Mama's Last Hug -- Frans de Waal

Staff Pick

This book is a good balance of science and storytelling. De Waal makes a sobering and passionate argument for the better understanding of animals- not as "primitive versions" of ourselves, but as living organisms that are emotional, intelligent, opportunistic and socially adept. For example, chimpanzees display jealousy over other chimps  receiving better gifts, and bonobos, our “closest social relatives,” prefer sex and grooming over fighting. If you are a pet owner, animal lover, or are genuinely interested in the non-human animal world, this is worth a read.

 

Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves By Frans de Waal Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9780393635065
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 12th, 2019

Native Country of the Heart -- Cherrie Moraga

Staff Pick

A queer Chicana poet and activist treasures the life of her ailing mother and Moraga clan matriarch, Elvira. As Moraga writes so eloquently in her prologue, “Few bemoan the memory loss of the unlettered. My mother- and her generation of MexicanAmerican women- was to disappear quietly... But when storytellers go, taking their unrecorded memory with them, we their descendants go too, I fear.” Here is the story of a woman seen and unseen, a mother who accepted her lesbian daughter, and left a legacy for the rest of us to keep alive by reading it.

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin -- Terrance Hayes

Staff Pick

Terrance Hayes is showing us how to live and love in the age of Trump, and beyond. Written during the first two hundred days of 45’s presidency, these seventy sonnets of the same title give heart, humor, gut, rage and meditation to what many of us may be feeling; they deal with the shadows of America's history with racism with meteoric metaphor: “I make you gym & crow here. As the crow/You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night/in the shadows of the gym.” (#11) Hayes has re-woken the sonnet so we can dance with it.

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Poets) By Terrance Hayes Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780143133186
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Penguin Books - June 19th, 2018

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