Bookshelf

The Road to Truth

November 19, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

This summer, author and professor Soma Mei Sheng Frazier ’95 perched on a stool in front of an audience of Pomona alumni and opened her debut novel, a high-stakes road trip story published after nearly three decades of authoring shorter works. “Ready to get read to like babies at bedtime?” When she closed the book again, Frazier’s role model—Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History Samuel Yamashita—piped up to engage her in conversation about Off the Books, which, per The New York Times, “captures the relatable toggle between the private and the collective, between sinking into the anxieties of your life and grieving for the cruelties of the world.” In it, Frazier introduces us to Měi, a college dropout who begins driving private clients—including a man with a mysterious suitcase—to make ends meet. PCM spoke to Frazier about the book, the Uyghur ethnic minority group and her enduring admiration for Yamashita.

PCM: This book contains elements of mystery, drama, coming of age, Chinese American and multi-ethnic identity struggles, and the juxtaposition of East vs. West (globally but also between the two U.S. coasts). Did you set out to tackle all these issues, and how do you see them working in tandem to set the novel’s tone?

Frazier: The seed of Off the Books was a single issue: China’s treatment of the Uyghur ethnic minority group, many of whom have been “disappeared” into detention camps for such offenses as sporting the wrong beard. Their birth rates have plummeted, and children have been instructed not to speak the language their mothers sang them to sleep in.

To shine a light on that faraway situation, I set about writing the very American story of Měi Brown, a college dropout who finds herself driving a secretive private client from Oakland, California, to Syracuse, New York. As I wrote, all those themes grew from Měi’s personal growth and fraught relationships with a Caucasian dad and Chinese American mom, which became the backdrop for a quirky—and funny, I’ve been told—story about the circumstances that lead people to take big risks, and the consequences of leaving one’s home.

PCM: Several of the central characters do not fit typical molds. Lăoyé, the main character’s grandfather, is a smack-talking, weed-smoking, 86-year-old video-gamer from China. Does this reflect your own personal experiences? How do you believe it adds to the major themes of the story?

Frazier: Well, typical molds can suck it. In my personal experience, people gain freedom when we stop contorting ourselves to fit those molds. Lăoyé is actually almost everyone’s favorite character, and I believe that’s because he is a mold breaker. He’s unapologetically sincere. As children, we say what we truly think and feel because we haven’t learned how to do otherwise yet. Then, as we gain age and wisdom like Lăoyé, if we’re lucky, we return to authenticity. When we meet Měi, she’s just beginning that journey back to herself, remembering the difference between reaction and intentional, self-driven action. On top of that, transporting her sweet (and I’ll say it: sexy) client Henry Lee across the states ultimately leads her to take the wheel in other ways.

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier ’95

PCM: The story unfolds through flashbacks intertwined with the progress of Měi’s road trip through the U.S. Although disorienting at first, it nicely accorded with real life—that is, we are constantly relating the present to past events we have experienced, even without noticing it. Does that structure serve other purposes?

Frazier: We are always toggling back and forth between present and past. Through the structure, my hope is that the road trip itself gives the story momentum, while the flashbacks (interspersed with present-day action) allow the characters to sort of experience that languid mental wandering that we often do on long drives.

PCM: Why did you use pinyin (romanization of Mandarin Chinese characters) for Chinese terms, including notating them with tone marks in an English-language book?

Frazier: Měi’s Chinese is rudimentary, so she’s limited to the kind of household language that one picks up organically from an immigrant parent, like “I’m hungry.” I wanted to permit people who know Chinese, or grew up in households that spoke Chinese but do not have complete command of the language, to relate. I also wanted readers who don’t know Chinese to experience the sort of disorientation that Měi herself does when the other characters suddenly start conversing in this language she doesn’t fully understand. So that’s why I didn’t italicize the Chinese. Italicization implies a sort of separation from English. But then in real life, there’s no separation. I wanted what was on the page to mirror the experience of hearing the characters’ conversations in real life.

PCM: What do you ultimately hope that this book accomplishes?

Frazier: I hope that Off the Books will make readers laugh and remind us to be kind to one another. I also hope it will pique interest in China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, ethnic minorities and prisoners of conscience. Because, yes, they’re halfway around the world, but I think we’d be fools to think of their issues as distant. China is the U.S.’s number one trade partner, and likely to gain regional hegemony and become a superpower. Before speaking with you, I did an interview with Radio Free Asia where I learned from the Uyghur interviewer that family members of every one of her Uyghur colleagues have disappeared. Ultimately, I want people to know about this and acknowledge the ugly truths about our number one trade partner, just as I hope we do about this country. And then to decide on their own whether and how to act on that knowledge to make things better for everyone.

PCM: How did Pomona College help or inspire you to undertake this book?

Frazier: When I was preparing to head to Pomona from New Hampshire, I walked into my mom’s office, and she was writing a check. I asked, “Hey, who’s that check going to?” And she replied that she was sending my aunties some money. I inquired why. After all, they were doing well. She said, “No, not those aunties—it’s for the aunties we had to leave behind in China.” And I didn’t know about these aunties, so I went off to Pomona reflecting on that experience and about the things I didn’t know about China. Those sentiments inspired me to delve further as an Asian studies major and Asian languages and literatures minor. Furthermore, I think a lot of experiences at Pomona—particularly being in Samuel Yamashita’s class—can make a person who might not have been focused on global politics think about global politics. Dr. Yamashita also makes us relate the issues we’re thinking about to our own behavior in the world. As the saying goes, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. In classes like his, you think you’re eating candy. Just all sugar. Yet you leave medicated, fortified with information about the world.

Bookmarks

November 19, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

In The Presidents and the People, Corey Brettschneider ’95 explores how five American presidents in different eras abused their power and how citizens fought back to restore democracy.

Chanté Griffin ’00 helps readers develop a vision of anti-racism and move toward racial healing in Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself: A Guide to Closing the Space Between Us.

As an editor of American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice, Walter B. Gulick ’60 proposes a distinctly American approach to aesthetic judgment and practice through this collection of essays.

In his debut novel The Emperor and the Endless Palace, Justinian Huang ’09 crafts a genre-bending queer Asian love story that unfolds across multiple timelines.

Jade Sasser ’97 explores climate-driven reproductive anxiety, placing race and social justice at the center, in Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future

The Five Ranks of Zen: Tozan’s Path of Being, Nonbeing and Compassion is a comprehensive guide to the teachings of Zen Buddhism by American Zen teacher Gerry Shishin Wick ’62.

As president emerita of Kalamazoo College and trustee emerita of Pomona College, Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran ’69 presents a fresh perspective on higher education leadership in The New College President: How a Generation of Diverse Leaders Is Changing Higher Education.

BOOK SUBMISSIONS

If you’ve had a book published and would like to submit it for inclusion in Bookmarks, please send a review copy to or email us

Lorraine Harry, PCM Books Editor,
550 North College Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711

Hidden History

June 18, 2024 by Lorraine Wu Harry '97 Comments Off

Four years after graduating, Michael Waters ’20 has published his first book, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports. Released in June ahead of the 2024 Olympics this summer in Paris, Waters’ book tells the story of early trans athletes and the roots of sex testing of athletes in the 1930s.

In 2021, Waters’ senior history thesis at Pomona about placements of queer youth with queer foster parents in New York City in the 1970s was adapted and published in The New Yorker. Since graduating, he has contributed numerous articles to publications including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, WIRED, Vox and The New York Times.

Pomona College Magazine’s Lorraine Wu Harry ’97 talked to Waters about the book as well as his development as a historian and journalist. Answers have been edited for clarity and length.

PCM: How did Pomona train you as a student of history?

Waters: Professors in the History Department taught me the potential of discovery in the past. There are so many stories of marginalized communities out there. They are just harder to find in traditional archives. But there’s a way of doing history where you read against the grain and you look for what’s not there.

What fascinates me about queer history is finding pockets of queer community in these spaces and in these eras before we would expect them. I want to try to scramble this idea of queer history as a linear story of progress. Queer history has never been linear. There are so many surprising examples of acceptance and celebrity and community that existed before World War II, before traditional narratives of queer history, before Stonewall. My work is about finding those lost communities. Where was community, where were queer people coming together and what does that say about us today?

Often what I do is I look through newspaper archives. I like to do search terms related to gender and sexuality and filter for certain eras to see what comes up. There are often stories in those newspaper archives that haven’t bubbled to the popular consciousness today but that were a big thing at the time.

PCM: How did you conduct research for this book?

Waters: It was hard in many ways, but one really lucky thing was finding a short memoir that Zdeněk Koubek, the main Czech athlete in the book, wrote in 1936 in a Czech magazine. It was this rich, 40,000-word manuscript about his life. That solved what would have been potentially insurmountable archival problems, because a lot of his story is otherwise not well-documented.

A lot of the book pulls from different newspaper records, too. For the Olympics, I went to the International Olympic Committee archive and went through some of their 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s correspondence files. Avery Brundage, who’s a big part of the book—he’s an American IOC official—has this huge archive in Illinois, where he saved literally everything, it seems.

To make a book, especially a nonfiction book, sellable, there’s so much luck involved when it comes to sourcing. I couldn’t have done this book if it wasn’t for that source from Koubek’s life. Everything kind of came together after that.

PCM: How did you learn to write so well?

Waters: I hope that’s true. I’ve been writing magazine-type stories for a while now, which is very different from writing a book, obviously. But that muscle was helpful in this process. I started freelancing originally for Atlas Obscura, which is a website that chronicles historical oddities. I started writing for them in 2016. I emailed an editor out of the blue with an idea. That was between high school and college. I’ve been doing something along those lines in my free time ever since. It makes it easier to figure out how to tell history in a compelling way, I hope.

PCM: Were there any things that surprised you as you wrote this book?

Waters: When I first started doing this research, I was surprised how American media received the news of these athletes transitioning gender. When you read those articles from the 1930s, there’s a real sense of curiosity about them and how one could move between different categories of what we would call gender today. Certainly, there were some skeptical stories that existed, and there were others that were quite sensationalist. But even through that, there is this real sense of interest and fascination and, in many cases, acceptance. People accepted that there’s a lot we don’t understand about how gender works, how the body works. There were op-eds from doctors that would say, “This is actually quite normal.” It’s especially illuminating when, by contrast, you look at all of the transphobic coverage in newspapers today.

PCM: What impact do you hope your book will have?

Waters: When it comes to sports today, I hope that the book provides context for the anti-trans and anti-intersex policies that exist at the Olympics. The big thing for me is to show the influence of fascist ideology on these policies. Tracing that history lets us see how Nazi-aligned sports officials originally rammed these policies through. These policies were flawed from the beginning, and that tells us something about them today. We can also see alternate pathways for how sports could have included people of many different genders, if officials had just been willing to have that conversation.

I also hope that the book inspires more researchers to look into queer life in the early 20th century, because there were so many incredible stories that I came across about queer community and gender transition in this era. I hope to bring some extra attention to these stories of real people that have been lost, and then let other researchers take the mantle. I don’t want to have the final word, especially on a story as significant as Koubek’s. But that takes researchers and that takes institutions being willing to fund this research.

Three Pomona Alumni Publish Their First Novels

June 18, 2024 by Lorraine Wu Harry '97 Comments Off

Patience and persistence. A little bit of luck. And the mentorship of novelist Jonathan Lethem, the Roy Edward Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing at Pomona College. These factors helped three Pomona alumni publish their first novels last year.

Francesca Capossela ’18, David Connor ’15 and Julius Taranto ’12, along with Tyriek White PZ ’13, convened on Pomona’s campus last spring for an event organized by the English Department that featured the four first-time novelists.

Francesca Capossela ’18

Capossela’s book Trouble the Living, set in the 1990s in Northern Ireland and the 2010s in a Los Angeles suburb, follows a mother and daughter as they confront the past while navigating their relationship with each other in the present.

Capossela knew she wanted the mother in the story to be from a different place than the daughter, hence Northern Ireland as one of the settings. Many years later, the mother raises her daughter in a Southern California town with several colleges—“basically Claremont,” says Capossela.

It often feels surreal to see physical copies of her novel on bookstore shelves, Capossela says. She’s learning how to pause and celebrate the accomplishment.

David Connor ’15

To introduce Connor’s book Oh God, the Sun Goes, Brian Evenson, faculty at California Institute of the Arts, said, “The premise is simple and absurd: The sun has disappeared, and no one knows why.

“It’s the kind of work that only David could write,” Evenson added.

At Pomona, Connor majored in neuroscience and minored in computer science. He also took a fair number of creative writing classes, which he says “without hyperbole, are some of the best I’ve been in.”

With an interest in the mind, consciousness and human experience, he says, “As time went on, I discovered that language was a much more malleable way to approach those questions than the scientific method for me.”

Julius Taranto ’12

Taranto’s novel How I Won a Nobel Prize is set on a college campus: one founded by a libertarian billionaire as a safe haven for canceled scholars and located on an island off the coast of Connecticut.

When Taranto arrived at Pomona, he thought he might major in economics or philosophy. But taking a class on James Joyce made him want to “keep coming back for more.” As his interest in economics started to wane, he discovered that he loved working with the faculty in the English Department.

After graduating, Taranto attended Yale Law School and practiced law for five years.

How I Won a Nobel Prize was named one of the best books of the year by Vogue and Vox.

Orientation Book

June 18, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

If you’d like to read along with the Class of 2028 and other Sagehens arriving on campus this fall, join them in checking out this year’s Orientation Book, Afterparties, a collection of short stories by young Cambodian American writer Anthony Veasna So that was published posthumously in 2021.

Diane Nguyen ’27, the first-year class president, helped make the selection, writing in a letter to incoming Sagehens, “I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, even though I admittedly squeezed it in during finals week!”

The stories “adeptly mix lighthearted moments with significant reflections on themes such as race, sexuality, friendship and family—each narrative underlined by the historical echoes of the Khmer Rouge past,” she wrote to future students.

The book was selected by a committee led by Colleen Rosenfeld, associate professor of English, that included professors, Associate Dean of Students Josh Eisenberg and Nguyen.

The Failures of Facebook

March 13, 2024 by David Silverberg Comments Off

Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets by Jeff Horwitz ’03.

To understand exactly what has happened at Meta with its lineup of products such as Facebook and Instagram, ask Jeff Horwitz ’03. The investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal has been on the Meta beat for more than four years with the goal of revealing the inner workings—and management failures—within Facebook’s Silicon Valley walls.

Horwitz tracked how often Facebook chose growth over quality by ignoring misinformation on the site and by lack of moderation, resulting in the investigative series The Facebook Files for the WSJ in 2021. He added additional reporting for his newly released book, Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets. In it, Horwitz also looks at how Instagram managers ignored warning signs that the platform seriously damaged body image perceptions for teen girls around the world.

Journalist David Silverberg spoke to Horwitz for Pomona College Magazine to learn more about his yearslong process in investigating Meta, his view on Mark Zuckerberg’s role in the company’s missteps, and why he warns parents to be extremely careful about how their children use social media.

Headshot of Jeff Horwitz ’03

PCM: Technology reporters have been writing that those who run Facebook haven’t learned from the mistakes they made in 2016 and beyond. What’s your take on that?

Horwitz: One of the really fascinating things that came out of the book is that there was a period of time where Facebook invested really heavily in safety and in understanding its product. Then those people made recommendations on how to change the product in ways that would certainly mitigate a lot of the harms from its product, such as misinformation, the formation of massive groups like QAnon, conspiracy movements. There were approaches to fixing this that these folks developed but the problem was they came at the cost of engagement and usage of a platform. Meta and in particular Mark Zuckerberg were not willing to accept that. So the company has actually laid off a lot of the people who are doing this, partly because they aren’t interested in pursuing the work, and partly because they view these people as a fifth column inside the company that is more loyal to their sense of public good than to their sense of what is good for Meta.

The problems of 2016 and 2020 have by and large not been addressed. The ease with which any motivated entity can trick the algorithm into spewing out spam or political content hasn’t fundamentally changed.

PCM: Your book found that Zuckerberg’s role in how his company chose growth over content moderation was a stark contrast to how some other CEOs and founders run their companies. How so?

Horwitz: Everything flows from Mark, and that’s why he’s kind of an anomaly in the tech space at this point. The other big founders tend to step back or work on side hobbies such as Twitter—look at Elon Musk—and with Google and Microsoft, those founders have moved along in their lives and Mark hasn’t. And I think one of the things that’s really striking is he is often describing the open internet where anyone can write what they want but he neglects to discuss what Facebook became, which is an extremely powerful content recommendation engine that will recommend literally anything that will keep people on the platform more often.

No one understood that introducing a reshare button was going to actually produce higher levels of misinformation on the platform because the more times a thing gets shared, it turns out based on the company’s internal research, the less likely it’s going to be true and more likely it’s going to be sensationalist.

PCM: What I also found compelling about the book, and The Facebook Files, was how you established a relationship with Frances Haugen, the famous whistleblower and ex-manager from Facebook who ended up testifying to the U.S. Senate about how the company knew about the potential harm they were causing to both adults and children. What did you think about what she did for you and the investigation?

Horwitz: Frances is an extremely unusual human being in the sense that most whistleblowers burn out first and then they quit in a huff or they get laid off and then they decide they want to talk. I think it’s very unusual for someone to begin at square one and that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t do her best to bring [Facebook’s issues] to the world’s attention.

This is somebody who was breaching the confidence of their employer for a very valid purpose and I think she had a lot on the line.

PCM: Before you delved into writing about Meta, you also wrote about other businesses for The Associated Press when you worked there between 2014 and 2019. How did your stint at AP help you with your career?

Horwitz: I was hired for their Washington investigative team and Donald Trump’s candidacy sort of ate my career there. I think because I had a business focus, I was originally put onto it in 2015 as, oh, hey, here’s another flash-in-the-pan candidate. We’ve seen many of them like that. Every cycle has some sort of Herman Cain-type figure who appears briefly on the horizon and then disappears. And I think that was originally the assumption about Donald Trump’s candidacy as well. Obviously that never happened.

So it was a really interesting time in terms of the work. But at the same time—I get into this a little bit in the book—it was kind of a depressing time because it really became apparent in 2016 that the only way news could get traction was if it appealed to partisans on either side and, in particular, if it appealed to partisans on Twitter.

I think one of the ways I ended up covering Facebook for The Wall Street Journal is I wanted to figure out that if the news and information ecosystem is permanently broken, then what’s going to replace it? And maybe I should be writing about that. So that’s how I ended up covering Meta.

PCM: How would you characterize the time you spent at Pomona?

Horwitz: One of the best things that happened at Pomona College for me was I got David Foster Wallace when he was teaching creative writing.

I also got into journalism via the student newspaper, and my first ever story for them was covering Professional Bull Riders Association events in Anaheim. It’s not like bull riding is a thing that I am deeply passionate about, but to have my press seat next to ESPN’s was pretty fun.

I began to feel more like an investigative reporter when I wrote on issues at the school, such as when I broke a story about grade inflation at Pomona while I was there. In 2000, The Student Life also reported on a very nasty fight over dining hall unionization and what we saw as some of the labor-busting tactics that the school undertook. I’m grateful to Pomona for a lot of things, but one of them is it kind of turned me on to questioning institutions.

Editor’s note: Pomona’s dining hall workers have been unionized since 2013, and the most recent collective-bargaining agreement provides a minimum wage of $25 an hour for all dining and catering workers by July 1, 2024.

PCM: Lastly, what’s your social media usage like these days? I assume you’re more careful than most considering everything you know about Facebook and Instagram.

Horwitz: I like cat videos as much as the next guy, but I’ve never been a super-heavy user.

So while I don’t have kids, I will say that I have been pretty damn strenuous in telling friends that it’s a good idea to be, shall we say, conservative with how much social media children use for a whole bunch of reasons. [Editor’s note: Since the interview, Horwitz has reported on Meta’s struggle to prevent pedophiles from using Facebook and Instagram in violation of its policies against child exploitation.] An interesting part of the book was revealing how the company really did define what was good for users and whatever made them use the product more. In other words, they must like it if they’re using it more, right? Not so fast.

Books and More Books

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Several readers wrote to note that the tradition of a common book for first-year students to read together began before 2003 (“The Full Stack: 2003-2023,” Fall 2023). Among earlier selections were Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Julia Alvarez’s Yo, Gregory Williams’ Life on the Color Line, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Naguib Mahfouz’s The Palace Walk.

Ann Quinley, Pomona’s dean of students from 1992 to 2007 and an emerita professor of politics, led the first-year book selection for some time with a committee of students and faculty, often reading 20-plus books a year and planning accompanying talks.

“It was my favorite project that I looked forward to every year,” Quinley says, noting that the effort was once the victim of a prank.

“One year, a student—I don’t remember who it was and I don’t think I’d tell you if I did—managed to get hold of the list and add another book. It was one of those bodice-rippers, and then I began to get calls. Students, they are just so creative.”

As for future nominations, Elizabeth Pyle ’84 writes to suggest H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal and a classic, Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion.

Incoming first-year Sophie Park ’28 is excited to find out what her class might read. “I’d like to suggest A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace as my class’s orientation book,” she writes, calling the title essay “one of the most profound yet accessible pieces I know.” She adds: “Even if the essay collection isn’t chosen as the orientation book, ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’ is short and an incredible standalone and I would cry if I came to school with all my classmates having read it.”

Bookmarks Spring 2024

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Studio of the Voice: Essays

In Studio of the Voice: Essays by Marcia Aldrich, Marcia Aldrich ’75 serves up intense personal essays, often reflecting on her relationships with her mother and daughter.

One Day This Tree Will Fall

One Day This Tree Will Fall, a nonfiction picture book by Leslie Barnard Booth ’04, invites readers to celebrate the life cycle and afterlife of trees.

Quiet Voice, Awesome Power

Amanda Edwards ’96, in Quiet Voice, Awesome Power, guides readers in communicating with spirit, defining their spiritual path and living with power and purpose.

How Much Are These Free Books? True Tales from the Book Nook

How Much Are These Free Books? True Tales from the Book Nook by Judy Schelling Hoff ’62 reflects on Hoff’s bookstore in Schenectady, New York, through 19 years of its existence.

Learning and Teaching Creativity

In Learning and Teaching Creativity, Dan Hunter ’75 details steps to improve student and teacher creativity through imagination.

The Saplings Think of Us as Young

The poems in The Saplings Think of Us as Young by Kim Kralowec ’89 explore the intimacy of living in close relationship with extremes of beauty and distress.

Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning

Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning by Amy Lyford ’86 is a study of the artist’s life and creative output as well as the history of Surrealism.

Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny

In Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny, Jesse Spafford ’12 articulates and defends social anarchism, staking out a number of bold and original positions.

The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall

Ali Standish ’10 reimagines Arthur Conan Doyle’s early life in her boarding school mystery novel, The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall.

The Full Stack: 2003-2023

October 18, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Each year since 2003, entering students have read a book—or books—together.

With the 20th anniversary of Pomona College’s annual orientation book in the rearview mirror, the full list makes for quite a stack.

Each year since 2003, entering students have read a book—or books—together. One thing has changed: Instead of receiving the book in the mail, most students now opt for electronic access.

How many have you read? Have a pick for the entering Class of 2028 next year? Books of poetry, short stories, essays or a volume that pairs well with a work of art such as a painting or film are being considered. Send your ideas to pcm@pomona.edu.

Each year since 2003, entering students have read a book—or books—together.

Bookmarks Fall 2023

October 18, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle by Lea Aschkenas ’95

Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle

Set in rural Cuba, Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle by Lea Aschkenas ’95 tells the story of a little girl and an old man who forge a lasting friendship that expands both their worlds.

A Stone Is a Story

A Stone Is a Story by Leslie Barnard Booth ’04 follows a stone’s journey through time as it forms and transforms, providing a window into Earth’s past along the way.

Don’t Look Away: Art, Nonviolence, and Preventive Publics in Contemporary Europe

In Don’t Look Away: Art, Nonviolence, and Preventive Publics in Contemporary Europe, Brianne Cohen ’04 advocates for the role of art to foster a public commitment to end structural violence in Europe.

Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother

In Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother, Peggy O’Donnell Heffington ’09 draws on diligent research to show that history is full of women without children.

American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail

Sarah Keyes ’04 offers a reinterpretation of the Overland Trail in American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail, focusing on how the graves of migrants who died along the way were leveraged to claim the land of Indigenous peoples.

The Seeing Garden

Set in 1910 on an estate in Northern California, The Seeing Garden by Ginny Kubitz Moyer ’95 is a coming-of-age story inspired in part by the great San Francisco Peninsula estates of the past.

Capacity beyond Coercion: Regulatory Pragmatism and Compliance along the India-Nepal Border

Susan L. Ostermann ’02 demonstrates how coercively weak states can increase compliance by behaving pragmatically in Capacity beyond Coercion: Regulatory Pragmatism and Compliance along the India-Nepal Border.

Becoming a Social Science Researcher: Quest and Context

Becoming a Social Science Researcher: Quest and Context by Bruce Parrott ’66 aims to help aspiring social scientists understand the research process, focusing on the philosophical, sociological and psychological dimensions.

Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy

Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy features exchanges between professors John K. Roth ’62 and Leonard Grob that underscore the most urgent threats to democracy in the U.S. and suggest how to resist them.

Just in Time: Temporality, Aesthetic Experience, and Cognitive Neuroscience

In Just in Time: Temporality, Aesthetic Experience, and Cognitive Neuroscience, Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr, also a professor of English and neuroscience, explores how beauty exists in time, integrating neuroscientific findings with humanistic interpretation.

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