Porcellino (Drawn & Quarterly), depicting stems and flowers rising from the bottom of the frame against a blue background. A view of America—as seen in small towns, rural roads, and its overlooked in-between places. https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/lone-mountain/

Book cover for Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard (Bellevue Literary Press), depicting a woman with late 1800's shawl and updo reading a book against a drawing of white branches. Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. https://blpress.org/books/flight-of-the-wild-swan/

Book cover for Hummingbird / Aamo-binashee written and illustrated by Jennifer Leason, trans. Norman Chartrand (Orca Book Publishers), with drawings of brightly-coloured flowers and a hummingbird against a bright blue background. In this deeply emotional and beautifully illustrated picture book, the ancestors send a hummingbird to a child lost in Windigo’s darkness. Its teachings of resilience, love and connection bring the child home and remind us that our ancestors are always watching and can help us find our way if we only ask. This bilingual book includes full text in both English and Anishinaabemowin. https://www.orcabook.com/Hummingbird-Aamo-binashee

Book cover for The Last Axolotl (illustration and text by Víctor José Palacios; publisher Editorial Resistencia), depicting a happy axolotl swimming past a small crab and surrounded by green and blue water and plants. The latest addition to Resistencia's trilingual collection tells the story of Axolotl the axolotl, who discovers that there are no more of his kind in the canals of Xochimilco, so he decides to go out and investigate if there are more like him. He will discover that the world has changed, for the worse, and it is up to each of us to help ensure that nature's resources and inhabitants do not become depleted. In the end, Xolotl finds his mystical twin, Quetzalcoatl. A story of adventure and ecology for all audiences. https://editorialresistencia.com.mx/tienda/producto/el-ultimo-ajolote/ (Note prices are in Mexican currency.)

#bookstodon #DSPBposts #SmallPress

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 11

Apr 11

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

How to Fuck Like a Girl (Vera Blossom, Dopamine / Semiotext(e)), Defund (Calvin John Smiley, Haymarket Books), and both by Joy James from Pluto Press: Beyond Cop Cities & Engage. 9/10

How to Fuck Like a Girl by Vera Blossom, Dopamine/Semiotext(e): A cheeky how-to guide, as raunchy as it is heartfelt, from a bright new literary voice. A bold and vulnerable collection from a new, young voice, How to Fuck Like a Girl is a daring mash-up of pillow book, grimoire, and manifesto by writer Vera Blossom. From hooking up to trans witchcraft, petty crime, capitalism, friendships, divorce, and survival, Blossom brings wit and melancholy, grandeur and smarts, debuting a bright literary voice as raunchy as it is heartfelt. A cheeky how-to guide that earnestly asks if it is possible to fuck oneself into girlhood, How to Fuck Like a Girl is a cult classic in the making. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635902273/how-to-fuck-like-a-girl/

Book cover for Beyond Cop Cities: Dismantling State and Corporate-Funded Armies and Prisons, edited by Joy James (Pluto Press), depicting two police officers covered in blood splatters as one of them points a gun at a person lying on the ground, also covered in blood. Since 1997, the US Department of Defense has transferred more than $7.2bn in military equipment to law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the DOD is legally required to make various items of equipment available to local police and school police departments, from flashlights and sandbags, to grenade launchers and armored vehicles. This militarisation has, unsurprisingly, been shown to unjustly impact on Black communities and is associated with increased killings by police. No wonder there have been calls to 'defund the police' echoing across the streets of America. In Beyond Cop Cities, Joy James and fellow contributors take these calls one step further, highlighting the Stop Cop City movement - one of the most vibrant in the US today. Linking anti-policing and racial justice movement with radical ecological 'forest defender' activism, the Stop Cop City campaign is a grass roots movement which aims to push back on police militarisation by blocking the construction of the Atlanta's Police Public Safety Training Center. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745350486/beyond-cop-cities/

Book cover for Defund: Conversations Toward Abolition by Calvin John Smiley (Haymarket Books), depicting a police shield with stylized flames drawn coming out of its top. Illuminating interviews with leading abolitionist organizers and thinkers. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2292-defund

Engage: Indigenous, Black, and Afro-Indigenous Futures (Joy James, Pluto Press) Engage is a tribute to the power of self-determined stories. This dynamic anthology of writings includes reflections by Black and Indigenous organizers and educators speaking in defiance of the violence and theft that has oppressed them for so long, imagining a future ripe for revolution. Both raw and disciplined, Engage discusses spirituality through environmentalism, security, freedom, autonomy, anti-Blackness and family. It is an invitation to dismantle colonial oppressions and a toolkit to build a future free from the harmful legacies of racism and genocide. Engage includes contributions from under-platformed writers from diverse political perspectives. It emphasises the role of non-academic collaborators as stewards of progressive, radical, and revolutionary projects to realise an optimistic future, that is not a repetition of the violent past. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745350301/engage/

#bookstodon #DSPBposts #SmallPress

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 11

Apr 11

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

The Secret That Is Not a Secret (Jay Michaelson, Ayin Press), Word Problems (Ian Williams, Coach House Books) and both University of Toronto Press: Epidemics and the Modern World (Mitchell L. Hammond) & Guardians of the Community (Kimberly N. Varma and Kanwal Khokhar)

Book cover for Guardians of the Community: The Block Parent Program of Canada by Kimberly N. Varma and Kanwal Khokhar (University of Toronto Press), depicting a child with a long ponytail listening to headphones behind the lower left window in a grid of four windows, which also form the outline of cell phones suggested by the buttons on their sides and single dot for the camera at center top, all against a red background. The Block Parent® Program of Canada was launched in 1968 following a tragic child abduction and homicide in Ontario. It rapidly expanded across the country, becoming the largest volunteer-led child safety initiative. For over fifty years, the program relied on volunteer homemakers, mostly stay-at-home mothers, who signaled their homes as safe havens for distressed children. Supported by partnerships with police, local businesses, and schools, the program provided a community-based approach to child protection. Although participation declined over the years, recent concerns about bullying, traffic safety, and child protection have sparked renewed interest in Block Parent communities. https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487560058

Book cover for The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales by Jay Michaelson (Ayin Press), with ten circles of different colours against a dark dusty rose background, each connected by wavering lines to the next. The inhabitants of these interlocking stories are pious and rebellious, mystical and queer, from a Hasidic woman tormented by her husband’s long beard to a closeted gay man repenting of his sins in the mikva. The first book of fiction by Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. https://ayinpress.org/the-secret-that-is-not-a-secret-2/

Book cover for Epidemics and the Modern World by Mitchell L. Hammond (University of Toronto Press), with a plague doctor with long beak mask in black and white against an orange background. Our institutions, colonial structures, relationships to animals, and perceptions of suffering, sexuality, race, and disability have all shaped – and been shaped by – these significant medical events. https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487593735

Book cover for Word Problems: Poems by Ian Williams (Coach House Books), winner of the Raymond Souster Award 2021. Title text is laid out twice in one black and one white interlocking circles against a red background. From Ian Williams, author of Reproduction, winner of the Giller Prize, using his characteristic inventiveness to find not just new answers but new questions, reconsidering what poetry can be, using math and grammar lessons to shape poems that invite us to participate. Two long poems cut through the text like vibrating bass notes, curiosities circle endlessly, and microaggressions spin into lyric. And all done with a light touch and a joyful sense of humour. https://chbooks.com/Books/W/Word-Problems

#bookstodon #DSPBposts #SmallPress

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 11

Apr 11

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Afrocentricity (Aaron X. Smith, Universal Write Publications), All Things Seen and Unseen (RJ McDaniel, ECW Press), and both Drawn & Quarterly: Louis Riel (Chester Brown) & Ducks (Kate Beaton) 7/10

Book cover for Louis Riel by Chester Brown, reinvents the comic-book medium to create the critically acclaimed historical biography Louis Riel, winning the Harvey Awards for best writing and best graphic novel for his compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps insane, nineteenth-century Metis leader. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie led by Riel, who some regard a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer. https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/louis-riel/

Book cover for Afrocentricity: Generations of Theory in Practice by Aaron X. Smith (Universal Write Publications), depicting a stylized drawing of a tree with branches leading to the names Taharka Ade, Lehasa Moloi, Carm R. Almonor, Louis Walee, Eva Bohler, and Bongani Mkhanza. Discover the power and legacy of Afrocentric thought with Afrocentricity: Generations of Theory in Practice, a definitive collection edited by Dr. Aaron X. Smith. This essential text celebrates Afrocentricity’s transformative impact on African history, culture, and identity, challenging Eurocentric perspectives and revolutionizing academic fields since the 1980s. Inspired by Dr. Molefi Kete Asante’s pioneering work, Afrocentricity offers a bold framework that re-centers African people within their own narratives. This collection brings together the insights of leading Afrocentric scholars from across the African diaspora, highlighting their contributions to fields like Africana Studies, cultural movements, and discussions on identity and liberation. https://uwpbooks.com/product/afrocentricity-generations-of-theory-in-practice/

Book cover for Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, a New York Times Notable Book, a Barack Obama’s end of year favorite of 2022, and the winner of Canada Reads. Kate Beaton’s Ducks stunned the world with its unflinching honesty and candid vulnerability, cementing its place in the graphic novel canon alongside Maus, Persepolis, and Fun Home.
https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/ducks-two-years-in-the-oil-sands-paperback/

Book cover for All Things Seen and Unseen by RJ McDaniel (ECW Press), with a central window showing yellow light obscured by the leaves of a bush which go from green at the bottom through yellow in the middle to orange on top. Alex Nguyen is an isolated, chronically ill university student in her early 20s. After a suicide attempt and subsequent lengthy hospitalization, she finds herself without a job, kicked out of campus housing, unable to afford school, and still struggling in the aftermath of a relationship’s dissolution. Hope comes in the form of a rich high school friend who offers Alex a job housesitting at her family’s empty summer mansion on a gulf island. Surrounded by dense forest and ocean, Alex must try to survive as an outsider in a remote, insular community; to navigate the beginnings of a possible romance; and to live through the trauma she has repressed to survive, even as the memories—and a series of increasingly unnerving events—threaten to pull her back under the surface. https://ecwpress.com/products/all-things-seen-and-unseen

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 11

Apr 11

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

Dysphoria Mundi (Paul B. Preciado, trans Frank Wynne, Fitzcarraldo), Rehearsals for Living (Robyn Maynard & Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Haymarket), We Grow the World Together (Maya Schenwar & Kim Wilson, Haymarket) & Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (Chen Chen, BOA) 6/10

Book cover for Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency: Poems by Chen Chen (BOA Editions), depicting a pink and a turquoise person sitting on top of a clotheswasher, naked and spooning, with a green cat on the dryer next to them. Behind them is a mountain and waxing moon. "What happens when everything falls away, when those you call on in times of need are themselves calling out for rescue?" https://www.boaeditions.org/products/your-emergency-contact-has-experienced-an-emergency

Book cover for Dysphoria Mundi: A Diary of Planetary Transition by Paul B. Preciado, translated by Frank Wynne (Fitzcarraldo Editions), depicting a person with breasts and male genitalia and large green wings, holding a torch and wearing only a helmet. https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/dysphoria-mundi/ In Dysphoria Mundi, Paul B. Preciado has written a mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility. Rooted in the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic, and taking account of the societal convulsions that have ensued, Preciado tries to make sense of our times from within the swirl of a revolutionary present moment. The central thesis of this monumental work is that dysphoria, to be understood properly, should not be seen as a mental illness but rather as the condition that defines our times. Dysphoria is an abyss that separates a patriarchal, colonial and capitalist order hurtling toward its end from a new way of being that, until now, has been seen as unproductive and abnormal but is in fact the way out of our current predicament.

Book cover for Rehearsals for Living by Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Haymarket Books), with title text in a handwritten font and author text in various splotchy colours including electric blue, all against a black background. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1880-rehearsals-for-living A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists. When much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, award-winning author of several books, including the recent novel Noopiming, began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. Their letters soon grew into a powerful exchange on the subject of where we go from here.

Book cover for We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson (Haymarket Books), with title and editor text over a painting of a lush garden. Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, “What if abolition is something that grows?” As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2446-we-grow-the-world-together

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**Joanne Merriam** @joannemerriam@mefi.social · Apr 11

Apr 11

Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam@mefi.social

All the Hometowns You Can't Stay Away (Izzy Wasserstein, Neon Hemlock), Country Queers (Rae Garringer, Haymarket), How to Tell When We Will Die (Johanna Hedva, Zando–Hillman Grad), & Juice (Stephanie Haerdle, trans Elisabeth Lauffer, MIT Press) 5/10

Book cover for Country Queers: A Love Letter by Rae Garringer (Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org), with a bouquet of wildflowers in a glass vase shaped like a boot, against a lavender background. Part photo book, part memoir, part oral history project, this volume paints a vivid portrait of queer and trans experiences in rural areas and small towns across the US. By the editor of To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2439-country-queers

Book cover for How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom by Johanna Hedva (Zando - Hillman Grad Books), with a line drawing of a corpse being killed or autopsied by various instruments (a pole, a knife, a scalpel, etc). The long-awaited essay collection from one of the most influential voices in disability activism that detonates a bomb in our collective understanding of care and illness, showing us that sickness is a fact of life. https://zandoprojects.com/books/how-to-tell-when-we-will-die/

Book cover for All the Hometowns You Can't Stay Away: Stories from by Izzy Wasserstein (Neon Hemlock), with a band of purple-haired adventurers in medieval-style armour and cloaks standing under a stone arch with their hair blowing dramatically in the wind. At the bottom is the quote: "Precise and evocative." - Kate Elliott. In her debut collection, Izzy Wasserstein pries the lid off fourteen different worlds from an already impressive short fiction career. In these pages, you’ll meet ne’er-do-wells and orphans, investigators and revolutionaries, diplomats and doctoral students. Wasserstein has a gift for putting her finger on the meaty parts of grief, the catalysts of change, and the pain points of community. https://www.neonhemlock.com/books/all-the-hometowns

Book cover for Juice: A History of Female Ejaculation by Stephanie Haerdle, translated by Elisabeth Lauffer (The MIT Press), showing a geyser erupting and people and horses running away in panic. The fascinating, little-known history of female sex fluids through the millennia. https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780262048514

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