Reviews of the Month: May 2026

Spotlighting four book reviews for their relevance or pure reading pleasure

Posted on May 19, 2026 in Reviews of the Month

This month’s collection of reviews starts with Racial Care: The Asian American Case in honor of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month. This Duke University Press title by James McMaster examines the intricacies of Asian American care, highlighting examples of Asian American theater, film, protest, and more in the process. Next, we acknowledge Mother’s Day with Birth Behind Bars from New York University Press. Written and researched by Rebecca M. Rodriguez Carey, this book uncovers the experiences and lasting impact of being pregnant and giving birth while in the US carceral system.

Third, we highlight Unlearning the Hush: Oral Histories of Black Female Educators in Mississippi in the Civil Rights Era by Marlee S. Bunch. Published by the University of Illinois Press, Unlearning the Hush “recounts the stories of Black women teachers and the prominent roles they played in advocating for their families, communities, and education” during school integration in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Last, we close with The Ohio State University Press’s Other Lovings: An AfroAsian American Theory of Life. Seulghee Lee connects Asian American studies and Black studies through literary texts, exploring love as an ontological concept that can “counter the impact of racial violence and offer an alternative to ‘Afropessimism’ and ‘racial melancholy.'”

---

Racial Care: The Asian American Case

McMaster, James. Duke, 2025
184p bibl index, 9781478029397 $89.00, 9781478032830 $25.95, 9781478061595

McMaster (American studies and English, George Washington Univ.) examines care from an Asian American perspective. He analyzes the intersection of Asian American historical suffering and survival, neoliberal capitalism, and white supremacy in the US with feminist, queer, and disability theories. McMaster also studies what performance artists, writers, and organizers do for each other when confronted with racism. He highlights prominent creatives, such as Kristina Wong, Jess X. Snow, Mark Aguhar, and Julia Cho, among others, and details their experiences with marginalization and overcoming crisis. McMaster also explores racial emotional labor and dehumanist care. He argues that Asian American racialized care must include the model minority myth that has racialized and neglected Asian Americans, as well as the racialized care for other racialized and colonized groups. Despite the negative effects of neoliberal capitalism, racism, and white supremacy, McMaster shows that uplifting each other and ourselves provides a path ahead and the possibility for Asian Americans to overcome racial crises.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
Reviewer: T. Chan, MIT Libraries
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Asian and Asian American Studies
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences
Choice Issue: Jun 2026

---

Birth Behind Bars: The Carceral Control of Pregnant Women in Prison

Rodriguez Carey, Rebecca M. New York University, 2025
280p bibl index, 9781479815791 $89.00, 9781479815814 $30.00, 9781479815838 $30.00

Rodriguez Carey (Emporia State Univ.) addresses problems that have rarely been realized or understood by the public. Women who are pregnant and who give birth while incarcerated literally go through hell, as this well-written and extensively researched book indicates. A few examples include giving birth while shackled hand and foot as the guards watch, having one’s baby taken away and lied to about where they are going, or being postpartum with only the minimum of care provided (e.g., engorged breasts or vaginal tears not cared for at all). The author points to how the prison system regulates and controls pregnant women and how the system serves to disrupt families after the women are discharged from prison. The complete lack of decent medical care, both pre- and postpartum, is horrendous and unforgivable in today’s world. Birth behind Bars makes it clear that the stigma of incarceration is bad enough for pregnant women and their families without the added burden of the atrocious and uncaring medical system currently in prisons. As the author points out in the afterword, as the mother of three young children, she understands what these incarcerated women are experiencing.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: S. J. Zuber-Chall, formerly, Emporia State University
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Law & Society, Women’s & Gender Studies
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Sociology
Choice Issue: Apr 2026

---

Unlearning the Hush: Oral Histories of Black Female Educators in Mississippi in the Civil Rights Era

Bunch, Marlee S. Illinois, 2025
179p bibl index, 9780252046766 $110.00, 9780252088872 $24.95, 9780252048319 $14.95

In Unlearning the Hush, Bunch, an author, educator, and scholar, explores the roles and lives of Black women teachers prior to and following school integration in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The author interviewed more than 20 teachers, students, and scholars for her research, including Lonnie Bunch and Dr. Joyce A. Ladner. She includes verbatim excerpts from oral histories accompanied by photographs of the interviewees and letters written by some to future generations of students. The text is amplified by poetry, visual art, and “historical vignettes” composed by Christopher Span. Bunch recounts the stories of Black women teachers and the prominent roles they played in advocating for their families, communities, and education. They created a pedagogy responsive to Jim Crow, which fostered the “whole child.” During the initial period of integration, they inculcated “loving as an act of Resistance” as a strategy to survive the antagonism and violence inherent to integration. Progress toward social equality required school integration, but it also meant tremendous loss. In an unequal world, the oppressed developed a separate community, one that supported its members and nurtured its children. The loss of “Black spaces,” the “culture of Black teaching,” and the role of Black teachers in the community have had lasting impacts.

Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: F. J. Hay, emeritus, Appalachian State University
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – History, Geography & Area Studies – North America
Choice Issue: May 2026

---

Other Lovings: An AfroAsian American Theory of Life

Lee, Seulghee. Ohio State, 2025
192p bibl index, 9780814215098 $69.95, 9780814282458 $32.95

Recent scholarship in comparative race studies often documents African American intellectuals’ encounters and experiences with Japan and China since the 1930s, or investigates issues of racial violence and cultural nationalism as represented and articulated in both African American and Asian American literatures. In Other Lovings, Lee (Univ. of South Carolina) makes a provocative argument by suggesting that “Asian American consciousness” is “grounded in the open field of Blackness,” and that anti-Asian violence during COVID-19 has been closely associated with the Black Lives Matter movement as a response to white supremacy. He then examines how love, as an ontological concept, may counter the impact of racial violence and offer an alternative to “Afropessimism” and “racial melancholy,” once prevalent in the discourses and communities of these two racial minorities. Engaging both historiography and critical theories such as Black Marxism, queer feminism, psychoanalysis, and affect theory, Lee not only offers innovative readings of literary texts across diverse genres and authors such as Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, David Hwang, Gayl Jones, and Adrian Tomine, but also examines popular cultural figures such as Jeremy Lin and G. Yamazawa. Ultimately, Lee seeks to build bridges and foster conversations between theorists and cultural practitioners and between Asian Americans and African Americans.

Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.
Reviewer: Y. Shu, Texas Tech University
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies
Subject: Humanities – Language & Literature – English & American
Choice Issue: Dec 2025

---

Subscribe to the Resource Round Up newsletter to receive the Review of the Week and more right in your inbox!

Related Posts