Book Review

Nic Stone’s Dear Martin grapples with American race relations through Justyce, an Ivy bound 17-year-old who attends a prep school in Atlanta.  After being unjustly profiled and arrested, Justyce begins keeping a journal addressed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Through Justyce’s perspective, readers encounter racist situations where he tries, at least initially, to reconcile

Brit Bennett’s debut novel The Mothers grapples with difficult topics, including suicide and abortion, with an equally delicate authorial hand found in The Vanishing Half.  Nadia, a senior in high school, begins seeing Luke, the pastor’s son, as she grieves for her mother, who recently committed suicide. After getting pregnant, she decides to have an

Brit Bennett’s second novel The Vanishing Half tells the story of Desiree and Stella Vignes, twins who grow up in Mallard, a fictional Black community in Louisiana.  The twins run away at 16 years old—Desiree marrying and having a child with a man with comparatively darker skin and Stella passing for white.  At first glance,

In this relatively compact piece, Fluent Forever provides a framework to building one’s second language skills from the ground up.  As an opera singer, Gabriel Wyner initially stresses the importance of pronunciation: “An accurate accent is powerful because it is the ultimate gesture of empathy. It connects you to another person’s culture in a way