Every week, our wonderful publicity team tracks the cross-platform media coverage our authors and their books receive. We’re proud to share our latest and greatest highlights below with links to where you can read more about these great titles!
Howdy, folks. Our American Music Series has had a great couple of weeks in the media! As y’all may know, last Tuesday, October 4th brought us a jamboree of new music books—Maybe We’ll Make It, Black Country Music, and I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive. We offer the biggest congratulations to our authors on their newest publications and we’re hoping they’re soaking up all the lovely media coverage they’ve been receiving as of late!
Music
First up, we’re taking a deep dive into the three American Music Series new releases and their most recent highlights—strap in, you’re in for an exciting ride!
Our books took over the airwaves of WNYC last week—Margo Price appeared on All Of It, and Francesca Royster and Lynn Melnick both appeared on The Takeaway (Royster and Melnick). Other radio/podcast appearances included Francesca Royster on Illinois Public Media’s “The 21st” and Lynn Melnick on Keen On.
Margo Price was interviewed for a feature on her and Maybe We’ll Make It at The Guardian. In the piece, Fiona Sturges calls the book, “Brutally honest” and “a vivid and poignant memoir.”
We also saw some lovely reviews for these titles last week, including:
- Black Country Music in the Los Angeles Times, by Elijah Santi Holley: “An original, timely and much-needed entry in the long-overdue national conversation on representation and accountability in the country music industry.”
- Black Country Music at Bearded Gentlemen Music, by Adam P. Newton: “Black Country Music is an astounding work of musical history and cultural reckoning…This is a must-read for anyone who enjoys country music, music writing, Black history, and Afrofuturism.”
- Maybe We’ll Make It in No Depression, by Henry Carrigan: “Price has a knack for telling stories and drawing readers into her life and experience, and Maybe We’ll Make It radiates with her bright candor; she’s not interested in hiding her heart in the shadows and covering her feelings with darkness. Price bares her soul and the jaggedness of her emotions, making Maybe We’ll Make It one of the best music memoirs so far this year.”
Jacqueline Zeisloft reviewed Maybe We’ll Make It for Chapter 16, writing, “Margo Price delivers an unflinching self-portrait of an artist striving to find her sound and make her Music City dreams come true.” Zeisloft goes on, “Artists of all creeds will find something relatable in Maybe We’ll Make It, with its raw depictions of the artist’s perennial dilemma: bridging the transcendental need to create with the very real need to survive. Beyond this, Price’s memoir offers a heart-wrenching account of her journey as a mother.”
Black Country Music was excerpted online at the Oxford American, in a passage titled, “How to Be an Outlaw: Beyoncé’s Daddy Lessons.” An interview with Francesca Royster, previously published at Chapter 16, ran again last week at the Nashville Scene as part of their special Southern Festival of Books coverage. The piece was also featured as the lead interview highlighted in the Scene’s cover story on the Fest. Introducing the interview, Maria Browning writes, “Black Country Music delves deeply into the tensions, pleasures, and contradictions that Royster, as a Black queer woman, finds in country music as a genre and a cultural signifier. The book weaves history, criticism, and memoir into an elegant narrative that challenges assumptions about what country music can be.” Royster’s book was also highlighted at the New Reads blog.
From earlier in the month, Maybe We’ll Make It was excerpted in the Oxford American (included in their Fall print issue), a passage titled “Fifty-Seven Dollars.” Maybe We’ll Make It was also the subject of a piece anticipating the book at American Songwriter, and mentioned in a write-up anticipating Price’s next tour at Pitchfork.
Excerpts from I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive saw placements in three spots last week: at Nylon (“The Bargain Store”), Alta (“Seven Bridges Road”), and Hey Alma (“How Dolly Parton Led Me Back to Judaism”). Melnick also wrote a piece published this week at Lit Hub titled, “On Phone Sex, First Writing Jobs, and Unexpected Teachers.”
On the listicle front, Melnick’s book was included in Book Riot’s “The Best New Nonfiction Books Out in October 2022.” I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive was also included in Nylon’s “October 2022’s Must-Read Book Releases,” and Maybe We’ll Make It and Black Country Music were included in Tinnitist’s “Next Week in Music | Oct. 3-9 • New Books.”
Finally—for these three great books—Margo’s book was mentioned in a piece at The Boot on the words she penned in tribute to Loretta Lynn after her passing on Tuesday, October 4th, and Margo’s performance of Lynn’s “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven” at her book launch on Tuesday was shared at Brooklyn Vegan and at Live for Live Music.
While we’re on the topic, take a break and read Hanif Abdurraqib on Loretta Lynn in the New York Times: “The best Loretta Lynn songs could convince me of anything. I could be in love and briefly believe myself lonely. I could be lonely, and, for a moment, I’d believe I’d never be alone again.”
Abdurraqib’s cited as an example in an interview on Jane Friedman’s website in response to the question, “Have any blockbuster books come out from university presses?” (Go Ahead in the Rain was mentioned alongside Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, as well as a few lightweights: A River Runs Through It, A Confederacy of Dunces, and The Hunt for Red October.)
The Atlantic published a piece featuring “Six Books That Music Lovers Should Read,” fully half of which (but whose counting?) are our books. Sophia Stewart writes of the three:
- Go Ahead in the Rain : “Even at his most introspective, Abdurraqib embraces nostalgia without succumbing to it, and honors the experience of fandom while interrogating it…With Go Ahead in the Rain, he manages to both celebrate their achievements and ‘lay them to rest.”
- I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive : “[Melnick] writes with remarkable vulnerability and candor yet ensures that the often-painful memories she relates don’t cloud her critical gaze. She moves gracefully between confessional and analytical registers, her prose both sharp and full of heart.”
- Why Solange Matters : “Phillips makes a convincing case for the singer-songwriter Solange as one of our most important and ambitious chroniclers of Black womanhood.”
Who Got the Camera? came in at #15 in Library Journal’s list of “Music and Art | Academic Best Sellers.”
Kathy Valentine, author of All I Ever Wanted, was interviewed about her book at Guitar World.
Latinx & Chicanx Studies
Undocumented Motherhood was included in a list at Texas Highways titled, “Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with 8 Books By Texas Authors.”
Apostles of Change was reviewed Perspectivas. Stephen R. Di Trolio calls the book, “A revolutionary contribution to Latinx church history in the United States,” going on, “Apostles of Change is an expertly crafted text that integrates first-hand testimony, archive, and historical sources to present this lesser-known side of Latinx activism in American history.” Hinojosa’s book was also reviewed this week at the Marginalia Review of Books. Barbara Sostaita writes, “Apostles of Change is expertly researched and written—a tribute to ‘short but fertile’ moments that bring religion to the forefront of Latinx social movements.”
Reverberations of Racial Violence was included in a review essay at H-Nationalism. Michael A. Hill writes, “When read together, and especially with James A. Sandos’s Rebellion in the Borderland: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904-1923 (1992), [Reverberations of Racial Violence and Murder and Intrigue on the Mexican Border] provide their reader with a very good understanding of the violence, chaos, and fear that engulfed much of the US-Mexico borderlands in the early twentieth century.”
Photography
The Devil’s Highway was featured in Pasatiempo ahead of an event with Myers and William deBuys in Santa Fe. Michael Abatemarco writes, “The photographs feature Myers’ compelling use of contrasting imagery to underscore the dichotomies between the West as it exists in the imagination, or through the lens of nostalgia, and the realities of the contemporary West. And it poses the question, without asking it directly: What happened to the American Dream?”
Latin American Studies
Oaxaca in Motion was recently highlighted on the New Books blog.
The First New Chronicle and Good Government was mentioned and quoted in a piece at Jacobin titled, “Cecilia Vicuña’s Paintings Are About Socialism and Freedom.”
Vital Voids was reviewed in 21: Inquires into Art, History, and the Visual. Jesper Nielsen calls it, “[A] wonderfully illustrated book,” going on, “Finegold has offered us a well-written, well-illustrated book on a topic that has received relatively little attention. . . Finegold manages to pierce a productive hole in our previous frame of understanding, allowing for a new and creative reinterpretation of a Mesoamerican cultural tradition and the underlying worldview.”
Texas
Hope and Hard Truth was excerpted in the Dallas Morning News.
Film, Media, and Popular Culture
More in wonderful new release news, Only the Names Have Been Changed was also highlighted on the New Books blog recently.
Food
Three of our titles created in partnership with local restaurants were featured in a Waterways Magazine piece titled, “What’s Cooking? Dig Into These Cookbooks from Austin Restaurants”: Fonda San Miguel, Uchi, and Thai Fresh.
Architecture
Modernity for the Masses was reviewed at caa.reviews. Erica Morawski calls the book, “[A] valuable contribution to architectural history and Latin American studies,” going on, “Focused on the intersection of spatial politics and the politics of the Argentine state through the lens of Catalan architect Antonio Bonet, León reveals the intertwined histories of modern architecture and statecraft through an analysis of mass housing…Modernity for the Masses strikes a balance between the detail of a single architect and the broader social and cultural context within which he worked, offering a clear representation of how Bonet was both a product and a creator of the architectural milieu of his time.” León’s book was also reviewed in Art Journal alongside Adrian Anagnost’s Spatial Orders, Spatial Forms. Fernando Luiz Lara writes of the two books together, “Spatial Orders, Social Forms and Modernity for the Masses are wonderful additions to our scholarly discussions, two books that help us see clearly the achievements and the shortcomings of modern art, architecture, and planning.”
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Well, that’s all for today folks. Hope y’all have a great week ahead. Happy reading until we meet again!
