Category: Focus
LATEST IN THIS CATEGORY
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick
International adoption from China arose amid policy-driven abandonment, later fostering trafficking incentives and coerced family separations.
When Your Body Isn’t Yours
This essay examines how policy, culture, and power quietly claim women’s bodies worldwide.
Three Poems by Gary Soto
Three poems explore cultural identity, family conflict, and the influence of media on class, belonging, and cross-cultural understanding.
When Artificial Intelligence Talks but Can’t Touch: Marjorie Prime
As anxieties about AI and mental health mount, a new Broadway drama confronts grief digitally today.
Pushback: Mary Fissell looks back at 2500 years of abortion history
A sweeping new history examines how societies across millennia have regulated, resisted, and reshaped access to abortion.
The End of Days by Bernard MacLaverty
In war-torn Vienna, 1918, artist Egon Schiele faces love, loss, and mortality as the Spanish flu devastates his family.
Stuck By Heidi J. Larson
Heidi J. Larson explores the cultural, moral, and social roots of vaccine hesitancy before the Covid pandemic.
The Great Influenza by John Barry
John Barry’s The Great Influenza vividly recounts the 1918 pandemic’s medical, social, and political upheavals with novelistic precision.
Vaccination in Danger
Vaccine pioneer Stanley Plotkin reflects on the growing opposition to vaccination despite its proven, lifesaving impact worldwide.
Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya
Blending memoir and criticism, Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia explores depression, identity, and the perilous yet healing power of books.
The Names by Florence Knapp and Flashlight by Susan Choi
Sudden life-altering events shape human experience; The Names and Flashlight explore divergent consequences through contrasting narrative styles.
From Tigers to Otaku
Parenting in Chinese Canadian immigrant families carries both triumphs and struggles, shaping children into overachievers—or isolating, withdrawn adolescents.