Books

July 15, 2022 • View in browser

Scenes From a Refugee Childhood

As a coming-of-age memoir during World War II, Zoe Beloff’s Reminiscences of a Refugee Childhood is a document of a generation rapidly fading from living memory. | Chelsea Haines

For a book that details a childhood turned upside down by World War II, Reminiscences of a Refugee Childhood (Booklyn, 2022) opens with an unlikely reflection on optimism and good fortune. 

Delivered in the first person in accessible prose and filled with childhood anecdotes, the book is a compilation of stories passed from mother and daughter.

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ODES & HOMAGES

A Look at the Country’s Only Touring Black Rodeo

The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo has helped validate and redefine the largely untold story of Black cowboys and cowgirls in the American West. | Lauren Moya Ford

Gabriela Hasbun’s book reveals the rodeo to be a crucial place for reclaiming a sense of history and space. The New Black West captures the cross-generational competition and camaraderie that has made the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo so vital and dynamic through the years.

Capturing the Lovers of New York’s Beaches

Erica Reade’s photos meditate on moments of romance and intimacy in public spaces. | Sarah Rose Sharp

A Photographer’s Love Letter to LA’s Koreatown

Emanuel Hahn’s photobook Koreatown Dreaming offers readers a personal look into the stories of a generation that often remains tight-lipped about their hardships to put on a brave face for the world. | Jeanha Park

DEFINING QUEER SPACES

What Defines a Queer Space? 

Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQ+ Places and Stories records how generations of queer communities have persisted and created familial oases around the world. | Isabella Segalovich

The Disappearing Queer Spaces of the Harlem Renaissance

A new project by Columbia’s Queer Students of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation explores queer histories that have been suppressed by gentrification and urban development. | Jasmine Liu

SPOTLIGHTING ARTISTS

The Lost New York of Larry Stanton

Stanton, who died of AIDS complications in 1984, left behind an engaging body of work, a moving tribute to a bygone generation of creative minds. | Francesco Dama

Laurie Parsons’s Disappearing Act

An artist book introduced by curator Bob Nickas seeks to introduce a new generation to the artist, who abandoned her art career 30 years ago to practice social work. | Louis Bury