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between herself and most of her classmates,
finds community with fellow undocu-
mented employees at her workplace, a cafe
in gentrifying Harlem. The repercussions
of living under the threat of arrest and
deportation are long-lasting, as poignantly
conveyed in an essay addressed to her now-
grade school-aged daughter, explaining
why she only travels by bike and largely
within a two-mile radius: “Your mother
can’t drive because when all her high school
friends were getting permits, she was an
undocumented teen with a MetroCard but
no ID.” Some of the writing can be prosaic,
but Barnes’s story is unforgettable, and
highly relevant to 2019 America. (Nov.)MiG Alley: The US Air Force in
Korea, 1950–53
Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. Osprey, $30
(320p) ISBN 978-1-4728-3608-3
In this technical military history, his-
torian Cleaver (The Frozen Chosen) aims to
bring readers past the myths to the truth
of the Korean War. Following WWII, as
sole possessors of the atomic bomb, the
U.S. believed traditional warfare was
over, so it began severely reducing
defense spending. While the Army and
Navy dealt with large cuts, a new branch
of the armed forces rose to the top: the
U.S. Air Force. When North Korean
forces invaded South Korea, the U.S.,
United Nations, and South Korea fought
North Korea and China on the ground;
American and Soviet pilots (the latter
wearing North Korean uniforms) fought
another war in the air in so-called MiG
Alley, an area of northwestern North
Korea between the Chongchon and Yulu
rivers, where U.S. pilots escorted
bombers to their targets. Exaggerated
stories abounded; the U.S. claimed a kill
ratio of 10 to one. Cleaver’s research,
which draws on declassified Soviet military
records, U.S. Air Force records, and first-
hand pilot accounts from both sides,
indicates it was closer to three to one.
In a work often heavy with technical and
aeronautical detail, Cleaver nonetheless
effectively conveys the sheer destruction
wrought by the U.S. bombing missions
on North Korea and its citizens. Still,
this account is probably mainly of
interest to students of military history.
(Nov.)parent when biographical insights are
sensitively applied.” Familial traumas (her
father’s death when she was an infant and
her mother’s struggles with mental illness)
and a disrupted childhood spent being
passed among various relatives found
reflection in poems such as “Sestina,” which
describes her realization that her mother
had been institutionalized. Travisano
follows Bishop’s career through her earliest
juvenilia; her blossoming years at Vassar
(1929–1934); her friendships with other
poets, such as Marianne Moore and
Robert Lowell; and her many travels—
most significantly, the intended two-week
stay in Brazil that stretched into 14 years,
chronicled in the major work Questions of
Travel (1965). Travisano also tracks Bishop’s
accumulating honors—a 1946
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1956 Pulitzer
Prize, and 1970 National Book Award—
and deepening renown among her peers.
Explaining how a writer who published
barely a hundred poems during her lifetime
left a lasting imprint on later generations
of poets, Travisano’s essential volume
illuminates Bishop’s life and, most valu-
ably, her work. (Nov.)Malaya: Essays on Freedom
Cinelle Barnes. Little A, $24.95 (204p)
ISBN 978-1-5420-9330-9
Barnes’s stirring follow-up to her
memoir, Monsoon Mansion, which
recounted her childhood in the Philippines,
continues her life story by sharing her life
in America while undocumented. After
arriving in the U.S. at age 16, Barnes learns
she is too old to gain citizenship through,
as planned, adoption by a family member.
While enduring this disappointment and
her subsequent depression over being
unable to attend college, she cleans houses
for $6 per hour, explaining that “cleaning
resuscitated what becoming undocumented
killed.” A few
years later, she
is still undocu-
mented, but
with help from
a skilled immi-
gration lawyer
has managed to
enter college
and, while bit-
terly aware of
the divisionsexperience from one’s self-image. Readers
“focused on building a new reality” after
trauma will be interested in Navarro’s
constructive kintsugi analogy and many
examples of healing taken from his practice.
(Nov.)A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room
Far, Far Away: My 50 Years Editing
Hollywood Hits—‘Star Wars,’
‘Carrie,’ ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’
‘Mission: Impossible,’ and More
Paul Hirsch. Chicago Review, $30 (448p)
ISBN 978-1-64160-255-6
Reading like the script of a fast-paced
movie, veteran Hollywood film editor
Hirsch’s memoir overflows with fascinating
insights and anecdotes. He starts by
describing, in loving detail, the nuts and
bolts of his craft, from sifting through daily
footage for the perfect shot, to creating
appropriate tone and pace, to finding an
actor’s best takes. Then Hirsch delves into
a treasure trove of stories, starting with
Carrie, on which his loyalty to director
Brian De Palma, and to De Palma’s
audacious use of split-screens, caused the
studio to briefly fire him—only for the
completed film to prove “my first hit.”
Hirsch goes on to describe making a last-
minute but pivotal change to the original
Star Wars—Darth Vader’s survival at the
end—at George Lucas’s behest, drawing
on a personal tragedy while editing Steel
Magnolias’ key funeral scene, and how a
comment by Tom Cruise—the star
remarked that “we still had all the entrances
and exits” in a rough cut of Mission:
Impossible—has influenced Hirsch’s
approach. Devoted cinephiles and casual
movie fans will thoroughly enjoy Hirsch’s
passionate and thoughtful career chronicle.
(Nov.)★ Love Unknown: The Life and
Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop
Thomas Travisano. Viking, $32 (432p) ISBN 978-
0-525-42881-7
Drawing on an extraordinary level of
archival access, Travisano (editor of Words in
Air: The Complete Correspondence of Elizabeth
Bishop and Robert Lowell), a professor
emeritus of English at Hartwick College,
offers a definitive biography cum literary
study of Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979). As
Travisano asserts, even “her more elusive or
enigmatic poems... seem almost trans-