New Books February 2024: Home

How one "fallen woman" battled religious ideology, pseudoscience, and political resistance to women's right to vote. Exposed in Ohio newspapers for an affair with a married man, Alice Chenowyth refused to cower in shame. Instead she changed her name to Helen Hamilton Gardener, moved to New York, pretended to be married to her lover, and became a wildly popular lecturer and author, brazenly opposed to sexist piety and propriety. The "Harriet Beecher Stowe of Fallen Women," she supported raising the age of sexual consent for girls (from twelve or younger), decried double standards of sexual morality, and debunked scientists' claims that women's brains were inferior. With liberal doses of feminine charm, Gardner networked tirelessly to persuade Woodrow Wilson and other male politicians to support the Nineteenth Amendment. Her effort, according to suffrage leader Carrie Pitt, was "the most potent factor" in its passage. As more women enter politics than ever before, Kimberly A. Hamlin recovers the wildly entertaining and illuminating life of a brilliant, effective woman-all but forgotten-who paved the way.

A riveting history of the momentous Friendship 7 space flight that put America back into the space race. If the United States couldn't catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War--a moment when the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs more destructive than any in history, and beat the US to every major milestone in space. The race to the heavens seemed a race for survival--and America was losing. When John Glenn blasted into orbit on February 20, 1962, his mission was greater than circling Earth; it was to calm the fears of the free world and renew America's sense of self-belief. Mercury Rising re-creates the sense of tension to a flight that riveted the world. Drawing on new sources, interviews, and Glenn's personal notes, Mercury Rising shows how the astronaut's heroics lifted the nation's hopes in what Kennedy called the "hour of maximum danger."

Glory Edim launches her Well-Read Black Girl Library with this vital anthology celebrating stories from such luminaries as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Since founding the Well-Read Black Girl Book Club in 2015, Glory Edim's profile has skyrocketed. From her roots in a Brooklyn-based community to a massive online following, she has been heralded as the literary tastemaker for a new generation. With On Girlhood, Edim has beautifully curated a canonical work centering around the voices of young Black characters as they contend with innocence, belonging, love, and self-discovery. From the timeless lessons in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" ("this is how you smile to someone you like completely") to those in Dana Johnson's "Melvin in the Sixth Grade" ("this is how kids start fights"), these short stories illuminate the power and the precariousness of Black girlhood. Highlighting both iconic and lesser-known authors-Edwidge Danticat, Amina Gautier, Dorothy West, Paule Marshall, Shay Youngblood, and more-this is an indispensable compendium that will instill readers with "the nerve to walk [their] own way" (Zora Neale Hurston).

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. In the second memoir from the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, Joy Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Weaving together the voices that shaped her, Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, the teachings of a changing earth, and the poets who paved her way. She explores her grief at the loss of her mother and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member. Moving fluidly among prose, song, and poetry, Poet Warrior is a luminous journey of becoming that sings with all the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

Everyone likes to think they know a bit about language: There are some words that you simply can't translate into English. The origin of a word tells you how it should be used. A dialect is inferior to a language. The problem is, none of these statements are true. In Don't Believe a Word, linguist David Shariatmadari explodes nine common myths about language and introduces us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics. By the end of this eye- opening tour, readers will understand that grammatical "errors" are in fact the foundation of modern English; that the meaning of a word is not what a dictionary says, but how it's used; and that the difference between what gets labelled a "language" or "dialect" is political, rather than scientific. Don't Believe a Word offers an accessible and thorough introduction to the science behind one of the most essential aspects of our daily life.

An acclaimed storyteller returns with "a gorgeous and gripping literary mystery" that explores "family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream" (Jean Kwok). The residents of Haven, Wisconsin have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant's delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, happy to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. But when brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo Chao is found dead--presumed murdered--his sons find they've drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant's reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town. "At once a brilliant reimagining of Dostoevsky and a wholly original and gripping story about the passions, rivalries, and searing pressures that roil a singular immigrant family."--Jess Walter, author of The Cold Millions.

COVID-19 is speeding up history, but how? What is the shape of the world to come? Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.

Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe's strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Beginning with her great-grandmother, the last full-blooded Native member in their lineage, she connects each woman with her totem to construct her family's totem pole: protective Bear, defiant Salmon, compassionate Hummingbird, and perched on top, Raven. As she pieces together their stories, Myers weaves in tribal folktales, the history of the Native genocide, and Native mythology. Throughout, she tells the larger story of how, as she puts it, her "culture is being bleached out," offering sharp vignettes of her own life between White and Native worlds.

An original investigation of our hidden potential to persuade, and how to wield it wisely. Whether attending a meeting, sharing a post online, or mustering the nerve to ask for a favor, we often assume our actions, input, and requests will be overlooked or rejected. As behavioral psychologist Vanessa K. Bohns reveals, however, people see us, listen to us, and agree to do things for us much more than we realize. In You Have More Influence Than You Think, Bohns draws from original research to illustrate why we fail to recognize the influence we have already, and how that lack of awareness can lead us to miss opportunities or accidentally misuse our power. She offers strategies for observing the effect we have on others, reconsidering our fear of rejection, and even, sometimes, pulling back to use our influence less. You Have More Influence Than You Think is an "enormously empowering" (Robert Cialdini, author of Influence) call to anyone who has ever felt ineffective or invisible to recognize their power and wield it accordingly.

A rigorous examination of six political myths used to deflect and discredit demands for social justice. In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump declared: "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct." Reeling from his victory, Democrats blamed the corrosive effect of "identity politics." When banned from Twitter for inciting violence, Trump and his supporters claimed that the measure was an assault on "free speech." In We Need New Stories, Nesrine Malik explains that all of these arguments are political myths--variations on the lie that American values are under assault. Exploring how these and other common political myths function, she breaks down how they are employed to subvert calls for equality from historically disenfranchised groups. Interweaving reportage with an incendiary analysis of American history and politics, she offers a compelling account of how calls to preserve "free speech" are used against the vulnerable; how a fixation with "wokeness," "political correctness," and "cancel culture" is in fact an organized and well-funded campaign by elites; and how the fear of racial minorities and their "identity politics" obscures the biggest threat of all--white terrorism. What emerges is a radical framework for understanding the crises roiling American contemporary politics.

Presumed Guilty reveals how the Supreme Court allows the perpetuation of racist policing by presuming that suspects, especially people of color, are guilty. Presumed Guilty, like the best-selling The Color of Law, is a "smoking gun" of civil rights research, a troubling history that reveals how the Supreme Court enabled racist policing and sanctioned law enforcement excesses. The fact that police are nine times more likely to kill Black men than other Americans is no accident; it is the result of an elaborate body of doctrines that allow the police and courts to presume that suspects are guilty before being charged. Demonstrating how the prodefendant Warren Court was a brief historical aberration, Erwin Chemerinsky shows how this more liberal era ended with Nixon's presidency and the ascendance of conservative justices, whose rulings-like Terry v. Ohio and Los Angeles v. Lyons-have permitted stops and frisks, limited suits to reform police departments, and even abetted the use of chokeholds. Presumed Guilty concludes that an approach to policing that continues to exalt "Dirty Harry" can be transformed only by a robust court system committed to civil rights.

From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon's CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves "workampers." In a secondhand vehicle she christens "Van Halen," Jessica Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying her irrepressible protagonist, Linda May, and others, from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, then moving on to the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy--one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive. Like Linda May, who dreams of finding land on which to build her own sustainable "Earthship" home, they have not given up hope.

The dramatic story of Noor Inayat Khan, secret agent for the British in occupied France. During the critical summer months of 1943, Noor Inayat Khan was the only wireless operator transmitting secret messages from Nazi-occupied France to the Special Operations Executive in England. She was a most unlikely spy. As the daughter of an Indian mystic, raised in a household devoted to peaceful reflection on the outskirts of Paris, Khan did not seem destined for wartime heroism. Yet, faced with the evils of Nazism, she could not look away. She volunteered to help the British; was trained in espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance; and returned to France under cover of night with a new identity and a code name: Madeleine. Khan transmitted countless details crucial to the Allies' success on D-Day, until she was captured and imprisoned by the Gestapo. She attempted two daring escapes before being sent to prison in Germany. Three months after the Allied invasion of France, she was executed at Dachau. Her last word was "liberté.

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X -- all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. The result is this historic biography that conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist, a work whose title is inspired by a phrase Malcolm X used when he saw his Hartford followers stir with purpose, as if the dead were truly arising, to overcome the obstacles of racism. Setting Malcolm's life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century's most politically relevant figures "from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary." In tracing Malcolm X's life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm's Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl's death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm's exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary. With a biographer's unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations-from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder "Fard Muhammad," who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz's 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X's murder at the Audubon Ballroom. Introduced by Payne's daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, who, following her father's death, heroically completed the biography, The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle.

A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar. If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period and through to today. Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard.

A major reassessment of Winston Churchill that examines his lasting influence in politics and culture. Churchill is generally considered one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, if not the greatest of all, revered for his opposition to appeasement, his defiance in the face of German bombing of England, his political prowess, his deft aphorisms, and his memorable speeches. He became the savior of his country, as prime minister during the most perilous period in British history, World War II, and is now perhaps even more beloved in America than in England. And yet Churchill was also very often in the wrong: he brazenly contradicted his own previous political stances, was a disastrous military strategist, and inspired dislike and distrust through much of his life. Before 1939 he doubted the efficacy of tank and submarine warfare, opposed the bombing of cities only to reverse his position, shamelessly exploited the researchers and ghostwriters who wrote much of the journalism and the books published so lucratively under his name, and had an inordinate fondness for alcohol that once found him drinking whisky before breakfast. When he was appointed to the cabinet for the first time in 1908, a perceptive journalist called him "the most interesting problem of personal speculation in English politics." More than a hundred years later, he remains a source of adulation, as well as misunderstanding. This revelatory new book takes on Churchill in his entirety, separating the man from the myth that he so carefully cultivated, and scrutinizing his legacy on both sides of the Atlantic. In effervescent prose, shot through with sly wit, Geoffrey Wheatcroft illuminates key moments and controversies in Churchill's career-from the tragedy of Gallipoli, to his shocking imperialist and racist attitudes, dealings with Ireland, support for Zionism, and complicated engagement with European integration. Charting the evolution and appropriation of Churchill's reputation through to the present day, Churchill's Shadow colorfully renders the nuance and complexity of this giant of modern politics.

Seventeen year old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance. His sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads to his deportation to South Korea, Bucky is forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life. One mishap leads to another, and he has to fall back on not just his raw physical strength, but resources of character and attitude he didn't know he had.

A multigenerational saga of two families, who rose from immigrant roots to the pinnacle of wealth and power, that tracks the unraveling of American democracy. In American Oligarchs, award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein tells the story of the Trump and Kushner families like never before. Their journey to the White House is a story of survival and loss, crime and betrayal, that stretches from the Klondike Gold Rush, through Nazi-occupied Poland and across the American Century, to our new gilded age. In building and maintaining their dynastic wealth, these families came to embody the rising nationalism and inequality that has pushed the United States to the brink of oligarchy. Building on her landmark reporting for the acclaimed podcast Trump, Inc. and The New Yorker, Bernstein's painstaking detective work brings to light new information about the families' arrival as immigrants to America, their paths to success, and the business and personal lives of the president and his closest family members. Bernstein traces how the two families ruthlessly harnessed New York and New Jersey machine politics to gain valuable tax breaks and grew rich on federal programs that bolstered the middle class. She shows how the Trump Organization, denied credit by American banks, turned to shady international capital. She reveals astonishing new details about Charles Kushner's attempts to ensnare his brother-in-law with a prostitute and explores how Jared Kushner and his father used a venerable New York newspaper to bolster their business empire. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews and more than one hundred thousand pages of documents, many previously unseen or long forgotten, Bernstein shows how the Trumps and the Kushners repeatedly broke rules and then leveraged secrecy, intimidation, and prosecutorial and judicial power to avoid legal consequences. The result is a compelling narrative that details how the Trump and Kushner dynasties encouraged and profited from a system of corruption, dark money, and influence trading, and that reveals the historical turning points and decisions--on taxation, regulation, white-collar crime, and campaign finance laws--that have brought us to where we are today.

An authoritative, accessible guide to how our lungs work and how to protect them. Most of us pay little attention to the workings of our lungs, but the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked interest in their functioning and fear about the risks they face. Dr. MeiLan K. Han, a leading pulmonologist and a national spokesperson for the American Lung Association, takes readers on a fascinating tour of this most vital organ. Han explains the wonder of breathing and reveals how the lungs serve as the body's first line of defense. She provides a timely overview of the latest scientific thinking about the leading respiratory risks-including indoor and outdoor pollution, smoking and vaping, wildfire smoke, and viruses like SARS-CoV-2-and offers a practical guide to keeping lungs healthy. And with authority as both practitioner and medical researcher, she argues powerfully for a social policy that makes a priority of preserving lung health nationwide.

In December 1862, the Battle of Fredericksburg shattered Union forces and threatened to break apart Abraham Lincoln's government. Five extraordinary individuals experienced Fredericksburg's cataclysmic repercussions -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, John Pelham, and Arthur Fuller. Guided by duty, driven by desire, they moved toward lofty destinies: a young Harvard intellectual steeped in courageous ideals, a gay Brooklyn poet condemned by guardians of propriety, a struggling writer desperate to serve the cause and gain her philosopher father's admiration, a West Point cadet from Alabama excelling in artillery tactics, and a one-eyed minister seeking to prove his manhood. Because of what they saw and suffered, America, too, would never be the same.

A deeply researched and eye-opening history that shows how Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system. This is the definitive history of Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world's largest genetically engineered seed enterprise. Monsanto merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018, but its Roundup Ready seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. Incorporating global fieldwork, interviews with company employees, and untapped corporate and government records, award-winning historian Bartow J. Elmore traces Monsanto's astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agrobusiness powerhouse. Capitalizing on deals with customers like Coca-Cola, General Electric, and especially the US government, Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products-including PCBs and Agent Orange-to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology. As new data emerges about its blockbuster Roundup system, and as Bayer faces a tide of lawsuits over Monsanto products past and present, Elmore's urgent history takes a penetrating look at the company's past.

An exhilarating, time-traveling journey to the solar system's strangest and most awe-inspiring volcanoes. Volcanoes are capable of acts of pyrotechnical prowess verging on magic: they spout black magma more fluid than water, create shimmering cities of glass at the bottom of the ocean and frozen lakes of lava on the moon, and can even tip entire planets over. Despite their reputation for destruction, volcanoes are inseparable from the creation of our planet. Super Volcanoes revels in the incomparable power of volcanic eruptions past and present, Earth-bound and otherwise, and explores how these eruptions reveal secrets about the worlds to which they belong. Science journalist and volcanologist Robin George Andrews describes the stunning ways in which volcanoes can sculpt the sea, land, and sky, and even influence the machinery that makes or breaks the existence of life. Traveling from Hawaii, Tanzania, Yellowstone, and the ocean floor to the moon, Venus, and Mars, Andrews explores cutting-edge discoveries and lingering scientific mysteries surrounding these phenomenal forces of nature.

A masterpiece of reporting on the Supreme Court's most divisive case, Roe v. Wade, and the unknown lives at its heart. Despite her famous pseudonym, "Jane Roe," no one knows the truth about Norma McCorvey (2947-2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fracture in American life. Journalist Joshua Prager spent hundred s of hours with Norma, discovered her personal papers-a previously unseen trove- and witnessed her final moments. The Family Roe presents her life in full. Propelled by the crosscurrents of sex and religion, gender and class, it is a life that tells the story of abortion in America. Prager begins that story on the banks of Louisiana's Atchafalaya River, where Norma was born, and where unplanned pregnancies upended generations of her forebears. A pregnancy then upended Norma's life too, and the Dallas waitress became Jane Roe. Drawing on a decade of research, Prager reveals the woman behind the pseudonym, writing in novelistic detail of her unknown life from her time as a sex worker in Dallas, to her private thoughts on family and abortion, to her dealings with feminist and Christan leaders, to the three daughters she placed for adoption. Prager found those women, including the youngest--Baby Roe--now fifty years old. She shares her story in The Family Roe for the first time, from her tortured interactions with her birth mother, to her emotional first meeting with her sisters, to the burden that was uniquely hers from conception. The Family Roe abounds in such revelations-not only about Norma and her children but about the broader "family" connected to these case. Prager tells the stories of activists and bystanders alike whose lives intertwined with Roe. In particular, he introduces three figures as important as they are unknown: feminist lawyer Linda Coffee, who filed the original Texas lawsuit yet now lives in obscurity; Curtis Boyd a former fundamentalist Christian, today a leading provider of third-trimester abortions; and Mildred Jefferson, the first black female Harvard Medical School graduate, who became a pro-life leader with great secrets. An epic work spanning fifty years of American history, The Family Roe will change the way you think about our enduring American divide: the right to choose or the right to life.

November 8, 2018. Paradise, California, a community of 27,000 souls, was destroyed in a fire that left 86 dead. Gee and Anguiano offer a dramatic narrative the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents and first responders. They also explore the science of wildfires in a time of dramatic climate change, the role of the power company PG&E in the blaze, and the efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins.

A masterful debut that weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love, and a curse. The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo's marriage is falling apart; daughter Dina, beleaguered by the fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them-could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another. Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humor, The Family Izquierdo is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.

A riveting investigation into a cold case asks how much control women have over their bodies and the direction of their lives. In July 1970, eighteen-year-old Paula Oberbroeckling left her house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and never returned. A cold case for fifty years, Paula's story had been largely forgotten when Katherine Dykstra began looking for answers. A woman was dead. Why had no one been held responsible? How could a community give up and move on? Could there ever be justice for Paula? Tracing the knowns and unknowns, Dykstra discovers a girl who was hemmed in by the culture of the late 1960s, when women's rights had been brought to the fore but had little practical bearing on actual lives. The more she learns about Paula, the more parallels Dykstra finds in the lives of the women who knew Paula, the lives of the women in her own family, and even in her own life. Captivating and expertly crafted, What Happened to Paula is a timely, powerful look at gender, autonomy, and the cost of being a woman.

In this selection of poems Harjo, a three-term US Poet Laureate, celebrates her fifty years as a poet. While musical, intimate, political and wise, they intertwine ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. From her early discoveries for her own voice to moving reflections of our contemporary movement, she offers poems on birth, death, love, and resistance-- and everything they encompass.