There’s been a lot of news in the last 10 years. Cognoscenti has tried to hold space for the personal, the very human, even in maybe especially in times or events that feel too big to put into words.
Starting with In the Family’s discreetly told story of a family trauma, Wang’s films, seen together, showcase a civically minded vision that demands attention
Review Quotes âWritten in a prose which is both scholarly and profoundly compassionate, Mark Freeman recounts the journey of his motherâs dementia from a sonâs perspective, using insights gained from his years of thinking about how we come to tell the stories we live, what happens when those threads fall apart, and exploring what cultural tools are available to us to tell stories of decline and death. This book will bring fresh insights combined with a deep sense of recognition to anyone interested in questions of memory and identity, who has lived with someone with dementia, or even struggled with the gradual loss of a loved one. While the story told here is about a particular person, in a particular time and place, with a particular son, Freeman offers the reader a philosophical contemplation on the meaning of love and loss, inviting us to reflect on who we are in relation to others in our lives, and the trouble of making sense when those
11 New Books We Recommend This Week
April 22, 2021
This week’s recommended books include a local’s impressionistic rendering of Mexico City, a Chilean novel about life during the Pinochet regime, and journalistic accounts of Rwanda and the family that brought you OxyContin. There are also two essay collections (or essayistic collections), by Jenny Diski and Jo Ann Beard, along with a senator’s memoir and sparkling letters by the American poet James Merrill. Finally, a biography of the scholar Edward Said, a history of the cultural hotbed of 1970s Los Angeles and Kaitlyn Greenidge’s new novel, about a free spirit finding her way in post-Civil War New York.