Celebrate African American History Month with Natasha Trethewey’s Monument: Poems New and Selected

Posted on behalf of Matthew Roberts, English Librarian

The Literatures and Languages Library celebrates African American History Month with Natasha Trethewey’s retrospective volume, Monument: Poems New and Selected. The monograph, which features poems from Domestic Work (2000), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), and the Pulitzer Prize winning, Native Guard (2006), introduces readers to Trethewey’s unflinching ability to observe how the remnants of both personal and historical traumas live on in the American landscape and imagination.

Cover art for Monument

Cover art for Monument., by Natasha Trethewey. Links to Catalog record.

Location: Literatures & Languages New Books
Call Number: PS3570.R433 A6 2018

In this work, the reader will confront a complex poetic engagement with the topic of memory, as Trethewey’s poetry poignantly observes how the past and future survive contemporaneously in the present. This feature of Trethewey’s work appears explicitly throughout Native Guard, a collection that, among other things, examines the legacy of the all black Louisiana Native Guard, which protected the Union fort on Ship Island during the American Civil War. For instance, the poem “Theories of Time and Space,” informally addresses the reader, and offers some direction as to the roads that one might take while reading the collection:

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one—
by—one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion—dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp—buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry—tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph—who you were—
will be waiting when you return

This photograph of who you were will be waiting for you, waiting for you in some future time and some future place. And yet, the past always waits, waits for one to return to it. But insofar as it waits, the past is not solidified, not set in stone like a monument. In this regard, the subjects of Trethewey’s poetry—for instance slavery, miscegenation, the Civil War, or socio-economic disparity—do not capture who ‘we’ as a nation were, but rather portray who ‘we’ as a nation are. Rather than a reference to the past and a symbol of completion, Monument waits for its readers, sending them on a journey from which there is no return.

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New Arrivals – Books to Break the Ice

Posted on behalf of Karen Huck

Hope this chilly season is treating you well! Here are some books on our new arrivals shelf that you might enjoy.

1. The Winter Solder – Daniel Mason

Winter Soldier Cover art

The Winter Soldier cover. Links to Catalog record.

Location: Literatures & Languages New Books
Call Number: PS3613.A816 W56 2018

When WWI breaks out in Austria, 3rd-year medical research student, Lucius, is sent to the front to treat wounded soldiers, not knowing anything practical about how to care for them.  Under the tutelage of a young nun who has no medical training, but who has gleaned necessary procedures on the fly from Lucius’ predecessor, Lucius slowly learns the intricacies of casualty care.  Shell shock, however, a new phenomenon to this medical team, remains a mystery that the two struggle to relieve.  The ramifications of war and medicine clash in ways never imagined in this atmospheric novel that will draw you in and keep you rooting for young Lucius and his nun.

Headshot of Daniel Mason

Author Daniel Mason, Photo Credit Sara Houghteling

You don’t have to take our word for it. Here are reviews in:

The Washington Post

The New York Times

Publisher’s Weekly

2. America for Beginners by Leah Franqui

Cover art for America for Beginners

America For Beginners cover. Links to Library Catalog entry.

Location: Literatures & Languages New Books
Call Number: PS3606.R422578 A78 2018

Planning a reconciliatory trip to America to see her son, Pival Sengupta, a newly widowed Bengali from Kolkata embarks on her first foray into the world against the unwanted advice from her servants. Her journey is guided by a Bangladeshi twenty year old and an American “companion” who take her to sights she has only heard of and ultimately to the home of her son’s lover, Jake. All parties learn about the intricacies of human interaction and relating in ways none of them would have imagined. A darkly humorous story of love. You will not be disappointed.

Photo of author Leah Franqui

Photo by Priyam Dhar.

Read more reviews here:

USA Today

Broad Street Review

The Washington Times

3. Stella: A Play for Lovers by Goethe

Cover art for Stella

Stella, a Play for Lovers cover. Links to Catalog record.

Location: Literatures & Languages New Books
Call Number: PT2026 .S813 2018

A shocking new translation of a love triangle in 1776, the year The United States of America was born! When a young woman and her mother travel to escape from poverty and enter the service of a young woman who’s been left by her husband three years prior, the three bond quickly over lost love stories and the plight of women in that age. The story remains suspenseful throughout, and the denouement surprises with all of the force no doubt originally intended.

More reviews:

Medium

Rochester

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Literatures and Languages Library to Participate in Ithaka SR

This academic year the Literatures and Languages Library (LLL) will participate in a joint Ithaka S+R and Modern Languages Association project to gather data on how local faculty carry out their research. Over the course of the year, Paula Carns, Head of LLL, and Matt Roberts, Librarian for English, will work closely with UIUC faculty to learn about their research habits and in response will create services to better meet their needs.

More on the project can be found here: http://www.sr.ithaka.org/blog/announcing-a-new-project-on-language-and-literature/

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RBdigital

The University Library subscribes to RBdigital, eAudio books from Recorded Books, which allows unlimited simultaneous users for each title. I tried the app out for the past few weeks, and I enjoyed using it. There are 5714 eAudio books from which a user can browse from, and the selections are pretty good, with many genres to chose from. I was lucky to find the newest Expanse novel on there, Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey. You can download the app on both Apple and Android phones/devices and on Amazon Kindle. Having the app at your fingertips on your phone is a really easy way to have access to audio books, and that it can be on both Apple and Android phones was a huge plus for me. At the time that I was trying the application out I was in between those two phones and using a tablet. The only big downside to this app was that the devices never synced together; I usually only got so far in one device by the time I moved on to the next, and the places where I left out where not automatically saved. I had to put a bookmark to save my place, which logically makes sense but I was expecting the application to just do that without any interference from me (sort of like Netflix or Hulu).
The layout of the platform is bordered by red with a background of black, which is a nice way for the covers of the books to be really seen and noticed. While browsing, the digital bookshelves allow you to see the covers of the books, along with the title, author and availability in plain text underneath them. You can search books by keyword, title, author or narrator while doing an easy search. There’s also an advanced search option that has genre, availability, or audience as search options (there will be dropdown menus for all of them with options to select from). You get to check out the books for three weeks, and as long as no one is checking that some ebook out, you can check it out again after those three weeks are over if you need more time. 
While listening to your books, at the bottom of your screen you will have 4 selections: the playback speed, chapter list, bookmarks and sleep timer. You have playback speed options from 0.5x to 2.0x, with 0.25x increments. Clicking on the chapter list tells you how long each chapter is, and allows you to move from chapter to chapter. The bookmarks lets you view and save multiple bookmarks. The sleep timer has the options of 15, 30, 45, 60 and 90 minutes before the app stops playing. 
Overall, I had a good experience using the app, and you should give at a try too. You’ll need to create an individual account to check out books. For more information on how to use this, you can use the following resource page: http://guides.library.illinois.edu/eAudio
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Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize Win

One of the many covers of articles circulating the web, from CNN Money

A few days ago, the Pulitzer Prizes where announced, and one winner in particular surprised many people: Kendrick Lamar for his album Damn. I for one was not surprised at all because if you, like me, have listened to his amazing albums, you knew that this was coming. His lyrics in sweet tempo with his sound choices is so relevant and representative of today’s black culture that I am honestly surprised that this has not happened earlier. All of his albums have explored very similar themes, and have also recreated (at least for me) what poetry is. To Pimp A Butterfly at times reads more like a complex poetic piece exploring life than actual music, and is in his ability to create deep, and sometimes even, analytic pieces what makes Kendrick Lamar one of the best artists out there. It’s in his formidable capability to recreate the rough gang world from which he comes from and intermesh it with his feelings, contemplations, and most importantly, hope, that makes him so worthy of a Pulitzer and the public fame he is now under.

If you don’t believe me, or haven’t checked out his dope music yet, I recommend you do!

Here is where you can get To Pimp a Butterfly.
Here is where you can get Damn.
If you want to check out all that’s available by Kendrick, click here.
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The Literatures and Languages Library now has access to Oxford Bibliography in Linguistics

Oxford Bibliographies: Linguistics
Oxford Bibliographies
in Linguistics is an entirely new and unique type of reference tool that has been specially created to meet a great need among today’s students and scholars. It offers more than other bibliography initiatives on- and offline by providing expert commentary to help students and scholars find, negotiate, and assess the large amount of information readily available to them. It facilitates research in a way that other guides cannot by providing direct links to online library catalogs and other online resources. Organizing the resource around discrete subject entries will allow for quick and easy navigation that users expect when working on screen. For more information: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/obo/page/linguistics.

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The Literatures and Languages Library now has access to Oxford Bibliography in Literary and Critical Theory

  Oxford Bibliography in Literary and Critical Theory

Literary theory has become the hegemonic methodology for the study of text and is often regarded both as a sub-discipline in itself and as a critical tool through which to liberate deeper and more complex meanings from texts. It encompasses a massive range of topics, including periods, movements, themes and works that make it a dynamic field of study. It is constantly evolving as writers from different areas make connections with what might be termed mainstream literary theory and these writers, in turn, become part of the theoretical enterprise. While this presents problems for the classifier and the bibliographer, it is an example of the dynamic and constantly-developing aspects of the field that have made it such an indispensable tool in the area of reading texts, be these texts written, iconic or socio-cultural. As such, this area invites trans-disciplinary collaboration with fields as varied as literature, history, cultural studies, and philosophy making it challenging for students and scholars to stay informed about every applicable area. Given that literary theory draws from other disciplines such as linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, the social sciences and work from non-Anglophone cultures and traditions, the very scope which makes it a necessary tool for contemporary academics and intellectuals can be off-putting in terms of locating a starting point for any specific inquiry. Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory will offer clearly-signposted pathways through the different areas, and will make clear references to the other disciplines which feed in to, and are often transformed by, literary theory. For more: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/obo/page/Literary-and-Critical-Theory

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Reading Room gets a fresh coat of paint!

The Reading Room is finally getting painted. The painting will last a couple of months and hopefully will be finished by mid-October. The Literatures and Languages Library will be open during this period, though sections of the room will be off limits to patrons at various times. Here’s a peak at the painting of the ceiling. What a difference the white makes!

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