With 2023 just around the corner, we asked some of our COLA faculty what they most enjoyed reading in 2022. Below are their picks, which cover contemporary fiction and poetry as well as looks at long-haul trucking and Black women’s impact on pop culture. Whatever it is you like to read, we’re sure there’s a winning recommendation for you here.
Mia Carter, COLA’s associate dean of student affairs and an associate professor of English, recommends: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan and Fight Night by Miriam Toews
“I would like to recommend Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (2021), a lovely and hopeful story, set in Ireland in the mid 1980s. Keegan writes a Christmas tale that reminds the reader of the transformative power of small acts of grace. And Miriam Toews’ Fight Night (2022)—one of the first novels that I instantly wanted to re-read upon finishing. It is a laugh out loud funny and deeply moving story of three generations of strong willed women. Toews is a Canadian wonder (her novel Women Talking is an absolute masterpiece).”
Karma Chavez, chair of UT’s Department of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies, recommends: My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson
“One of the best books I read in 2022 was Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me. Newson is a writer and producer of familiar TV shows like Bel-Air, The Chi, and Narcos. My Government Means to Kill Me is his debut novel. In it, we meet Trey: black, gay, seventeen and fresh from Indiana, leaving his privileged but painful past to find his way in New York City. Set in the early days of the AIDS pandemic, Trey experiences racism and homophobia, but he also builds powerful relationships, including with historically important figures like legendary Black gay civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin, who compels Trey to become an AIDS activist. This book is so well written and engaging. Even though it’s fiction, it feels like memoir. It does incredible work for readers by teaching them about real-life figures who are crucial to queer history, and it centers stories about the AIDS pandemic that literally no one else has told. I’d recommend this book to anyone, but it is especially important for young LGBTQ+ people.”
Sarah Brayne, associate professor of sociology and director of the Texas Prison Education Initiative, recommends: Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance by Karen Levy
“I recently received a book in the mail that I really enjoyed! It’s called Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance by Karen Levy. The book is an ethnographic examination of the long-haul trucking industry, with a focus on how truckers are increasingly surveilled using new technological tools. It was fascinating to learn more about an industry I previously knew little about, especially how truckers challenge and resist new forms of surveillance tech in their daily lives.”
Elizabeth McCracken, James A. Michener Chair in Creative Writing and author of The Hero of This Book, recommends: Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman
“Bushra Rehman’s Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is a gorgeous novel about a young queer Pakistani-American woman growing up in Queens, full of music and books, jokes and sadness, longing, love. It’s one of those novels that seems to contain every emotion, and tone, and sound, much like New York City itself. Razia Mirza, the main character, is unforgettable. The whole book is.”
Christy Erving, associate professor of sociology, recommends: Buy Black by Aria Halliday
“I appreciate this book by Dr. Aria Halliday, who’s at UT Austin this year as a Harrington Fellow, because it centers Black women as an important population to understand and investigate from a social scientific perspective. More broadly, I appreciate Dr. Halliday’s work because I feel seen and understood in a unique way when reading her work that focuses on people who have been historically marginalized and whose stories often go untold.”
Sean Gurd, professor of classics and editor of Tangent, recommends: Double Trio by Nathaniel Mackey
“I think the book I read this year that resonates with me most strongly is Nathaniel Mackey’s massive poem Double Trio. It’s actually three books, packaged together in a box. Inspired by avant-garde jazz and improvised music, it reckons unsettlingly with recent history. And it has a deep, resonant beauty that stays with you long after you turn the last page.”
Thomas Palaima, Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor in the Department of Classics, recommends: 365 Days by Ronald J. Glasser
“Ronald J. Glasser, M.D. opposed the Vietnam War when he was drafted in August 1968 and assigned to the military hospital for our worst wounded in Zama, Japan. There he used his surgical skills to try to repair the hideously damaged bodies of soldiers, 6,000-8,000 per month, supplied by our body-count war. But like Walt Whitman in Civil War hospitals, Glasser connected deeply with every suffering soldier he cared. His connections ran on full voltage for over fifty years until the lights of his noble soul were switched off on August 26, 2022. His dedication to the cause of soldiers was fierce from the moment he realized in Zama that ‘the troopers they were pulling off those medevac choppers were only children themselves.’
365 Days was a National Book Award finalist. It is a non-combatant’s deeply empathetic equivalent of Rolando Hinojosa’s Korean Love Songs, E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed or Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Glasser dedicates 365 Days to Stephen Crane and, like Crane’s book, reading it will make you understand fully the sorrow and the pity and the utter senselessness of what the Vietnamese today call ‘The Resistance War Against the U.S. for National Salvation and Defense.'”
Patricia García, associate professor of instruction in the Department of English, recommends: A Ballad of Love and Glory by Reyna Grande
“Set during the US/Mexico war, A Ballad of Love and Glory by Reyna Grande illustrates how this borderland has always been a place of conflict but also a place of beauty and connections. Ximena Soledad is a Mexican Tejana woman working as a nurse for the Mexican army when she encounters John Riley (based on the historical figure), an Irish immigrant fighting for the US army who changes sides to going the Mexican army. As they fall in love during the course of the war and US invasion of Mexico, we learn the hard truths what Grande has called the ‘war the US has forgotten and that Mexico cannot forget.’ We also see the beauty of the landscapes of South Texas and Mexico, as well as the love for family and country that the characters profess.”