Guadalupe Rosales’s memoir, Christine Sun Kim’s artist book, Fady Joudah’s ode to the people of Gaza, and Elizabeth Alexander’s essay collection are among our most anticipated titles.
Christine Sun Kim's archive of deafness in pop culture, Guadalupe Rosales's East Los Angeles memoir, Kent Monkman's pulls back the curtain on a Vermeer painting — it's choose your own adventure in art books this fall. We've got far too many novels, catalogs, essay collections, and photography books coming out over the next three months to pick from, but these 15 caught our eye. Read on for a story within a story, an artist's take on Moby-Dick from our resident Mellville fan, Associate Editor Lisa Yin Zhang, and much more. Happy reading! —Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor
East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood by Guadalupe Rosales | One World, September 8
In Guadalupe Rosales’s practice, the archive documents “what it feels like to hold something that is so meaningful.” That feeling is at the fore of her memoir, where images and other ephemera plumbed from the Los Angeles Chicana artist and educator’s personal archive are inseparable from the experiences that occasioned their capture. Rife with images of family, teenage friends, lowriders, and party flyers similar to those that appear in her portal-like, multi-media installations, this memoir stresses the importance of telling one’s own story, especially for those for whom the existing archives do not speak. —Phillip Pyle
Christine Sun Kim: Deaf Material | Primary Information, September 15
Christine Sun Kim has range — her drawing, installations, and video work are bitingly acidic, wickedly funny, and heartwrenchingly moving. With more than 600 photos of deaf imagery in mainstream culture — think memes, advertisements, disability signage, art, and more — that Kim has either taken or found, this book is not only a corrective to a lack of a comprehensive archive but also a glimpse into the mind of one of the most interesting artists working today. —Lisa Yin Zhang
Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales by Elizabeth Alexander | W. W. Norton & Company, September 15
Few books have stuck with me as poet, scholar, and Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander’s The Light of the World has. Published in 2015, three years after the sudden death of her husband, artist Ficre Ghebreyesus, the poetic memoir was pinpricked with the devastating details of grief — shared recipes, an empty chair, a found acrostic. I’ll be first in line to read Signals Across Vast Distances, a collection of essays exploring a question artists have always chased: What is our role? —Lakshmi Rivera Amin
Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza by Fady Joudah | Milkweed Editions, September 22
One heart-rending photo from Gaza. Two, three, hundreds, thousands. In many, we see starved children walking around all day with empty pots instead of toys, begging for food. There's no school. No summer camp. No warm bath. No cozy bed. No storytime before sleep. No Pokémon cards or Spider-Man outfits. No roof to sleep under. No future in sight. Just grief and rubble all around.
This moving collection of photos, poems, and essays by National Book Award finalist Fady Joudah tells their stories. Words by him and others express how the greatest chapter of Palestinian resistance and survival is now being written by the children of Gaza. —Hakim Bishara
Facts Only
Executive Summary
Several books are featured for the fall reading list, including Guadalupe Rosales’s memoir *East of the River*, Christine Sun Kim’s artist book, Fady Joudah’s *Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza*, and Elizabeth Alexander’s essay collection. The selection also includes Christine Sun Kim's archive on deafness in pop culture, Guadalupe Rosales's East Los Angeles memoir, Kent Monkman's work on a Vermeer painting, and other novels, catalogs, essays, and photography books.
The featured works explore themes related to personal archives, identity, and societal experience. Rosales’s memoir documents the feeling of holding meaningful items from her personal archive, focusing on family and community experiences in Los Angeles. Kim's book presents over 600 photos of deaf imagery in mainstream culture, offering a corrective to a lack of comprehensive archives. Joudah's collection provides visual and written testimony regarding the experience of children in Gaza. Alexander’s essays explore the role of artists by examining questions about the role of art.
The selection demonstrates an engagement with diverse narratives through memoirs, artistic archives, and essay collections addressing themes of cultural documentation, personal history, and global suffering.
Full Take
The selection highlights the tension between personal archival practice and the necessity of public record, particularly when dealing with marginalized experiences. Rosales’s work emphasizes that personal archives are crucial for capturing lived experience, contrasting with the need to document experiences for those whose stories are currently absent from mainstream archives. Kim's work directly addresses the lacuna in cultural representation by cataloging deaf imagery, positioning the compilation as a corrective archive. Joudah’s photographs and writings force confrontation with intense suffering, illustrating the reality of displacement through visceral documentation. Alexander’s inquiry into the role of the artist suggests an ongoing search for ethical positioning amid shared human conditions.
The pattern observed is a convergence around the act of making visible what has been omitted or ignored—whether it is personal memory, cultural representation, or physical trauma. This dynamic pushes toward recognizing that modes of knowing and archiving are intrinsically tied to power structures. The implication is that achieving cognitive sovereignty requires valuing narratives that challenge established archives, moving beyond singular perspectives to incorporate the multifaceted realities suggested by these disparate texts.
What frameworks are needed to account for the differential weight given to personal ephemera versus large-scale testimonial documentation? How does the act of creating an archive mitigate or exacerbate the experience of the subject when those archives are disseminated across different cultural contexts?