News & Notes

This material was presented as a paper at the Cascade Song Festival, 24 January 2025, and is part of a larger project on vocal music and trauma. Please contact me before quoting or citing any material here.

Negotiating Trauma in New Art Song

Kendra Preston Leonard

(1) Content Warning: In this presentation I discuss rape and other sexual violence, death, psychological abuse, and traumatic memory. I will not be offended if you need to leave this presentation for any reason at any time.

(2) In this project on negotiating trauma in/and vocal music is a new one for me, and I’m wearing two hats: I’m approaching it both as a librettist and lyricist, and as a musicologist and music theorist. My work is influenced by art song texts and opera libretti, and by numerous scholars and practitioners, including Margaret Cormier, whose book Rape at the Opera: Staging Sexual Violence tracks operatic practices with regard to works like Don Giovanni and Salome[1]; Patrick Duggan, who explores the performer-audience relationship when trauma is presented as part of entertainment; and Olivia Bloechl, who has written about operatic survivors’ testimonies; and others working across and within a variety of disciplines. Bloechl notes that while “sexual violence and the emotional responses it elicits have been a pervasive trope in Western opera across its four-hundred-year history,” many non-opera dramatic vocal works of the twenty-first century “have centered antiracist, decolonial, and feminist perspectives,” and that “they also integrate, to varying degrees, a critical viewpoint on the histories and continuing inequities that expose their characters to harm.”[2]

(3) I argue that much the same holds true for narratives in new art song (defining new as having been composed in the last 20 years; we all know how long it takes new music to become part of the repertoire) where I—as a lyricist—and many of my colleagues choose or have been tasked with creating texts that are explicitly feminist, anti-racist, non-ableist, and otherwise socially conscious. However, we are also often asked for works about trauma of various kinds as well as narratives that address survivors’ stories and “overcoming” narratives—sometimes even in the guise of being “feminist” or “decolonial.” I am fortunate that many of my commissioners ask me to write about being more than one’s trauma or to resist the stereotype of the “resilient” (but often “damaged”) survivor. The arts are inundated with the trope of the noble or strong survivor, while few artists have engaged with the underlying complexities of resistance, recovery, and/or reparation; and few have considered the effect of such works on performers. As Duggan writes, “trauma is an evocative and emotive force that binds an audience to the theatrical action drawing them ever deeper into the performance event.”[3] Therefore, simply describing a song or song cycle as one of “heartbreak” and “healing” prepares neither audiences nor performers for the potential violence, possibly (re-)traumatizing material, and unpredictable after-effects of coming into contact with such work. Here, I offer some preliminary thoughts on practices we—performers, composers, lyricists, anyone and everyone involved—might create as part of developing a community of care in negotiating with, teaching, and performing new art song that comes out of trauma of various kinds.

(4) Trauma is often the impetus for art; so too is sensationalism.

Some critics, including Parul Sehgal, have condemned what they see as the overuse of trauma and diagnoses of trauma and PTSD, asking, in “a world infatuated with victimhood, has trauma emerged as the passport to status—our red badge of courage?”[4] Some of us may well respond with an emphatic yes, perhaps in part because we have seen or heard art in which trauma is applied or addressed at a very superficial level.

(5) Responding to Sehgal, however, Alicia Elliott argues that with careful handling by artists, presenting trauma in a way that “didn’t linger, didn’t sensationalize” allowed the artist to protect the audience from careless or casual retraumatizing.[5] Rather, in the example she uses, Katherena Vermette’s novel The Break, she notes that

Despite all of the traumas hinted at in this book and how much violence, both colonial and domestic, has shaped each character’s life, there are not scenes depicting this violence outright. Instead, Vermette follows the contours of this violence, showing us the depths of these traumas through each character’s coping mechanisms or thoughts. Reading it, I couldn’t help but think of her comments about centering already-traumatized readers. How she didn’t dwell on the violence because she was concerned with the response of her audience—one she expected to have some experience with the traumas and violence she was writing about.

(6) Vermette’s approach, writing for a specific—in this case Indigenous—traumatized audience, speaks directly to trauma and violence without commodifying victimhood or making it either a virtue or something shameful. This, Elliott elucidates, is the difference between “trauma porn” and “trauma-informed narratives.” Trauma porn focuses on the visceral, the physical, the blood and brains of violence and trauma, lacking any connection with people who have been traumatized. And there are many stories that creators cannot tell without including references to trauma. But in telling those stories, Elliott writes, we need to resist the colonizing gaze of the non-traumatized, the person who “wants to eat our pain, wants to read even fictionalized violence enacted on us in excruciating detail.” Artists have responsibilities to their audiences and performers, that they—we—are accountable for how we present material to others. Despite what some believe—and the entire culture-production machine of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tell us—the artist isn’t superior to the audience, and artists taking care with how they tell stories isn’t censorship or a curtailing of rights—it’s about recognizing a human obligation to their fellow humans.

(7) In her work teasing out the postdramatic and the post-traumatic in theatrical narrative, Karen Jürs-Munby asks whether there is “an affinity between trauma’s incommensurability, inaccessibility and ultimate resistance to narrative representation and postdramatic theatre’s anti-representational impetus, combined with its preference for fragmentation and its emphasis on the live co-presence of audience members and performers?”[6]

She argues that a society with mass media such as that we experience in North America results in many more people encountering trauma through media than in their own, personal lives.

“How do artists,” she further asks, “account for a world in which most of the traumatic events we ‘witness’ are ones we have not seen in person?” Her answer is to consider a “continuum of the many ways in which postdramatic performances may engage with the nature of traumatic memory.” I propose that the art song repertoire—particularly that of the last 20 years—can also be mapped onto this continuum. Like the postdramatic works Jürs-Munby cites, art song focusing on trauma also often involves repetition, re-membering, mis-remembrances, historical distortion (deliberate or unintentional), and the blurring of specific events into broader representations. This continuum, applied to art song, is not linear, but a complex matrix.

(8) As a final theoretical note, I want to propose a framework of thinking about art song in a Lacanian framework.

For Lacan, trauma happens in the Real, but as soon as we assign language—the symbolic—to the (memory of) trauma, we move the trauma from the Real into perceived reality; what we think of as “reality” is necessarily structured by human narratives and almost inescapably fictionalized. What artists create comes from the symbolic, influenced by the Real, but because of the inherent defenses of the mind and the interference of language and its inability to address the Real, they are never able to fully articulate it.

(9) Cathy Caruth summarizes this as “a history that in its crises can only be perceived in unassimilable forms.”[7]

Music assists in the articulation of what is possible. As playwright Sarah Mantell writes about the need for “resilience services” in the theater, artistic expression and creation allows artists and audiences to “touch the wound, but don’t live there.” Therefore, I—as an individual and as a lyricist—can never quite represent the trauma within the Real, but I can use this metaphor as a way of grappling with trauma in lyric-writing that recognizes the power and functions of the symbolic. For the audience, the wound can evoke an empty place in which they can place their own ideas or memories, even though doing so in full, in an accessible way, is impossible.[8] Those of us seeking to understand trauma live in reaction, in empathy, in compassion with others’ wounds.

(10) If we are to fully engage in that compassion, we need to be preparing and protecting performers and audiences involved in musical works that focus on trauma. How do we do that as creators, performers, and instructors of song? I have found numerous examples of opera productions of grappling with these matters, as well as two notable examples in choral music.

The first of these is composer Mari Esabel Valverde’s “We Hold Your Names Sacred,” a litany of and for murdered transwomen that is intended to be “programmed with extended efforts to connect the BIPOC trans population with concrete resources local to its performance(s).”[9] A second is Lore Burns’s “Here is a Safe Place,” at the end of which the composer asks audience members to “turn to a person nearby and introduce ourselves with our pronouns.”[10]

(11) Within the vocal repertoire, though, such practices are less common. Composers I spoke with about this topic indicated that they generally did not include content advisories or any other materials or resources for mitigating potential trauma among performers or audiences. Composer Bonnie McLarty, writing about her piece Snow Angel, which uses text by Wyatt Townley and is about “the reclamation of personal identity and agency following a sexual assault of the female protagonist,” stated that she did not include such materials.[11] However, the premiere of the work, held at the University of Kansas School of Music in 2021, did have representatives from the school’s Counseling and Psychological Services available virtually for students; community members who attended were given contact for information for a free counseling service in the community.[12] This proactive approach on the part of KU is an excellent example of the kind of “resilience services” I am advocating for in the art music world.

(12) One of the only other things that I have found to date—please tell me about examples I should know about!—that comes close to offering guidance in regard to trauma and the potential for re-traumatizing performers is Myles McLean’s foreword to NewMusicShelf’s Anthology of New Music: Trans and Nonbinary Voices, Vol. 1, curated by Aiden K. Feltkamp and published in 2016.[13] In it, McLean writes that the collection of pieces in the volume celebrate “the wonderful array of intersectional experiences within” the trans community while recognizing that singers and the voice are often subject to misgendering and erasure because of art songs’ inherited limitations that force singers into an artificial gender binary. McLean encourages users of the anthology to embrace trans joy and the embodiment of singing as a trans vocalist, but omits deeper consideration of potentially negative emotional responses or a discussion of how singers might feel as they explore their voices, suggesting that all of the works in the collection testify to and/or resonate with beauty, affirmation, and “a sense of belonging.” McLean makes only one comment that hints that engaging with a song that cites gender dysphoria might be difficult or call for preparation or aftercare on the part of a performer, instructor, or listener. McLean’s milquetoast note, “some works even allow space to acknowledge that flawed—and sometimes even harmful—individuals exist within our community” is about a song extracted from an opera cycle, Dana Kaufman’s “To my mother’s closet,” which sets text from Caitlyn Jenner’s televised interviews.

(13) Finally, I do want to mention the Voice and Trauma Institute and Lab, which investigates “the relationship between a person’s traumatic experiences and their voice.” It is focused on psychophysiology and the vocal apparatus, which is outside the scope of this paper.

(14) Clearly there is a lacuna in the creation and publishing practices of new art song to address trauma depicted in or that has inspired such music. I have been complicit in not addressing this in my own work as a lyricist, which in addition to and in conjunction with topics like compassion, human rights, myth, magic, and nature and the environment, also engages with domestic, psychological, and emotional violence and abuse; rape; death; and other traumas and traumatic events. For many works already in or entering the repertoire, for which there are no such notes or information, we are reliant on historical interpretations (primary source writings and recordings and secondary sources like scholarship and scholarly editions), widely varying performance editions, and program and liner notes that do not address trauma. I propose that for creators of new art song, respect for those who perform it includes recognizing it as essential to communicate about the content of those works. For performers, I propose that respect for audiences similarly includes this recognition.  Here I offer some initial thoughts on doing so in a considered way that takes into account the matrix of trauma and memory. Creators can use them in developing content advisories; instructors or coaches teaching a work that doesn’t have such warnings can use these guidelines to prepare performers; performers can use them to prepare audiences and devise aftercare for them.

(15) Be honest and direct.

Don’t be euphemistic. If a work deals with death, say that: “this song cycle is about death.” “Death” is not “passing away.” If it is about rape, write “this piece depicts, describes, details rape,” not “an assault,” not “an attack,” not “harm.” Rape is never the same as consensual “sexual content.” Plenty of people would like to just say, “this work includes sexual content” or “mature themes.” These are weasel words: works people use when they don’t want to be honest and frank. Will the performers create, or will the audience hear, the sounds of physical abuse in the piece? Tell them. In my piece with composer Angela Slater, a tulip, iron, I begin the lyricist’s note by writing “a tulip, iron is about the fear and horror created by psychological and emotional abuse, the relief of escape from abuse, and the work required to contend with traumatic memories of it.”

(16) Provide information up front.

Tell the performer and audience what happens as part of the presentation of the work Write them a note and make it obvious. For performers, put it in the score, on the very first page past the title page. Not in a video you hope they will watch or hear before experiencing the piece; not in a note on your website or social media page that may never get seen. For audiences, put it not just in the program but also read it from the stage before the performance begins as part of the performance, not just silently added to supertitles or projections. “In this song, Cassandra predicts the mass killing of the Spartans.”

(17) Make a map.

Help performers and audiences understand what happens within the piece. Not the kind of program note that says, “the piano then takes over this mournful melody, transposing it by a third.”

No, a map of the emotions and experiences depicted in the work. This map was made for a performance of a work called Divergent Sounds, by Jen McGregor and Amble Skuse. It was designed for a piece about autism with text by autistics, and this map is for autistic as well as neurotypical audience members.

It helps prepare the audience for the sounds and text they’ll hear, in case they need to leave the room, use earplugs, or other techniques to minimize harm.

(18) Let people choose how to handle the work.

Tell your audience that it’s ok if they need to leave before the performance or during it because of what they might experience. Announce from the stage when it’s the next item in the program and give them time. Never push a student into learning a song that might be traumatizing; if a student wants to learn such a piece, make sure they have access to you and to mental health services if they find that they need it. 

(19) Offer aftercare.

Be available to talk with audience members after the performance. Told a talkback with performers and share information for organizations like RAINN and local mental health resources at the performance.

(20) Ultimately, I want to make the new music world a safe space, one where we acknowledge trauma and are informed about it. Send me your suggestions, recommendations, examples of who’s doing it right, your anecdotes, your ideas, your personal rating systems for music about trauma, whatever you’ve got. Let’s have a conversation.

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Bibliography

[1] Margaret Cormier, Rape at the Opera: Staging Sexual Violence, Music and Social Justice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024).

[2] Olivia Bloechl, “Survivors’ Songs in Opera: What the Vulnerable Voice Can Do,” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 25, no. 1 (2021): 35-6.

[3] Patrick Duggan, “Feeling Performance, Remembering Trauma,” Platform 2, no. 2 (2007): 44.

[4] Parul Sehgal, “The Case Against the Trauma Plot | The New Yorker,” New Yorker, December 27, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/the-case-against-the-trauma-plot.

[5] Alicia Elliott, “The Case FOR the Trauma Plot? How Writers Can Use It with Purpose and Care,” CBC Arts, February 11, 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-case-for-the-trauma-plot-how-writers-can-use-it-with-purpose-and-care-1.6346579.

[6] Karen Jürs-Munby, “‘Did You Mean Post-Traumatic Theatre?’: The Vicissitudes of Traumatic Memory in Contemporary Postdramtaic Performances,” Performance Paradigm 5, no. 2 (2009): 201.

[7] Jürs-Munby, 202.

[8] Jürs-Munby, 209.

[9] Mari Esabel Valverde, We Hold Your Names Sacred, SATB (Graphite Publishing, 2023), https://graphitepublishing.com/product/we-hold-your-names-sacred-satb/.

[10] Author: Annalyce Wiebenga, “Review: Compose Queer,” Farrago Magazine, April 19, 2021, https://farragomagazine.com/article/farrago/review-compose-queer/.

[11] Bonnie McLarty, personal communication with author (Facebook Messenger), December 11, 2024.

[12] Conner Mitchell, “KU School of Music to Perform 2 Modern Operas Examining Sexual Assault, Transgender Identity,” The Lawrence Times, April 26, 2021, https://lawrencekstimes.com/2021/04/26/ku-music-operas/.

[13] Myles McLean, “Foreword,” in Aiden K. Feltkamp, NewMusicShelf Anthology of New Music: Trans & Nonbinary Voices, Vol. 1 (NewMusicShelf, Inc., 2021).

I contributed to a blog post on Illuminate Women’s Music on my new piece MY SKIN with composer Angela Elizabeth Slater. Read it here!

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall. 3/5

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Esperance by Adam Oyebanji. 3/5

The concept here–a human descended from ancestors saved by aliens and transported to another planet comes to Earth to stop one of her fellow such humans from killing all of the descendants of the man who condemned their ancestors to die–is interesting, even if it doesn’t always work well. At the center of the novel is the question as to whether the children should suffer for the sins of their forebears. The humans from another planet mostly say yes, while humans from Earth mostly say no. The tone zigzags from police procedural to buddy caper to technothriller to family drama, and while I enjoyed reading the mash-up of genres, the ease of which characters accepted some of the weirdness created by the human-aliens felt a little too easy, and the capabilities of the human-alien tech involved wasn’t always consistent.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami. 5/5

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No More Tears by Gardiner Harris. 5/5

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The Last Wizards’ Ball by Charlaine Harris. 5/5

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Speak EZ by Elle E. Ire. 5/5

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Disco Witches of Fire Island by Blair Fell. 5/5

I want to make an opera–or maybe a musical–out of this wonderful, quirky, supremely queer, and beautiful book about found family, finding love, loving yourself, and witches. It’s 1989, and two young gay men head to Fire Island for summer jobs–and sex. Despite the AIDS crisis, men (and women) are still managing to find love–or at least like and lust–over the course of the summer. When Joe ends up boarding with a pair of disco witches, his life goes spinning like a mad teacup–and his friends’ lives are changed as well. I loved every moment of this novel: every meeting, every kiss, every ritual, every potion, every song, every person; that Fergal’s dad is a selkie; that Joe’s destiny might be to end AIDS. I cried, too, when Max, who has already made a shrine for himself with his friends, dies of AIDS; when Joe and his love finally, FINALLY get it together; for the real-world people I knew who died of AIDS. It’s just a great book, and the Disco Witch Manifestos at the beginning of each chapter are affirming and campy and fun. I can’t wait to give copies to friends!

Wolf’s Path by Joyce Chng. 5/5

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A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. 5/5

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The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. 5/5

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Looking at Women Looking at War by Victoria Amelina. 5/5

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A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle. 5/5

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Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen. 5/5

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Sex Lives of Superheroes by Diana Mccallum. 4/5

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The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig. 4/5

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As Sarah and Trevor embark on a mission to swim every pool in their town, they’re also trying to figure out their futures and desires. Their initially-private project becomes less secret when Trevor tells some of their other friends about it, and as a group they take to the night to swim. But one pool, hidden in the woods, is very different, existing in its own time and space. As the various members of the group try to figure out what’s going on and how to leave, emotions run high and relationships change in unpredictable ways. A solid SFFH novel with elements of philosophy.

My Documents by Kevin Nguyen. 5/5

When Vietnamese men engage in terrorism within the US, Vietnamese Americans are interred in camps, just like the Japanese in WWII. We follow four twenty-something siblings–and their dad, who has been conditioned to escape his whole life–who are sent to camp, spared, given special treatment, make their careers, and horrifically abused during the interment period. The characters are superb, the plotting is stunning, the writing feels real and true and honest. It’s a tour de force about identity and segregation and privilege, and set in an all-too-possible America. I want every high school student to read this right now. I want everyone to read this right now. What–who–will stop an American government from doing something like this whenever it wants?

Cleavage by Jennifer Finney Boylan. 3/5

This isn’t quite a book, yet. It’s a lot of essays by Boylan reworked into kind of a book shape, but it needs more work to become a book. it’s unfortunately really disjointed because of the origins of many of the chapters, and there’s a good bit of repeated material, as well as stories that are begun and never resolved. Maybe that’s deliberate. I don’t know. What I do know is that while Boylan is always fine to read and while this is enjoyable enough, it doesn’t feel particularly meaningful or deep. It’s still half-baked, as well as not fully arranged. It feels like she’s resting on her laurels. I’m not going to say don’t read it, because there is some good writing, and good insight in it, but get it from the library.

Once a Castle by Sarah Arthur. 1/5

This sequel to Once a Queen really requires readers to have read and remember that book in order to make much sense of this one. And while the first was a little twee, this one leans much more heavily on the cutesy-names-and-wide-eyed-innocents tropes of the more treacly fairytales. I was far less impressed with Once a Castle than Once a Queen, and really had to force myself to finish it.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu. 5/5

An excellent collection Liu’s short work, smart and original and already widely honored and praised elsewhere. I’d encountered some of these stories in their original publications, but some were new to me and were just as much a treat to read. Highly recommend.

The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li. 5/5

This is a nice, solid gothic horror + queer romance. Lives echo lives, and a grand mansion built on the blood and suffering of many. There are mystery elements, secrets of all kinds, some truly horrifying ghosts, and a nice little twist at the end. On a larger scale, the novel grapples with anti-Asian racism, domestic violence, and the Hollywood entertainment machine. The characters are well-developed and grew through the book, and Li’s writing is so evocative and detailed that I could easily envision all of the house and its terrifying garden.

Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis. 5/5

I really enjoyed this novel about a woman who, when faced with the complexities of the world, undergoes serious reconsideration of who she is and what she believes in. Nadia, a brash criminologist, gets involved in a UN plan to rehabilitate ISIS brides, and finds herself advocating for one woman in particular who–in a slightly different timeline–Nadia thinks could easily have been her. But people are complicated, and the UN people Nadia works with are a mixture of corrupt, uncaring, overworked, and burnt out, and her protege isn’t as much like Nadia as she thinks. Younis does a fabulous job of world-building and character development, and I appreciate the excellent bi/pan representation in a person of color. This is a great choice for book clubs and discussion groups.

The Scientist and the Serial Killer by Lise Olsen. 1/5

This is so poorly organized and written that it does a disservice to the victims, the young men known as the Houston Lost Boys, and their families. Olsen’s writing is full of implicit bias (a woman is described as “determined yet charming” as if someone cannot be both (and why is it necessary to describe her as “charming” in the first place?) and then in the same sentence her accent is described as “charming;” another woman doesn’t go to college but “somehow” becomes a teacher, suggesting incredulity that such a thing could happen and that such a person would be qualified to teach; and countless other examples. She goes off on unrelated or barely-related tangents (the Peter Pan theory, which fizzles out and which she abandons within a handful of paragraphs), makes unnecessary and judgmental asides, and focuses on superficial and irrelevant aspects of individuals’ appearances, belongings, homes, and occupations. She makes unsubstantiated assumptions and claims about what people’s beliefs and attitudes. This ms needs heavy, guided revision and may benefit from a co-author.

The World She Edited by Amy Reading. 2/5

I really hoped for more from this book. It drags and is often dull; it is repetitive and ableist; and it’s less about Katharine White and her work than it is about the author being unable to let go of unnecessary quotes that she somehow feels are important but which really aren’t relevant. Reading offers little depth in her presentation of White’s life, and while she does at times try to take on issues like how working women handled parenting, for example, the writing tends to be a little superficial, offering anecdotes rather than analysis. I was hoping for a biography of White that really dug into her editing practices, discussing her influences and style, but instead we get not much more than statistics about what authors she accepted, and how often she accepted their work, and how she didn’t accept. There’s a missed opportunity in Reading’s take on White and Langston Hughes: we’ve already learned that the New Yorker was racist in almost all of its practices; here, Reading could have provided a much deeper reading of who was reading Hughes and publishing him, and what pieces, and why, and why White and the New Yorker couldn’t see his importance and potential, and how White dealt with race in other ways–there’s so much here that could have been really illuminating about White and the New Yorker and her peers there and the publishing world as a whole, but I’ll have to find that somewhere else. While Reading has said in an interview about the book that “the author-editor relationship, which is rarely studied, can be quite crucial to literary culture,” but she doesn’t really write about that; she writes about how White was a friend to her writers, and we learn how she helped them through divorces and gave them advances, but there’s so little of the “here’s how the first draft was, and here’s what White changed, and why, and here’s how the author responded” that the editor-author relationship is almost entirely lost. Also: could an editor please get Reading to stop using words like “crippled” and “bedridden”, please? It’s ableist as fuck.

A Dangerous Idea by Debbie Levy. 5/5

A solid account of the Scopes trial for young or new readers, A Dangerous Idea presents the importance of the case in straightforward language, discussing the context in which Scopes volunteered to be a test case for the ACLU, how Brady and Darrow prepared and executed their roles in the trial, and what the influence of the case has been on American education and free speech. Readers familiar with the play and/or movie Inherit the Wind will find the facts of the trial fascinating (and, as I was, be impressed by the how much the film’s actors looked like and were able to mimic the real-life men they portrayed). Author Levy carefully explains the rise of fundamentalist Christianity as well as Darwin’s views and beliefs, and makes it clear that she’s on the side of science. My only complaint is Levy’s use of people’s first names–Darrow and Brady are “Clarence” and “Will” while the judge retains his title and last name. It isn’t necessary, and is the only thing in the book that smacks of condescension to its audience. Can Dolly Parton give this one to every 5th grader in the nation, please?

Black Panther Woman by Mary Frances Phillips. 4/5

This is an important biography of one of the Black Panther Party’s women leaders, Ericka Huggins. Author Phillips has captured Huggins’s methods of resistance, action, and prison care as only someone who has spent considerable time with their subject can. While the narrative is sometimes short on analysis and cultural context, I can forgive this because it is, after all, meant to inspire and help general readers learn about Huggins and the concept of self-care and community care in the BPP. Phillips chronicles Huggins’s development and life as a young activist, parent, widow, writer, and political prisoner. Phillips writes candidly about Huggins’s sexuality, her spirituality, and what she accomplished for the BPP and Black women in general. A perfect choice for a book club or reading group, and an essential text for understanding the BPP and race and politics in the US.

Red in Tooth and Claw by Lish McBride. 5/5

This is a terrific Western/dystopia/werewolf book! A young woman, living in a fraught world where power is concentrated in men, is sent to a brutal outpost where colonizers and religious despots have created a system of exploitation and abuse. Posing as a man for her own safety, Faolan uncovers the truths of the place, including the creatures that attack it. There’s a lot of ingenuity on her part, and courage, and persistence, as well as some romance and friends. The world-building is excellent and the novel is well-paced. I know this is one I’ll be re-reading.

Devouring Tomorrow ed. by Jeff Dupuis; A.G. Pasquella. 2/5

This is a mixed bag of short stories by Canadian writers on the effects of climate change on food and eating. Some are told with a fairy-tale like wonder, like a story about a fig tree and its progeny, while others are slice-of-life–I liked one in which a scavenger finds a book, which, being incredibly rare, earns her enough water–used as a commodity–to buy better food for herself and her son. Some are funny–there’s a great eat-the-rich parody in which the only ethical meat is determined to be human mean, because humans can consent, and so celebrities offer meat cloned from their bodies–while others are expectedly grim. There’s not a whole lot of originality, though; there are too many retreads of topics that have been used to death. Usually anthologies like these lead me to read more by the writers who are included, and there may be one or two here I’ll track down for more, but overall the collection is a bit under the bar for me to endorse it with much enthusiasm.

And the Sky Bled by S. Hati. 1/5

This might win the award for most boring and derivative read of the year. Fantasy cli-fi with impetuous and unpleasant characters who never seem to learn or grow, and remain flat throughout, this book tries to be complex and full of intrigue, but in the end failed to interest me in any of the things going on. It feels a lot like an attempt to cash in on the success of other works, better works in the genre: Jemisin’s Broken Earth series; Okorafor’s Who Fears Death and its new prequel; and others.

Embers of the Hands by Eleanor Barraclough. 5/5

I loved this excellent history of early Nordic peoples told through materials. Barraclough does a terrific job of presenting information in ways that will captivate general readers, providing facts, insight, and carefully considered speculation about the so-called Vikings’ languages, travels, joys, sorrows, grooming habits, possessions, sex lives, raiding practices, and much much more. She carries readers across seas and into graves, painting detailed, intimate portraits of everyone of the age from bored children and exhausted farmers to board game enthusiasts and enslaved people. Highly recommended.

The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes. 2/5

You probably know the story of Oedipus already: Jocasta has a baby boy. A prophesy says a son will kill his father, so the baby is sent to die on a hillside. A peasant finds the boy and raises him. The boy grows up, goes adventuring, unknowingly kills his bio-dad and marries his bio-mom. They have kids. This novel tells the story of Jocasta and those kids, and what happens to them after their parents learn who they are in relation to one another. It’s ok. I wasn’t blown away by any particularly original imagining of the people, and there are a number of draggy places that could be tightened up. I never really felt invested in the characters–they weren’t very developed or deep.

The Otherwhere Post by Emily J. Taylor. 4/5

I enjoyed this fantasy/romance about a young woman seeking the truth about her father’s death. The world-building is solid: the magic is original and unusual, the characters are pretty well-developed and diverse, the romance works well, and the pace is great. I’d have liked maybe a little more depth to some of the characters (there’s the plucky, orphaned heroine, her extrovert, social butterfly roommate, the brooding and injured mentor/love interest, the heiress who helps with material needs…you get the idea….) but overall this is a fun and engrossing read.

Back After This by Linda Holmes. 3/5

I enjoyed Holmes’s previous book, Evvie Drake Starts Over, and I like this one too, although it’s a little too predictable and formulaic. A podcast producer–and I did love learning about podcast production!–agrees to take part in a podcast in which she’ll go on 20 dates and get advice from a “romance influencer”-type figure. But before those dates get underway, she has a meet-cute with a charming guy and a charming dog. So we know what’s gonna happen: most of the dates will be duds, and either she’ll have to choose between a date and meet-cute-dog-guy, or all of the dates will be duds and she’ll end up with meet-cute-dog-guy. Spoiler: it’s the second. But along the way there are some unfortunately cliched events: misunderstandings, omission of crucial info, et al. Even knowing the ending that’s coming, it’s still a pleasant read; the main characters are interesting and pretty well-developed and the podcast and influencer worlds are interesting to learn about.