2021 Summer Reading List: Alumni Selections
Add to your summer vacation reading list with engaging books written by The New School’s critically acclaimed alumni. From captivating novels, insightful memoirs, and charming stories for children, these books will take you on new adventures to places both faraway and nearby.
Discover your next great read on the list below and browse The New School’s alumni online bookshelf for more selections.
FICTION
The Other Black Girl
Zakiya Harris, MFA Creative Writing ’16
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
The Photographer
Mary Dixie Carter, MFA Creative Writing ’17
As a photographer, Delta Dawn observes the seemingly perfect lives of New York City’s elite: snapping photos of their children’s birthday parties, transforming images of stiff hugs and tearstained faces into visions of pure joy, and creating moments these parents long for. But when Delta is hired for Natalie Straub’s eleventh birthday, she finds herself wishing she wasn’t behind the lens but a part of the scene.
Cucina Romana: Another Italian Adventure
Andrew Cotto, MFA Creative Writing ’08
Cucina Romana: Another Italian Adventure continues the story of Jacoby Pines from Cucina Tipica, as the fledgling expat discovers a potential connection to his ancestry while on vacation in Rome. What follows is a food-filled, wine-soaked adventure about one man’s quest for family among the splendor of Italy.
MEMOIR
Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind
Barbara Becker, MA Media Studies ’00
When her earliest childhood friend is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Barbara Becker sets off on a quest to immerse herself in what it means to be mortal. Can we live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die? With a keen eye towards that which makes life worth living, Becker recounts stories where life and death intersect in unexpected ways. With life-affirming prose, Becker helps readers see that grief is not a problem to be solved but rather a sacred invitation to an opportunity to let go into something even greater—a love that will inform all the days of our lives.
Negative Space
Lilly Dancyger, BA Literary Studies ’11
Despite her parents’ struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? Dancyger’s father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene, and she idolized him–despite the escalating heroin addiction that sometimes overshadowed his creative passion. Using his sculptures, paintings, and prints as a guide, Dancyger sought out the characters from his world who could help her decode the language of her father’s work to find the truth of who he really was.
Girlhood
Melissa Febos, BA Liberal Arts: Writing, The Arts ’03
When her body began to change at eleven years old, Melissa Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on the perceptions of others. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.
NONFICTION
Strive from Within: The Jazzmeia Horn Approach
Jazzmeia Horn, BFA Jazz and Contemporary Music ’14
Multi-award winning jazz artist Jazzmeia Horn shares her experiences of composing and arranging her latest album, Love and Liberation, in her new book Strive From Within: The Jazzmeia Horn Approach. Focusing on Horn’s knowledge on using her voice as an artist and a woman in the male dominated jazz industry, the book teaches singers how to serve jazz music along with the many roles of a good vocalist. Balancing jazz’s rich history in the African American experience and the spirituality of its essence, Horn shares with students her self-taught expression which brings about liberation, healing, and self-love.
Holding Back the River: The Struggle Against Nature on America’s Waterways
Tyler Kelley, BA Liberal Arts: Literature ’07
America’s great rivers are the very lifeblood of the country, needed for nourishing crops, cheap bulk transportation, hydroelectric power, and fresh drinking water. But as infrastructure across the nation fails and climate change pushes rivers and seas to new heights, it’s now a critical moment in the battle to tame these often-destructive forces of nature. After spending two years getting to know the men and women whose lives and livelihoods rely on these rivers, Tyler Kelley delivers the meticulously researched Holding Back the River, which brings us into the lives of the Americans who grapple with our mighty rivers and, through their stories, suggests solutions to some of the century’s greatest challenges.
An Ordinary Age: Finding Your Way in a World That Expects Exceptional
Rainesford Alexandra Stauffer, BA Liberal Arts ’17
In conversation with young adults and experts alike, journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant pursuit of a “best life” has put extraordinary pressure on young adults today, across their personal and professional lives—and how ordinary, meaningful experiences may instead be the foundation of a fulfilled and contented life.
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy
Ray Acheson, MA Politics ’14
With so much at stake, from climate change and reproductive rights to threats from weapons of mass destruction and police brutality, the last decade has seen ordinary people take to the streets to challenge and change the way our governments and institutions legislate our future. Ray Acheson’s book offers a look inside the antinuclear movement, the journey of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons coalition—from scrappy, grassroots organizing to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and achieving a landmark UN treaty banning nuclear weapons—and developments in feminist disarmament activism.
Everyday Violence against Black and Latinx LGBT Communities
Siobhan Brooks, MA Sociology ’01; PhD Sociology ’08
In Everyday Violence against Black and Latinx LGBT Communities, Siobhan Brooks argues that hate crimes and violence against Black and Latinx LGBT people are the products of institutions and ideologies that exist both outside and inside of Black and Latinx communities. Brooks analyzes families, educational systems, healthcare industries, and religious spaces as institutions that can perpetuate and transform the political and cultural beliefs and attitudes that engender violence toward LGBT, Black, and Latinx people.
Bargaining with the Machine: Technology, Surveillance, and the Social Contract
Robert M. Pallitto, PhD Politics ’02
Cell phone apps share location information; software companies store user data in the cloud; biometric scanners read fingerprints; employees of some businesses have microchips implanted in their hands. In each of these instances we trade a share of privacy or an aspect of identity for greater convenience or improved security. In Bargaining with the Machine, Pallitto asks whether we are truly making such bargains freely and whether, in fact, such a transaction can be conducted freely in our ever more technologically sophisticated world.
POETRY
July
Kathleen Ossip, MFA Creative Writing ’98
In her groundbreaking and most politicized collection, Kathleen Ossip takes a hard look at the U.S.A. as it now stands. She meditates on our various responses to our country—whether ironic, infantile, righteous, or defeated. Inspired by images that flick across car windows during a road trip from Bemidji, MN, to Key West, FL, there are poems based on bumper stickers, the names of churches, little shops. Traveling tests her beliefs, and Ossip fully discloses her doubts and confusions throughout July.
Ghost Face
Greg Santos, MFA Creative Writing ’09
In Ghost Face, Greg Santos explores what it means to have been a Cambodian infant adopted at birth by a Canadian family. Through a uniquely playful and self-reflective series of poems that pay moving homage to his adoptive parents and explore the fantasies of a lost family and life in Cambodia, Santos leads the reader through his visceral process of unlearning and relearning who he is and who he might become.
Ghost Hour
Laura Cronk, MFA Creative Writing ’05
Sometimes compact, sometimes expansive, the poems in Ghost Hour examine girlhood and contemporary womanhood, and the ways both are fraught with the pleasures and limits of representation.
ART AND DESIGN
Out of the Shadows: The Henson Festivals and Their Impact on Contemporary Puppet Theater
Leslee Asch, Nonprofit Management ’05
Dedicated it to the spirit and genius of two giants of puppeteering, Jim Henson and Joe Papp, Out of the Shadows explores the Henson festivals’ role in building and growing the field of contemporary puppet theater for adults in the United States and raising awareness about puppetry as a serious art form.
We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World
Jasmin Hernandez, BBA Strategic Design and Management ’02
We Are Here presents the bold and nuanced work of Black and Brown visionaries transforming the art world. Curated by Jasmin Hernandez, the founder of Gallery Gurls, this collection features fifty of the most influential voices in New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. Striking photography of art, creative spaces, materials, and the subjects themselves is paired with intimate interviews that engage with each artist and influencer, delving into their creative process and unpacking how each subject actively works to create a more radically inclusive world across the entire art ecosystem.
Yes No Thank You Goodbye
Sam Klegerman, BFA Photography ’20
Over the past five years, Los Angeles based photographer Sam Klegerman navigated the eerie world of grief while caring for his mother with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Conveying this disconnection, Klegerman’s photographic series Yes No Thank You Goodbye exists as a window into the quiet world of separation and lost time. Working collaboratively with his parents to document the effects of his mother’s battle, Klegerman gives a sentimental approach into the world of coexisting with lost shadows.
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
Kitty Sweet Tooth
Abigail Denson, BA Liberal Arts and BFA Illustration ’99
Featuring colorful text from author Abby Denson, and bright, cheerful illustrations by Utomaru, this adorable graphic novel follows Kitty Sweet Tooth, who runs a movie theater that serves up magical (and unpredictable) desserts. Kitty and her friends transform a ramshackle theater into the Taste-O-Rama, a combination movie house restaurant. But when you have a mad scientist and a witch working in the kitchen, recipes can go awry. On opening night, the theater is flooded with magical jelly that grows out of control. How can Kitty Sweet Tooth and her friends save the day?
Taking Up Space
Alyson Gerber, MFA Creative Writing ’12
Sarah loves basketball more than anything. Crushing it on the court makes her feel like she matters. And it’s the only thing that helps her ignore how much it hurts when her mom forgets to feed her. But lately Sarah can’t even play basketball right. She’s slower now and missing shots she should be able to make. Her body doesn’t feel like it’s her own anymore. She’s worried that changing herself back to how she used to be is the only way she can take control over what’s happening. When Sarah’s crush asks her to be partners in a cooking competition, she feels pulled in a million directions. She’ll have to dig deep to stand up for what she needs at home, be honest with her best friends, and accept that she doesn’t need to change to feel good about herself.
Secret Spy Society: Case of the Missing Cheetah
Veronica Mang, BFA Illustration ’19
The first book in an illustrated new chapter book series, Secret Spy Society follows three delightfully mischievous young girls and some of the most enigmatic women in history who worked as spies. Debut author-illustrator Veronica Mang has created a playful pastiche full of masters of disguise, martial artists, codebreakers, and introduces young readers to some of the most enigmatic and unforgettable women in history.