LETRAS

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER Most of us assume that the key to overcoming anxiety is to think our way out of it. And for a while, it works. Meditation and mental exercises offer us relief, but there is always something—a work deadline, a family emergency, a particularly distressing newsbreak—that disrupts our sense of peace and sends us right back inside the same anxious spiral we’ve been trying to climb out of. Is there a way to reduce our anxiety, not just in the moment, but in every moment after that? After a lifetime of struggling with anxiety, Martha Beck studied just about everything there was to know about how to calm down. What she realized is that the analytical part of our brain—so valued in Western culture—is the same structure responsible for amping up anxiety. In other words, we cannot logic our way to relief. In Beyond Anxiety, she reveals that to find calm, we must activate an entirely different part of our brain, one responsible for curiosity, wonder, and, most of all, creativity.

Un cajón exclusivo en el armario. La copia de una llave. Un te amo dicho a tiempo. Un mensaje agradeciendo una cena. Gestos de amor y muestras de interés que construyen los cimientos de cualquier pareja. Aunque muchas veces todo esto queda relegado por un muro que no puede atravesarse. El egoísmo, el hastío, la pereza e incluso el maltrato se entrometen en la relación y el desenlace final se vuelve inevitable, si es que antes no clausuraron la posibilidad de un verdadero comienzo. Claire Keegan observa y escribe con la sensibilidad justa para convertir la típica historia de amor en un relato tan conmovedor como atrapante, y avanza sobre zonas incómodas de la intimidad de una pareja como la falta de generosidad o incluso el desamor. Bien tarde en el día confirma la agudeza de su estilo y se vuelve un reflejo de la imposibilidad del amor en los tiempos que corren, aunque también una vía de escape.