By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Sep 1st, 2023
0 Comments
280 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “And what was I to say? Most days, these days, I didn’t feel as though I loved him. Most days I thought of him as a problem I would have to solve eventually, when I felt like making the effort.” I hesitate to review novels set in the world of academia, a […]...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jul 31st, 2023
0 Comments
913 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Names are talismans of memory too – Katrina, Camille. Perhaps this is why we name our storms.” When we think of Hurricane Katrina, we think of New Orleans. The media’s fascination with the Big Easy resonated across our screens as we watched people stranded on roofto...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jul 31st, 2023
0 Comments
357 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “I was what I was and could no more choose my family, even a family denied me, than I could choose a country that denies us all the same.” On a 19th century Virginia plantation, young Hiram Walker knows only the landscape in front of him. As the dominance of American [&hel...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jun 30th, 2023
0 Comments
298 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Viktor Frankl’s groundbreaking book, originally published in 1959, details his experience as a prisoner of war during World War II, his post-war development of a school of psychother...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jun 30th, 2023
0 Comments
300 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Among many enumerated rights that the government cannot abridge, the right to vote remained conspicuously absent and remains so to this day.” In Lichtman’s book centered on the history of voting rights in America, the most surprising revelation is the book’s premise...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jun 30th, 2023
0 Comments
300 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Amma experienced commitment to one person as imprisonment. She hadn’t left home for a life of freedom and adventure to end up chained to another’s person’s desires.” Evaristo’s novel revolves around the lives of twelve black women in Europe. In a woven narrative of pasts ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
May 31st, 2023
0 Comments
538 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Because something in him knew she’d be there. That she was waiting. Because that’s what mothers do. They wait. They stand still until their children belong to someone else.” Ocean Vuong’s memoir is equal parts harrowing and gorgeous, as evident in its title. I was drawn t...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
May 31st, 2023
0 Comments
339 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Maybe our parents’ lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins. Or maybe we are free the moment we are born.” Nina [...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
May 2nd, 2023
0 Comments
918 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.” Whitehead’s gripping novel is based on The Arthur G. Dozier School...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Mar 30th, 2023
0 Comments
613 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE Four-year-old Wavy and her little brother Donal are raising themselves on a meth compound. The sporadically present parents are emotionally neglectful and physically abusive, as Valerie struggles with addiction and mental illness and Liam resents the children’s existence t...
