New Books

Announcing “The Past”

“Xu’s lyricism and near-painterly control of the line are breathtaking. The Past shows us how the natural world tells of a shared history and language long after the traumas of revolution and immigration. These poems push outward at all of the seams.”—Wendy S. Walters, author of Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal

“Wendy Xu’s The Past embodies what James Baldwin said about poets, that they must excavate and recreate history. In her brilliant confrontations with the past, Xu is cultivating, caring for, and ultimately transforming the consciousness and the subconscious ground of poetry’s faithful yet fearless engagement with history, out of which descendant generations will approach and appraise, by the profound permission of her example, their own cultural and familial histories, and therefore all of our futures.”—Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall

 

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The poems in Wendy Xu’s third collection, The Past, fantasize uneasily about becoming a palatable lyric record of their namesake, while ultimately working to disrupt this Westernized desire. Who is “the past” for, after all, and what does it allow? Both sorrow and joy are found in these poems, knit into the silences and slippery untrustworthinesses of the English language.

Born in Shandong, China, in 1987, Wendy Xu immigrated to the United States in 1989, three days ahead of the events of Tian’anmen Square on June 4th—the poems of The Past partly concern the emotional reverberations of this annual double-anniversary, the place at which “the past” forked, over thirty years ago, putting the author on a path to the United States. The Past probes the multi-generational binds of family, displacement, the illness and passing of the author’s uncle and maternal grandfather in 2018, and immigration as an ongoing psychic experience without end. Moving spontaneously between lyric, fragment, prose, and subversions in “traditional” Chinese forms, the book culminates in a centerpiece series of “Tian’anmen Square sonnets” (and their subsequent erasures), an original form built from iterations of 6 and 4 in order to evade algorithmic censorship of references to June 4, 1989. Using form as inquiry, The Past conjures up the irrepressible past and ultimately imagines a new kind of poem: at once code and confession.

LOOKING AT MY FATHER

It’s the inside which
comes out, as I contemplate
him there half
in sunlight, weeding diligently
a Midwestern lawn.
On my persons, I have
only notes
and a drying pen,
the memory
of onion blossoms
scenting
in a window.
Reflection is my native
medium. I am never
arriving, only speaking
briefly on material
conditions between myself
and others. My country
inoculates
me lovingly, over time.
My country grasps me
like desire.
I will show you
my credentials, which is
to say my vivid description
if you ask.
Here we are, my father
and I, never hostile,
a small offering: pointless
cut flowers appear
on the kitchen table
when one
finally arrives
into disposable income.
Still possible.
Am I living? Do I
accept revision
as my godhead
and savior? I do
and I am, in the name
of my Chinese father now
dragging the tools
back inside, brow
shining but always
a grin, faithless
except to protect whatever
I still have time
to become,

Amen.

WENDY XU (Brooklyn, NY) is the author of Phrasis, named one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of 2017 by the New York Times Book Review. She teaches writing at the New School, and serves as poetry editor for the arts magazine Hyperallergic.

Celebrating Aboriginal Veterans Day

Today is Canadian Aboriginal Veterans Day. As is true of the First Nations people of Canada, Native Americans enlist in the United States military at a higher rate than their white counterparts. At least 12,000 Native Americans enlisted to fight in WWI, at at time when they did not qualify for United States citizenship.

Novelist Gerald Vizenor’s trilogy of novels from Wesleyan University Press follow the story of the Beaulieu brothers, Basile and Aloysius. In Blue Ravens they come of age and leave the White Earth Reservation to fight on European battlefields during WWI. Native Tributes follows the brothers as they participate in the Bonus Army March on Washington DC. In his forthcoming novel, Satie on the Seine, Vizenor brings the brothers back to Europe. They seek lives as artists in Paris—only to witness the Nazi occupation of the city.

 

Blue Ravens

Native Tributes

Surprise by Rick Bartow (Wiyot, 1946–2016). Cover art for Satie on the Seine.

Satie on the Seine: Letters to the Heirs of the Fur Trade
A Historical Novel by Gerald Vizenor
Publication Date:  September 8, 2020
Trade Paper, $17.95 / 978-0-8195-7934-8; Ebook, $14.99 / 978-0-8195-7935-5

Basile Hudon Beaulieu wrote fifty letters to the heirs of the fur trade between October 1932 and January 1945. The messages were circulated on the White Earth Reservation. At the end of the war the letters were translated as native chronicles in a six volume roman fleuve, narrative sequence, published by Nathan Crémieux at the Galerie Ghost Dance in Paris, France.

The letters convey the mercy of liberté, the torment and solidarity of Le Front Populaire, the Popular Front, an alliance of political leftists, and the contest of ethos and governance in the French Third Republic. Basile relates the massacres of Native Americans, and the misery of federal policies on reservations to the savage strategies of royalists, fascists, communists, and antisemites during the eight years before war was declared against Germany, and to the end of the Nazi Occupation of Paris.

The letters to the heirs of the fur trade during the war reveal the cruelty and deprivations of the Nazi Occupation, the fearsome Prefécture de Police, persecution of Jews, and the eternal shame of the Vélodrome d’Hiver Roundup. Maréchal Philippe Pétain, the Vichy Regime, and betrayal of résistance networks are condemned, and at the same time the littérature engagée of Romain Rolland and liberation of the French Third Republic are celebrated in the last emotive letters.

About the author
Gerald Vizenor (Chippewa) is a novelist, essayist, and interdisciplinary scholar of Native American culture and literature. He is professor emeritus of American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Native Provenance: The Betrayal of Cultural Creativity (Nebraska, 2019), and three recent novels, Chair of Tears (Nebraska), Blue Ravens (Wesleyan), and Native Tributes (Wesleyan).

 

Announcing “Letters from Amherst”

Entertaining and informative letters written from 1984 to 1991

In these personal and pointed letters written between 1984 and 1991, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer Samuel Delany comments on literature, art, politics, aging, academia, his family’s history in Harlem, and black and white social life in another century. He details a visit from science fiction writer and critic Judith Merrill and reflects on his colleague and former student Octavia E. Butler.

Samuel R. Delany is a science fiction author and a retired professor at Temple University. After winning four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Visit samueldelany.com for more author news.

Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica. She is the author of six novels and numerous short stories. She has received the Campbell and Locus Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award for her contributions to science fiction and fantasy. Currently she teaches creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.

Letters from Amherst gives readers insight into the personal and professional life and aesthetic assessments of the author, Samuel R. Delany, one of the most important literary figures of our time.”—Nisi Shawl, author of the Nebula Award Finalist novel Everfair, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning story collection Filter House

“Letters from Amherst is significant and important…Delany provides unseen glimpses into his important familial lineages, personal friendship and partnership, his assessment of universities and their politics, and a general joy in anything that has to do with intellectual culture.” —L.H. Stallings, author of Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures

June 4, 2019
160 pp., 9 x 6″
Paperback, $17.95 9780819578518
Cloth, $45.00 9780819578204

Announcing “Staging Brazil”

How Capoeira Became A National Folk Form

“As elaborate and beautiful as capoeira itself! Drawing on interviews, manuals, sketches, photographs, and embodied knowledge, and highlighting the authorship of often overlooked actors, Staging Brazil demonstrates that capoeira elides and eludes the binaries purity/mixture, tradition/modernity, authentic/staged, angola/regional, and black/white.”
—Patricia de Santana Pinho, author of Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian combat game practiced today throughout the world. Staging Brazil: Choreographies of Capoeira is the first in-depth study of the process of legitimization of capoeira and its globalization as Brazil’s national folklore. Using early illustrated capoeira manuals, the book contextualizes the two main styles of capoeira, angola and regional, within discourses of race and nation in mid-twentieth century Brazil and reveals the mutual influences between capoeira practitioners, tourism bureaucrats, intellectuals, artists, and directors of folkloric ensembles.

Ana Paula Höfling is an assistant professor of dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She splits her time between North Carolina and Brazil.

“As elaborate and beautiful as capoeira itself! Drawing on interviews, manuals, sketches, photographs, and embodied knowledge, and highlighting the authorship of often overlooked actors, Staging Brazil demonstrates that capoeira elides and eludes the binaries purity/mixture, tradition/modernity, authentic/staged, angola/regional, and black/white.” —Patricia de Santana Pinho, author of Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil

“In this tour-de-force of painstaking archival work and theoretical sophistication, Höfling brings capoeira alive as a crucial area of study for understanding the role of bodies and movement in post-colonial nation-building.” —Jane C. Desmond, author of Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World

“This book is at once a fine biography of capoeira in its kinesthetic specificities and a necessary examination of the narratives that sustain the invention of a modern Brazil . . . it is a valuable addition to a growing body of work that challenges us to see beyond staged and authentic, loss and retention dichotomies.” —Bianca Freire-Medeiros, author of Touring Poverty

Staging Brazil represents an important contribution to dance studies, martial arts studies, and Brazilian history . . . Rejecting false binaries of tradition versus innovation and Brazilian versus African, Höfling emphasizes choreographic authorship not as a sign of decline but as fundamental to capoeira. Meticulously researched and clearly articulated, Staging Brazil nuances understandings of capoeira by treating modernity and choreographic authorship as central to its practice.” —Janet O’Shea, author of Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training

June 4, 2019
280 pp., 40 illus., 6 x 9”
Unjacketed Cloth, $85.00x  978-0-8195-7880-8
Paper, $26.95 978-0-8195-7881-5
eBook, $21.99 Y 978-0-8195-7882-2

Announcing “Konnakkol Manual”

Exercises and theory for advanced students of Solkaṭṭu

“The South Indian rhythmic core, the demystifying strategies, transforming capability of the content and the manner of presentation, the authenticity of the rhythmic repertoire, the learning tips from the wealth of the author’s musical experience in South Indian drumming over half a century, gained from the acclaimed Karnatak music maestros—all this and much more, are most valuable for students, performers, teachers of improvisation in the world of music.”
— Karaikudi Subramanian, Founder and director of Brhaddhvani Research & Training Center for Musics of the World

 

Konnakkol Manual assists in the advanced study of Karnatak (South Indian) music. It picks up where Solkaṭṭu Manual left off, including advanced exercises and a discussion of the sources of Karnatak tāḷas (meters). In one chapter, the evolution of rhythmic compositions is illustrated through the work of three generations of musicians. The book contains full tani āvartanams (spoken percussion solos) in three tāḷas, together with instructions for practice and Solkaṭṭunotation. A hundred and fifty accompanying instructional videos are available at wesleyan.edu/wespress/konnakkol.

David P. Nelson has been performing and teaching South Indian drumming since 1975 and has a PhD. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, where he is currently adjunct assistant professor.

Konnakkol Manual is a very valuable addition to rhythm studies for any musician. The material is presented in a clear and systematic way, very appropriate for teachers and students.” —Glen Valez, New School

“The South Indian rhythmic core, the demystifying strategies, transforming capability of the content and the manner of presentation, the authenticity of the rhythmic repertoire, the learning tips from the wealth of the author’s musical experience in South Indian drumming over half a century, gained from the acclaimed Karnatak music maestros—all this and much more, are most valuable for students, performers, teachers of improvisation in the world of music.” —Karaikudi Subramanian, Founder and director of Brhaddhvani Research & Training Center for Musics of the World

“High caliber and innovative mrdangist David Nelson shares insights acquired over more than four decades in this well-paced guide to advanced rhythmic composition in South Indian music. Written in an inviting style and amply illustrated with video demonstrations, this manual will be useful for creative musicians of all backgrounds.” —Richard K. Wolf, author of The Voice in the Drum

“The lessons present the rhythmic concepts in a completely comprehensible and thorough way. This book may be the best way to dive into these concepts, short of getting on a flight to Chennai.” —Jamey Haddad, American percussionist

“Very courageous and musically friendly.” —Trilok Gurtu, percussionist and composer

June 4, 2019
200 pp. 28 illus., 8 1/2 x 11”
Paper, $34.95 978-0-8195-7878-5

Announcing “Sol LeWitt”

An intimate portrait of a renowned conceptual artist

“One of the interesting things about living through a period is you know where the recorded history and the happenstance of the moment diverge. Consequently, having known Sol LeWitt since my days as an art student in New York in the 1960s, I appreciate the clear and concise manner that Lary Bloom has scrupulously chronicled not only Sol’s artistic development, but also his personal life and his ever-changing social milieu. The results are an insightful and intimate portrait of the artist, the man and his times.”
— Saul Ostrow, Founder of Critical Practices, Inc.

 

Sol LeWitt (1928−2007), one of the most influential and important artists of the twentieth century, upended how art is made and marketed. As a key figure in minimalism and conceptualism, he proclaimed that for the artist the work of the mind is more important than that of the hand. (He argued, “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”) But even as his wall drawings and sculpture were admired around the world (installed, over time, by thousands of young artists, and marketed not as objects but as concepts), and even as he championed the work of hundreds of colleagues including many women whose efforts were spurned by the bullies of a male-dominated profession, he remained an enigmatic figure, refusing to participate in the culture of celebrity. Lary Bloom’s biography Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas links the extraordinary arc of his life to his iconic work. The author draws on personal recollections of LeWitt, whom he knew during the last two decades of the artist’s life, as well as letters and papers and over one hundred original interviews, including those with Chuck Close, Ingrid Sischy, Adrian Piper, Philip Glass, and Carl Andre. The result is a full and absorbing portrait of a man who, following the flashy and self-aggrandizing period of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, stripped art down to its basics and, with a band of rebellious colleagues, started over again.

Lary Bloom has authored or co-authored ten books including The Writer WithinThe Test of Our Times, with Tom Ridge, and Letters from Nuremberg, with Christopher Dodd. He has taught writing at Yale University, Fairfield University, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

May 7, 2019
356 pp. 28 illus., 6 x 9”
Jacketed Cloth, $35.00 978-0-8195-7868-6

Chapbooks by Kit and Joseph Reed now available as a set!

Wesleyan University Press has recreated three enchanting, humorous chapbooks originally produced for friends by the late Kit and Joseph Reed. The books were written by Kit and lavishly illustrated by Joseph.

All three books are now available as a set. 

Thirty Polite Things to Say

          Amusing guide to social etiquette.

The preface reads: “There are times in the lives of us all in which we are at a loss for words. This volume attempts a partial solution.” What follows are thirty things perhaps we shouldn’t say, but often find ourselves uttering.
32 pp. 4 x 6″ Paper, $6.95, 978-0-8195-7859-4

Dog Truths

          A whimsically serious chapbook about dogs

The chapbook includes absurd graphs, charts, and diagrams that tell the “truth” about various dog breeds—size, attitude, and likability. Dog truths are laid bare here, setting the record straight. Woof.
12pp. 4 x 6″ Paper, $6.95, 978-0-8195-7860-0

Deaths of the Poets

          A darkly humorous homage to poets and their deaths

Rhyming couplets meet slightly-sardonic etchings in this whimsically dark chapbook chronicling the dramatic ends of some of our most beloved poets.
34 pp. 4 x 6″ Paper, $6.95, 978-0-8195-7858-7

Kit Reed (June 7, 1932–September 24, 2017) was an American author and journalist whose short stories were nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Tiptree Awards. Joseph Reed is Professor Emeritus of Film and American Studies at Wesleyan University.

Also by Kit Reed
The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories
Seven for the Apocalypse
Weird Women, Wired Women

Announcing “In the Language of My Captor” now available in paperback!

Finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry

“[McCrae’s] language remains as stark as the perdurable, terrible history it contains—a history that is not over yet.”
—Stephanie Burt, New York Times Book Review

Acclaimed poet Shane McCrae’s latest collection, In the Language of My Captornow available in paper, is a book about freedom told through stories of captivity. In it, historical persona poemsand a prose memoir address the illusory freedom of both black and white Americans. McCrae explores the role mass entertainment plays in oppression, and he interrogates the infrequently examined connections between racism and love.

Shane McCrae is the author of four other books of poetry, including The Animal Too Big to Kill, Mule, Forgiveness Forgiveness, and Blood.

April 2, 2019
108 pp., 9 x 6″
Paperback, $14.95 9780819577122
Cloth, $24.95 9780819577115

Announcing “Extra Hidden Life, among the Days” now available in paperback!

Poetry of grief and sustenance from an award-winning poet

“Just dazzling: how the world, the mind, and emotion are bound into that affecting, meditative, and poignant system of phrases. When I read lines as sharp as these are lexically, semantically, syntactically, and rhythmically, I fall in love with American poetry again.”
—Forrest Gander, New York Journal of Books

Building on her groundbreaking quartet of books about the earth’s elements, Brenda Hillman’s Extra Hidden Life, among the Days features new poems that are both plain and transcendent. This is poetry as a discipline of love and service to the world, whose lines shepherd us through grief and into an ethics of active resistance. A free reader’s companion is available online.

Brenda Hillman is an activist, writer, editor, and teacher. Hillman serves on the faculty of Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California.

April 2, 2019
152 pp., 9 x 6″
Paperback, $14.95 9780819578945
Cloth, $24.95 9780819578051

Q & A with Mary Kathryn Nagle on Native Theater and YIPAP

Mary Kathryn Nagle contributed a powerful original essay to introduce Wesleyan’s new theater volume, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light: A Play by Joy Harjo and a Circle of Responses. Her essay is entitled “Joy Harjo’s Wings: A Revolution on the American Stage.” Nagle explains how negative and demeaning representations of Native people in popular culture are not without consequence to Native people. She writes:

“Redface was purposefully created to tell a false, demeaning story. Redface constitutes a false portrayal of Native people—most often performed by non–Natives wearing a stereotypical ‘native’ costume that bears no relation to actual Native people, our stories, our struggles, or our survival in a country that has attempted to eradicate us. The continued dominant perception that American Indians are the racial stereotypes they see performed on the American stage is devastating to our sovereign rights to define our own identity. Of course, that’s why it was invented.”

Join Joy Harjo & Priscilla Page at the Yale Center for British Art, March 5, 4PM.

Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She currently serves as executive director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP)—who are sponsoring Joy Harjo and Priscilla Page’s visit to Yale on Tuesday, March 5th. She is also a partner at Pipestem Law, PC, where she works to protect tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. Curious to learn more about YIPAP, I asked Mary Kathryn some questions about the program, and Native theater in general. Here are her answers:

Q. How long has YIPAP been existence? Can you tell me a little about how the department came to be?
A. YIPAP was formed in 2015, following the performance of SLIVER OF A FULL MOON at Yale Law School. Professor Ned Blackhawk noted that several of the Native students were moved and inspired when they witnessed professional Native actors, alongside Native women survivors, sharing Native stories in a play. Because Native people hardly ever see authentic Native people on stage, this one performance was very impactful. Professor Blackhawk wanted to sustain this work and give students exposure to professional Native performing artists, while also assisting with the development of Native artists more broadly in the field. This is the work YIPAP has been dedicated to.

Q. What do you envision for YIPAP, moving forward?
A. We hope to expand our programing and partnerships in order to bring more Native artists to college campuses and tribal communities to work directly with youth.

Q. What would you like to say about “Native Theater” as a concept? Misconceptions? Relevancy? How long it’s actually been around? How is it different than Non-Native theater?
A. I think the biggest misconception today about Native theater is that somehow our stories do not appeal or are not relevant to non-Natives. Powerful stories are powerful stories. Good stories are good stories. Just like the stories of ALL of the other communities that comprise the United States today, our stories are universal in their humanity and always relevant to the issues everyone faces today.

Nagle has authored numerous briefs in federal appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. She studied theater and social justice at Georgetown University as an undergraduate student, and received her JD from Tulane University Law School, where she graduated summa cum laude and received the John Minor Wisdom Award. She is a frequent speaker at law schools and symposia across the country. Her articles have been published in law review journals including the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Yale Law Journal (online forum), Tulsa Law Review, and Tulane Law Review, among others. Nagle is an alum of the 2012 Public Theater Emerging Writers Group, where she developed her play Manahatta in Public Studio (May 2014). Productions include Miss Lead  (Amerinda, 59E59, January 2014) and Fairly Traceable  (Native Voices at the Autry, March 2017). Upcoming productions include Arena Stage’s world premiere of Sovereignty, Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s world premiere of Manahatta, and others.