Word’s pick: “Difficult Women” by Roxane Gay
In her new collection of short stories, Roxane Gay creates intimate, insightful portraits of women with messy inner lives. Some of the stories are hard to read, but Gay makes the characters easy to empathize with, and she shines a light on the persistence of ordinary life through and after trauma. Also: great sex writing.
— Camille Drummond, Word [126 Franklin St. at Milton Street in Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096, www.wordbrooklyn.com].
Greenlight Bookstore’s pick: “Medical Apartheid” by Harriet A. Washington
In this must-read scholarly text, Harriet A. Washington vividly captures the medical experimentation performed on Black Americans from colonial times to the present, uncovering secrets that have been kept from all of us. While painful to read, the book sheds light on how the medical world has advanced medical knowledge and procedures at the expense of Black bodies, for the benefit of all Americans. I challenge you to face the harsh realities captured in this work.
— Steven Rice, Greenlight Bookstore [686 Fulton St. between S. Elliott Place and S. Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246–0200,
Community Bookstore’s pick: “A Million Windows,” by Gerald Murnane
In “A Million Windows,” Australian meta-fictionist Gerald Murnane continues his sustained assault on the concept of “fiction.” Murnane — or his narrator — imagines a house of a million windows, and behind each window an author, and behind each author a different text. Or are they all Murnane himself? What follows is a sly, often funny investigation into the various styles of narrative production — point of view, free indirect voice, and plot — that have made up Murnane’s “fictions” for the last 40 years.
— Hal Hlavinka, Community Bookstore [43 Seventh Ave. between Carroll Street and Garfield Place in Park Slope, (718) 783–3075, www.communitybookstore.net].
