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book’s individual examples, the material
never coheres into a narrative and suffers
as a result. (Oct.)
★ Where the Past Begins
Amy Tan. Ecco, $28.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-
231929-6 978
In this wise and profound memoir, novelist Tan (The Joy Luck Club, etc.), now 65,
looks back on her life, illuminating the
path that led her to writing. Tan’s fans and
writers of all kinds will find her latest
work fascinating; she explores how her
writing has evolved, and how memory
sparks imagination. She also reveals how
listening to classical music helps her create
scenes during the writing process. Writers
will find a chapter of emails between Tan
and her editor Dan Halpern to be clever
and endearing, illustrating how an exceptional editor helps shape a book and shore
up a writer’s self-esteem. Tan also reveals
that it takes her years to write a novel,
with each more difficult than the last.
Woven throughout are tales from the writer’s sometimes traumatic past. Her
mother, once married to an abusive
Chinese pilot, left her husband and three
daughters in China, married Tan’s father,
had three more children, and occasionally
threatened suicide. When Tan was 15, her
father, an electrical engineer and part-time evangelical minister, died of a brain
tumor—as did her older brother six
months later. Despite hardships and sacrifices, the Tan family held fast to one
another, and the “resilience” of love is
apparent in these pages. The memoir
reveals that, for Tan, the past is ever
present, serving as a wellspring of emotion and writing inspiration. (Oct.)
A World of Three Zeros: The New
Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero
Unemployment, and Zero Net
Carbon Emissions
Muhammad Yunus, with Karl Weber. Public
Affairs, $28 (304p) ISBN 978-1-61039-757-5
Yunus (Banker to the Poor), a Noble
Prize winner and founder of the
Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank, which
pioneered microcredit, describes himself
as “fundamentally optimistic about the
future.” That optimism permeates his
argument that the capitalist system’s eco-
nomic framework, driven by personal
interest, is broken and must be redesigned
so that “both personal and collective
interests are recognized, promoted, and
celebrated.” Yunus’s preferred vehicle for
this redesigned economy is the so-called
social business, which aims not to enrich
investors but improve people’s lives and
make the world better. Yunus explains
how social businesses can help reduce
poverty, unemployment, and environ-
mental degradation. He then examines
the “megapowers” that he believes are
crucial to his vision of world transforma-
tion: young people, old people, tech-
nology, good governance, and human
rights. Along the way, he expresses his
support for fair, free global trade. The
book is packed with true-life examples,
many from Yunus’s own experiences with
Grameen Bank. Though the sparseness of
financial data in the text is a weakness,
Yunus offers sound recommendations to
distribute global wealth more equitably
through individual and systemic support
for small-scale entrepreneurship. (Oct.)
A World Without Whom: The
Essential Guide to Language in
the BuzzFeed Age
Emmy J. Favilla. Bloomsbury, $26 (400p)
ISBN 978-1-63286-757-5
This witty and informative guide to
language and contemporary usage,
written by BuzzFeed copy chief Favilla, is a
refreshingly modern antidote to the staid
style guides of times past. Proceeding
from “the fundamental fact that language
always evolves,” Favilla describes the
rationale by which she created a style
guide for her
employer that
would accom-
modate the
rapid shifts in
language and
style rampant
on the internet
(which, as she
notes, was until
recently capital-
ized) and in
social media. Her subjects are wide-
ranging and include proper forms of
address and designation in our diverse
society and the internet’s effect on the use
of punctuation (the usually absent period
in tweets becomes an indicator of aggres-
sion when used, for example). She sides
with descriptivists who believe that “lan-
guage should be defined by those who use
it” against the prescriptivists who believe
“there are rules you simply must follow”
and supports her recommendations with
wisdom gleaned from other style guides
and screen captures of email (not “e-mail”)
exchanges and web memes. Favilla’s style
is light and breezy, which only makes it
easier to absorb the serious import of her
advice. This is the rare style manual that
is as entertaining as it is instructive.
Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy
Literary Agency. (Nov.)
The Wall of Respect: Public Art
and Black Liberation in 1960s
Chicago
Abdul Alkalimat, Romi Crawford, and Rebecca
Zorach. Northwestern Univ., $35 trade paper
(346p) ISBN 978-0-8101-3593-2
In 1967, 14 artists from the
Organization of Black American Culture
(OBAC) created a mural on an abandoned
building at the intersection of 43rd Street
and Langley Avenue in Chicago’s South
Side. Known as “the Wall of Respect,”
the mural featured black pioneers in
American culture, including Muhammad
Ali, Billie Holiday, Malcolm X, and
W. E.B. DuBois, among others. Here,
OBAC founding member Abdul
Alkalimat (née Gerald Mc Worter), with
art historians Crawford and Zorach, provides a long-overdue illustrated history of
the mural, featuring essays by the editors
and rare photographs and other archival
material. “[The mural] was a great declaration of black unity based on a collective
process of self-determination,” Alkalimat
writes in the introduction. “Many of us
became a posse, a band of brothers and sisters, who shared an awakening of cultural
identity.” The authors trace the history of
the mural from its conception and planning, noting how the artists drew inspiration from the burgeoning black power
movement as well as the murals of
Mexican artist Diego Rivera and local
artist Charles White, through to its
demise in 1971 due to damage from a fire.
In the years between, the site developed
into a hot spot for local musicians, poets,
and activists, and it was the source of conflicts over community control of the
work. Combining African-American history, Chicago history, and art analysis, the
