Category Archives: Nonfiction

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Posted on July 24, 2017 by

In 2009, Susannah Cahalan was 24 years old and well into an exciting and successful career as a journalist at the New York Post. And then she noticed what looked like a bug bite on her arm. That was followed by a … Continue reading →

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | 10 Comments

Between the World and Me

Posted on July 23, 2017 by

I have raised you to respect every human being as singular, and you must extend that same respect into the past. Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction | 17 Comments

Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment

Posted on July 12, 2017 by

Did you know that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world? At least it did in 2012, according to the essay by Jeremy Travis and Bruce Western in this collection edited by Angela J. Davis. Besides having … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction, Short Stories/Essays | Leave a comment

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me

Posted on July 3, 2017 by

Sherman Alexie’s new memoir is a combination of prose and poetry reflecting on his relationship with his parents, especially his mother; his childhood on the Spokane Indian Reservation; and his adult life away from the reservation. The emotions he expresses … Continue reading →

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | 6 Comments

What Is the Bible?

Posted on June 22, 2017 by

People have lots of ideas about the Bible. A lot of those ideas are incomplete, misguided, or just plain wrong. And often those mistaken ideas lead people to miss the richness of the biblical stories. That’s what Rob Bell is … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction, Religion | 5 Comments

Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq

Posted on June 16, 2017 by

In 2010, cartoonist Sarah Glidden traveled with journalist friends Sarah Stuteville and Alex Stonehill through Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. The journalists, founders of the Seattle Globalist, were there to meet and interview people and develop stories for their website and … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphic Novels / Comics, Nonfiction | 4 Comments

To the Is-Land

Posted on June 15, 2017 by

The first volume of Janet Frame’s autobiography begins with a chapter called In the Second Place: From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture … Continue reading →

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | 2 Comments

Dimestore: A Writer’s Life

Posted on June 7, 2017 by

When I was in college and away from my rural southwest Virginia home, I discovered the novels of Lee Smith. Although her hometown of Grundy was a couple hundred miles west of my hometown, her writing felt culturally close to … Continue reading →

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction, Short Stories/Essays | 6 Comments

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Posted on May 20, 2017 by

Matthew Desmond’s ethnographic study of the housing crisis among the poor in Milwaukee has won multiple awards, including the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It’s easy to see why. Desmond lived in a trailer park and then … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction | 14 Comments

The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

Posted on May 19, 2017 by

I’ve been an avid listener to On the Media for several years. I listened whenever I could when it was only on the radio, and it was among the first podcasts I subscribed to. And, right now, I consider it more essential … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction | 7 Comments