Alumni Books

NONFICTION , , Iraq, Afghanistan, Syr- fellow citizens to solve local problems. ia, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Honduras. In a concluding chapter, Barton Peace Works: America’s Unifying Role Along with personal stories of working recommends three specific changes to in a Turbulent World with the people of these countries, he America’s approach to : Rick Barton (Questrom’83) has concrete suggestions for learning tolerate greater risk so that good ideas Rowman & Littlefield from US successes and failures in each. will cease to be stymied by overblown VER THE PAST 25 YEARS, THE He argues that US assistance is most legal and security concerns; name a O United States has lost thousands valuable when it capitalizes on the single point person to lead US efforts of lives and spent billions of ingenuity of local people and when it in each crisis country; and insist on dollars to bring peace to is catalytic—arriving early congressional approval for overseas conflict zones around the to jump-start promising actions, which will improve public world—with limited suc- changes. “America should debate at home and increase US cred- cess. As a leader at the US think of itself as a venture ibility abroad. Agency for International capitalist, not a pension The public knows America’s current Development (USAID), an manager,” he writes. approach is failing, Barton writes; ambassador to the United When Barton led USAID’s leaders should respond not by with- Nations, and an assistant 1994 efforts to bolster Haiti’s drawing from the global scene to focus secretary of state, Barton young democracy, for exam- on “America First,” but instead, by has worked in numerous ple, his office provided seed seizing the opportunity to make serious global hot spots and be- funding for small, com- reform.–CORINNE STEINBRENNER lieves he’s learned lessons munity-led projects through- that can improve America’s peacebuild- out the country. The Haitians they POETRY ing efforts. funded not only built new bridges, Barton’s book offers summaries of schools, and water systems for their A Distant Center recent US involvement in a range of towns but also gained valuable demo- Ha Jin (GRS’94) troubled countries, including Bosnia, cratic experience collaborating with Copper Canyon Press EST KNOWN AS AN AWARD- B winning novelist, Jin is also an accomplished poet. In this slender but elegant collection, the author of Waiting, War Trash, and Nanjing Requiem returns to many of the themes that have preoccupied his fiction for more than two decades: exile and displacement, China’s fraught political history, and the importance of hard work and perseverance. Many of the poems are addressed to “you” and feel like dispatches from a world-weary traveler, offering the kind of philosophical advice one might ex- pect from a grandparent. In one poem, “A Center,” the speaker urges the reader: “You must hold your quiet center, where you do what only you can do. If others call you a maniac or a fool, just let them wag their tongues.”

Elsewhere, the writer seems to be addressing himself. “The Lost Moon” concludes with these lines: “I have landed in a place my ancestors never heard of— I need to grow a new backbone.” The strongest, most deeply felt po- ems are those that address exile. It’s a subject Jin, director of the BU Creative

56 BOSTONIA Fall 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY ADAM MCCAULEY Book Briefs

From Teen Secrets to a Defense of Howard Zinn

Four classmates are ecstatic when they by its exploration of the realm between succeed in befriending their favorite two languages and two cultures, the young adult novelist after a book sign- America of Doan’s birth and the Vietnam ing in ALL OF THIS IS TRUE (HarperTeen, of his ancestors. 2018) by Lygia Day Peñaflor (Whee- lock’95). But their starstruck bliss sours Media critic and Northeastern University when their lives become thinly veiled professor Dan Kennedy (MET’84) has pro- fodder for her next novel, and their duced a timely book in THE RETURN OF THE dark truths and secrets are cast out MOGULS: HOW JEFF BEZOS AND JOHN HENRY for all to read. Now, one of the friends ARE REMAKING NEWSPAPERS FOR THE TWEN- is in a coma, beaten for a secret re- TY-FIRST CENTURY (ForeEdge, 2018). Using vealed in the book. The suspenseful the Washington Post (owned by Amazon novel is smartly told from fractured CEO Jeff Bezos), the Globe (owned viewpoints—through interviews, di- by John Henry, who also owns the Boston ary musings, and even portions of the Red Sox), and the Orange County Reg- book within the book—that slowly unravel the events leading to a ister (formerly owned by entrepreneur Aaron Kushner) as case disastrous outcome. studies, Kennedy explores how entrepreneurs have attempted to plumb their unique backgrounds to revitalize newspapers in an In ZINNOPHOBIA: THE BATTLE OVER HISTORY IN EDUCATION, POLITICS, increasingly digital landscape. Kennedy espouses the importance AND SCHOLARSHIP (Zero Books, 2018), David Detmer (CAS’80) has of newspapers, and frames these “wealthy, civic-minded” own- crafted something of an homage to his former professor, the po- ers as the industry’s saving graces; but it’s clear they still have larizing BU historian Howard Zinn. Zinn, who died in 2010, taught much work to do. in the College of Arts & Sciences political science department for 24 years. Detmer, a professor of philosophy at Purdue University With her debut young adult novel, DEAR RACHEL MADDOW (Feiwel Northwest, bills the book as an extended defense of Zinn’s teach- and Friends, 2018), Adrienne Kisner (STH’03,’11) has remade Bev- ings and controversial A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES erly Cleary’s Newbery Medal–winning Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983) (1980). Detmer’s engaging critical conversation is welcome in for Generation Z. Instead of letters sent to a beloved writer, Kis- today’s politically fraught climate, and is of interest to both fans ner builds her story with emails typed out to the protagonist’s and critics of Zinn’s work. favorite television personality. The short chapters move quickly as 16-year-old Brynn Harper documents her high school experi- In his debut poetry collection, Duy Doan (GRS’11) roams through ence—and a student government race disrupted by attacks on memories of childhood and adulthood, siblings, cousins, and the press, voter suppression, and shady donations—one email lovers, and even captures the exquisite joy of watching FC Bar- at a time. Kisner explores tried-and-true YA themes of dating, celona elevate soccer to an art form. WE PLAY A GAME (2018), family conflict, and stress against the backdrop of the modern which was published by Yale University Press after Doan won political divide in a Pennsylvania steel town.–MARC CHALUFOUR, the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, is also marked MARA SASSOON, ANDREW THURSTON

Writing Program, knows well. Born in captures both the physical and psy- “As long as you stay put year after year, Liaoning, China, he was studying for chological dislocation that comes with eventually you will find a world beginning to revolve around you.” his doctoral degree at Brandeis Univer- uprooting one’s life: A Distant Center sity when student-led pro- “You can’t go home anymore is Jin’s fourth kONLINE: tests calling for democratic and will drift on the wind of chance— collection of poems and his first writ- Read three reforms swept through Bei- wherever you land ten in Chinese and then you will be an outsider.” of Ha Jin’s jing’s Tiananmen Square. rewritten in English, rather new poems The protests were met with Despite references to than composed in English. at bu.edu/ a violent military response suffering and loss, many Despite the translation, they bostonia. that resulted in an estimat- of the poems are infused still capture a voice that is ed 10,000 deaths. Following with a stoic optimism. by turns philosophical, com- the massacre, Jin decided to immigrate In “A Center,” one of the passionate, and generous— to the United States. final poems in the collec- a perfect counterpoint to In one of the new collection’s most tion, Jin concludes with a these noisy, often deafening powerful poems, “Acceptance,” he promise: times.–JOHN O’ROURKE

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTIAN DELLAVEDOVA Fall 2018 BOSTONIA 57