Review_NONFICTION
WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 49This black-and-white photo of a bar in Mississippi is one of
several in Jessica Lange’s Highway 61 (reviewed on p. 53).What We Carry: A Memoir
Maya Shanbhag Lang. Dial, $27 (288p)
ISBN 978-0-525-51239-4
Lang (The Sixteenth of June) delivers a
stirring memoir exploring the fraught
relationships between mothers and
daughters. Born to Indian immigrants,
Lang grew up in New York City in the
1980s and ’90s with a stern physician
mother and a father who accused her of
exaggerating injuries for attention.
After her parents divorced, Lang had
little contact with her father and lived
with her sometimes-distant, fiercely
independent mother. After the author’s
daughter Zoe was born, Lang suffered
from a crippling postpartum depression;
she asked her mother for help, but her
mother refused: “My body cannot handle
travel anymore.... If I tried to come to
you right now I would die on the plane.
And would that make you feel any better?
No.” Years later, when Lang’s daughter
was in grade school, her mother was
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease—
and it was Lang who stepped in to take
care of the mother who had refused to
care for her. Lang details the difficulties
of parental caregiving—making sure her
mother eats, dealing with her intense
mood swings and memory loss—and
examines her own complex emotions as
her mother undergoes treatment (“When
she was thorny and awful, I was sympa-
thetic. Now that she’s thriving, I feel
hostile”). Lang’s astutely written and
intense memoir will strike a chord with
readers dealing with a parent’s dementia.
(Apr.)
I’ve Been Wrong Before: Essays
Evan James. Atria, $17 trade paper (256p)
ISBN 978-1-5011-9964-6
Novelist James (Cheer Up, Mr.
Widdicombe) takes the reader along on a
globetrotting coming-of-age as a young gay
writer around the turn of the millennium
in this promising debut collection. Its
selections jump around in chronology from
James’s experiences of sexual awakening,
at age 10 (incongruously, during hip hop
duo Kid ’n Play’s 1992 movie Class Act),
to his more mature musings about
meeting his partner while working at
New York City’s Strand Bookstore. Along
the way, James travels the world, from
New Zealand (where he turns 30 and
visits short story writer Katherine
Mansfield’s birthplace) to Cambodia
(where he has a near-romantic connection
with an Iraqi tourist) to a bathhouse in
Montreal, using these experiences to try
to better understand himself as both a
writer and a gay man. James writes with
clarity and humor, but at times his sen-
tences clunk—“I wonder as I watch
Vincent Price play the role of pathologist
Dr. Warren Chapin... whether I could
ever have a side career as a screen vil-
lain”—and at others his navel-gazing
threatens to overwhelm his storytelling.
But aside from these speed bumps, most
readers should find James’s account of
his journey into adulthood a smooth and
enjoyable ride. (Mar.)★ This Brilliant Darkness:
A Book of Strangers
Jeff Sharlet. Norton, $30 (320p) ISBN 978-1-
324-00320-5
Lives lived in shadows and corners are
lit up in these offbeat photo-journalisticessays. Journalist and
Dartmouth writing professor
Sharlet (The Family) roams
several continents, snapping
smartphone photos he posts on
Instagram and talking to
people: night-shift workers at a
Dunkin Donuts in Vermont; a
far-right gun fanatic in
Schenectady, N.Y.; a Ugandan
clergyman who’s terrified of a
witch’s curse; brother-sister
street-junkies in Dublin,
Ireland. Most of the pieces are
short, evanescent essays, but
Sharlet includes longer pieces,
such as a profile of a homeless
African immigrant on L.A.’s
Skid Row who was shot to
death, unarmed, by police, and
a sketch of a mentally fragile
New England woman strug-
gling to control her life, her
only friend a potted plant
named Bandit. Sharlet’s
haunting photos accompany
clipped, pointilist, but expres-
sive prose that evokes character
and tragedy: a New Hampshire
arsonist “told the police (there
were things he wanted them to know)
that he used the flag to burn the church,
that he tried to burn the children, that he
did what he did—and, if they let him go,
would do more—because he was angry
with God.” The result is a triumph of
visual and written storytelling, both
evocative and moving. (Feb.)The Affirmative Action Puzzle:
A Living History from
Reconstruction to Today
Melvin I. Urofsky. Pantheon, $35 (592p)
ISBN 978-1-1018-7087-7
Urofsky (Dissent and the Supreme Court),
a professor emeritus of history at VCU,
examines the political, social, legal, and
economic ramifications of affirmative
action in this perceptive and deeply
researched study. Starting with JFK’s
1961 executive order requiring govern-
ment contractors to “take affirmative
action” to ensure equal employment
opportunities regardless of “race, color,
creed, or national origin,” Urofsky
charts the evolution of the policy from a
“soft” program designed to achieveNonfiction