Happy 2025! I love a most-anticipated books list as much as the next person, but this month, we decided to do something different. With an inauguration looming and art shows on the horizon, we rifled through our shelves in search of old titles to reread in the new year. Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian revisits critic AX Mina’s treatise on the political power of memes, while Associate Editor Lisa Yin Zhang returns to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home in anticipation of her graphic novel coming out this May. And I’m diving back into the perplexing
short stories of Leonora Carrington; only she could concoct the tale of a hyena attending a debutante ball with a human face as its mask. Last month, we also featured a bracing conversation with historian Sarah Lewis, whose latest book is a must-read on the role of visual culture in shaping race and sight in America. “It’s largely the artists who’ve been willing to show us what others would not,” she observed. Read on for the answers to more questions about race and culture: Why don’t we talk about race in fairy tales, for one, and why isn’t slavery depicted in Dutch painting, for another? — Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Associate Editor
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This year, we’re rereading a fictional dialogue by Oscar Wilde, bell hooks’s book of art criticism, prose poetry by Etel Adnan, and more titles that won’t make it onto most industry lists. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Lisa Yin Zhang, Hakim Bishara, Hrag Vartanian, and Natalie Haddad
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SPONSORED
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ONE-ON-ONE
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“When it comes to the unspeakable facts in the history of America, it’s largely the artists who’ve been willing to show us what others would not,” the art historian said in an interview with Hyperallergic.
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Netherlandish art is remarkably coy about the whole colonial endeavor. A new book seeks to uncover those connections. | Natasha Seaman
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Characters in fairy tales “are white not by chance, but by design,” Kimberly J. Lau writes in a new book. | Tamar Boyadjian
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Despite its ambition to expand our definition of the creature to include other winged, hybrid beasts, Griffinology is hemmed in by a European framework. | Tamar Boyadjian
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For the so-called “1.5 Generation,” music allowed an escape from the binary between home and school, Vietnamese traditions and American culture. | Sigourney Schultz
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FROM THE ARCHIVE
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Electronic Landscapes takes the reader into the storied record shops and cozy home studios of Detroit’s most important musicians. | Lauren Moya Ford
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You’re currently a free subscriber to Hyperallergic. To support our independent arts journalism, please consider joining us as a member. |
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