Readers, we are living in unprecedented times. Funding for the arts and education is being slashed, ICE agents infiltrate our communities, and our rights are constantly under attack. It is a dark time in America, but literature has always been a beacon of hope: Even in telling tragic stories, writers resist. We resist the impulse of complacency. We resist the idea that our stories don’t matter.
In the following fifteen books from small press, resistance is a theme, whether against capitalism, toxic family structures, being overtaken by grief, or repressive regimes. Some of these books carry a lightness, and some are tragic. Each one reminds us of why it matters to create.
Running Wild Press: Fallout by Jordan Rosenfeld
Zoe Rasmussen is the wife of a powerful energy executive, and even though she has misgivings about what her husband does for a living, she stays with him for the economic stability he provides to her and their daughter. Her friend Justine is a journalist who has suffered the terrible loss of her own daughter, and the women also bond over their feelings about climate justice. When Justine is ensnared by Project Nemesis, an all-female group of eco-terrorists, she and Zoe are exposed to a violent, high stakes world where homemade bombs and targeted kidnappings are part of the norm. As Rasmussen Energy seeks to break ground on a nuclear power plant, and the Nemesis collective ramps up, both women collide with elements of their past that haunt them. A powerful page-turner.
Hub City Press: Plum by Andy Anderegg
J and her older brother M grow up together in an abusive household, and they are bonded by the betrayal of their parents. They make plans to leave as soon as M gets his driver’s license, but nothing goes to plan, and J is left on her own. She was a child who had grown-up responsibilities like making dinner, a tween who learned to play along to fit in at school, a teenager who became an influencer with her own money, and as she enters young-adulthood, gains control over her destiny. Yet, J does not forget her brother, and works through complicated feelings about their separation. Plum is an intimate novel that speaks to generational trauma, the way children are failed by adults, and the power of a girl who dares to survive.
Autumn House Press: I Have Not Considered Consequences by Sherrie Flick
A bear holds its heart in its paws, offering it to a hiker; a bear takes vitamin D supplements that messes with its sleep; a third-grade classroom sees a bear outside their window and they, including the teacher, solemnly do not breathe a word out of their collective fear and awe; a woman admits she is, actually, something of the bear: it is her heart she is trying to give. In this collection of short, flash, and micro-fictions, the world turns on both the small pedestrian and large absurd moments, and the people—whether children or lovers or a woman who just wanted a kitten but is instead pregnant and soaking in the bathtub—are all infused with a sense of longing. Flick’s characters know they need something, but aren’t always sure what it is. A case study of the emotional impact possible in the short form.
New Door Books: The Blue Door by Janice Deal
Flo is a social worker by training who now works in an upscale grocery store in the American southwest. Her daughter, Teddy, was sentenced to a juvenile detention facility for a violent crime when they were living in northern Illinois; slowly, they are mending the rift that opened between them. Flo feels parental guilt. Teddy is distant. In the meantime, Flo’s dog has escaped her apartment, and she is on a day-long journey to find him. As she walks, she is flooded by memory of Teddy as a child, retells (and amends) the fairy-tale her own mother used to tell to her, and tries to reckon with the recent death of a dear friend who was one of the only people who supported them when Teddy was convicted. Written with emotional depth, The Blue Door is infused with empathy.
West Virginia University Press: north by north/west by Chris Campanioni
The seminal 1959 Hitchcock film North by Northwest centers on a case of mistaken identity; Campanioni’s hybrid work of the same name (with different punctuation) also focuses on identity, though Campanioni’s is not mistaken: he is seeking to understand. At the core of this hybrid non-fiction work is the concept of exile; as the son of exiles from Cuba and Poland, his very life is shaped by the impacts of the Cold War. Here is a book where discourse around Wittgenstein, selfies, and Google Maps can appear on the same page and track perfectly; here is a book that can dive into historical events, with dates and documentation, and still feel very personal. In north by north/west, Campanioni offers readers a new kind of origin story.
Tin House Books: Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh
In Foreign Fruit, Katie Goh maps her personal history alongside that of the orange. Originating in Asia, which is also Goh’s ancestral homeland, the orange fruit has a complex history of cultivation, migration, and multi-cultural significance. Goh’s deep research into the citrus that traces back to the Himalayan foothills works in tandem with her inquiry into her own Chinese and Malaysian heritage—and her own family tree is just as branched. Goh’s prose is lyrical and deft as she draws parallels from the plagues carried along the Silk Roads to the Covid pandemic, and as she links the oranges we have in supermarkets today with her own story. As a text, Foreign Fruit is smart and satisfying. As a memoir, it is breathtaking.
SFWP: After Pearl by Stephen G. Eoannou
Nicholas Bishop is a private detective living out of a hotel, and his success is deeply hampered by his alcoholism. As Nazism sweeps across Europe, and in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, anti-Semitism surfaces in Buffalo, New York. The office of one of Bishop’s associates—a Jewish attorney—is repeatedly vandalized. All the while, local nightclub singer Pearl DeGaye has gone missing, and Bishop is a suspect. He is also struggling desperately with the need to drink, and is only holding it together with the help of his assistant, Gia. Packed with made men, corrupt politicians, and philandering husbands with socialite wives, After Pearl is a throw-back noir with a literary twist. While Eoannou’s Bishop is a deeply flawed man, we root for him anyway.
Buckrider Books: Drinking the Ocean by Saad Omar Khan
Murad and Sofi are university students when they meet, and both are trying to figure out who they will be in the world. Sofi is haunted by the death of her brother, and Murad is beginning to wrestle with what Islam means to him. While Murad has romantic feelings toward Sofi, she does not reciprocate, and they take a break. Drinking the Ocean follows their stories, both before and after their split, including a chance encounter in Toronto, as their paths run both parallel and diverge, and they both must understand what it means, personally, to be Muslim in modern London and Toronto. An artfully meditative novel, Khan captures highly personal matters of faith, complex relationship dynamics, and a deep sense of longing in this beautifully written debut.
Dzanc Books: Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation by Sarah Yahm
When Louise is diagnosed with the same terminal neurological disease her mother died from, she is determined to spare her immediate family from watching a slow decline. Louise has built a life with her husband of twenty years, Leon, and has a close relationship with their daughter Lydia. In an attempt to protect them both from the pain Louise experienced as her own mother was physically ravaged by disease, she moves to a kibbutz in Israel where she has kin. Yet, instead of saving her husband and daughter, who is just a teen when Louise leaves, from the trauma of extended illness and caregiving, she creates a gaping emotional hole. This novel explores the complicated choices we make when trying to protect the people we love—and ourselves.
Betty Books: The Boat Not Taken by Joanna Choi Kalbus
Part of the land-owning gentry, the Choi family fled Korea as it was partitioned between north and south, a 1945 Cold War borderline drawn under the influence of the United States and the Soviet Union—and they had already fled once before, to China, when Korea was under Japanese occupation. Caught in the aftermaths of multiple wars, Kalbus lived in tenuous housing and refugee camps, until she and her mother made their way to Los Angeles. This memoir details both the struggles and the joys Kalbus and her mother experience in LA, and how they make their way. At times disarmingly funny, there remains the fact that as someone from what is now North Korea, even decades later, she cannot go home. With notes of unspoken violence and a chorus of resilience, The Boat Not Taken shines with Kalbus’s voice.
Regal House: Duet for One by Martha Anne Toll
When Adele Pearl—half of the renowned piano duet Pearl and Pearl—dies from cancer, her son Adam is left dealing with the loss as he watches his father—the other half of the duet—keening with the absence of both a wife and professional collaborator. As Adam works through his grief, he examines both his relationship with his mother and the romantic relationships with other women in his life, all of which are suffused with a kind of emptiness. A talented violin player in his own right, Adam starts to question how the musical ambitions of his parents impacted him. When a woman he used to care deeply for resurfaces in his life, his feelings are further complicated. A thoughtfully crafted and deftly layered novel that offers a nuanced look at encores, and at love.
Rejection Letters Press: Freelance by Kevin M. Kearney
After Simon barely graduates from his elite private school in Philadelphia, he starts driving for HYPR, a ride-sharing app. Because his most meaningful romantic relationship to date is with a cam girl, he already knows how the internet infiltrates real-life. And, already, the HYPR app seems to know too much about him. Yet, as his roommates, other drivers, and a city council-person begin agitating against HYPR’s labor practices, Simon doubles down. He takes a financial incentive and drives even more to keep up with the terms of his payout—even when it’s starting to become clear that certain passenger matches are absolutely not coincidences. A novel that grapples with the ramifications of the gig economy in late-stage capitalism and the ever-growing tension between a life lived and a life lived via a screen, Freelance is an astute cautionary tale.
Book*hug Press: Iris and the Dead by Miranda Schreiber
Somewhere in Toronto, a high school counselor has a new job, having fled her last posting in Colorado, after having left her home state of California. The counselor, Iris, takes a special interest in the speaker of this hybrid novel, who is technically an adult at eighteen, but also clearly a child in terms of power dynamics. The speaker believes she is in love, and the novel unfolds in fragments of longing, confusion, and journal entries. In addressing questions of consent and abuse, Schreiber unpacks the very complicated experiences of a young woman’s sexuality in the wake of a mental health crisis deeply exacerbated by being groomed. Iris and the Dead is uncomfortable in the way it feels so true, and perfect in the way its speaker finds her own voice.
Autofocus: Out There in the Dark by Katharine Coldiron
In this collection of braided essays that employ classic films like Apocalypse Now and The Sound of Music as a foundation, Katharine Coldiron looks at her own life with a cinematic scope. She works on a horse farm with a difficult but loveable steed named Borges, she undergoes complex dental work because of a childhood illness, she wonders what her father is not telling her about his time in Vietnam. All the while, Last Tango in Paris plays in the background, and the image of an older Marlon Brando is juxtaposed against him as a young man in A Streetcar Named Desire. Neither a memoir nor a book of film criticism, Coldiron succeeds in pulling together the moments that make our own life feel as if we are in a movie—and in this case, it’s an exceptionally interesting one.
Columbia University Press: The Red Wind Howls by Tsering Döndrup, translated by Christopher Peacock
In 1950s Tibet, Alak Drong is the reincarnate lama, and even he is not above informing on other inmates in the labor camp. Such is the culture of fear, surveillance, and violence imposed by the Chinese occupation. The novel details the horrors of the camps many Tibetans were sent to after a failed uprising in 1958, and it also shows that in the face of so much cultural, familial, and environmental destruction, life outside the camps was often not much better. The Red Wind Howls excavates a period of particular cruelty in the Mao regime—Tibetans sentenced to hard labor, ethnic Chinese experiencing famine. It is so desperate, even holy Alak Drong is fallible. Banned in China, The Red Wind Howls was long only available on the black market. Tsering Döndrup deserves to be read.
