Boston College graduate Emese Parker is author of To Carry Wonder: A Memoir and Guide to Adventures in Pregnancy and Beyond, a new type of pregnancy book that aims to nurture, inspire, and equip mothers-to-be and postpartum mothers. Drawing from her own personal and clinical experiences with pregnancy, Parker authentically presents pregnancy through a curated blend of stories and evidence-based information. Topics covered include mental health and body image, nutrition and activity, health care rights and providers, relaxation and sleep, labor or Cesarean birth prep, and connecting with and feeding your baby, among many others. Parker graduated from the Connell School of Nursing with a master’s degree in 2008. She is a board-certified women’s health nurse practitioner, certified perinatal mental health specialist, and mom. Part of the proceeds from the sales of To Carry Wonder will go to International Justice Mission, a global nonprofit working to combat slavery and violence against women and children.
‘To Carry Wonder’
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Tagged Connell School of Nursing, health care, motherhood, pregnancy
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Fantastical Blackness in Genre Fictions
Rhonda Frederick, a professor of English and African and African Diaspora Studies at BC, has written a literature-based interdisciplinary study of blackness in the Americas. Evidence of Things Not Seen: Fantastical Blackness in Genre Fictions (Rutgers University Press, 2022) interprets blackness in fantasy, thriller, science fiction, mystery, erotic romance, and police procedural fictions written by African Diaspora writers. From the publisher: “The ‘fantastical’ in fantastical blackness is conceived by an unrestrained imagination because it lives, despite every attempt at annihilation; this blackness also amazes because it refuses the limits of anti-blackness. Ultimately, the imaginable possibilities in these popular genres offer strategies through which readers can ask different questions of and for blackness. When black writers center this expressive quality, they make fantastical blackness available to a broad audience that then uses its imaginable vocabularies to reshape extra-literary realities. Ultimately, popular genres’ imaginable truths offer strategies through which the made up can be made real.” Frederick is also the author of “Colón Man a Come”: Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration.
Poetry collections from BC Law student
Billie Bioku, who will graduate this month from Boston College Law School, has published two books of poetry. We Ponder: Unsettled Minds (Archway Publishing, 2023), Bioku’s debut poetry collection, is a reflection of classic poetry with abstract concepts that touches on subjects such as love, spirituality/religion, heartbreak, mental illness, and more. “I want readers to know that they are not alone in the experiences they go through, and that I hope this book helps them to become more vulnerable with themselves and others,” said Bioku. Her second collection, Untethered Grounds (Archway Publishing, 2023), focuses on elemental properties, society, self, and humanity.
How Königsberg Became Kaliningrad
German Blood, Slavic Soil (Cornell University Press, 2023), a new book by Boston College Associate Professor of History Nicole Eaton, reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, 20th-century Europe’s two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. From the publisher: Eaton “details an intricate timeline, first describing how Königsberg, a 700-year-old German port city on the Baltic Sea and lifelong home of Immanuel Kant, became infamous in the 1930s as the easternmost bastion of Hitler’s Third Reich and the launching point for the Nazis’ genocidal war in the East. She then describes how, after being destroyed by bombing and siege warfare in 1945, Königsberg became Kaliningrad, the westernmost city of Stalin’s Soviet Union. Königsberg/Kaliningrad is the only city to have been ruled by both Hitler and Stalin as their own—in both wartime occupation and as integral territory of the two regimes.”
Solidarity and lived ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury
Lessons learned from an in-depth study of and an immersive experience at St. Mary of the Angels, a small, poor, urban Catholic parish in Boston, are at the heart of a new book by Boston College alumna Susan Bigelow Reynolds. People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (Fordham University Press, 2023) weaves together archived letters, oral histories, stories, photographs, newspaper articles, and archdiocesan documents to trace how St. Mary’s parish stayed open and thrived by parishioners making solidarity an ecclesial virtue. Reynolds is an assistant professor of Catholic studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. She graduated from the School of Theology and Ministry with a M.T.S. in 2013 and from the University’s Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences with a Ph.D. in 2018. She gave a talk on her book earlier this month at Boston College, where she was honored with the STM Alumni Distinguished Service Award. Read more from BC News.
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Tagged Boston, Catholic Church, Catholicism, parish, School of Theology and Ministry
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The Half of It
Bestselling author Juliette Fay, a graduate of Boston College, has written a new novel about settling the past, rekindling lost friendships, and discovering love when it’s least expected. The Half of It (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2023) tells the story of 58-year-old Helen Spencer who has a chance to reconnect with Cal Crosby 40 years, one marriage, three children, and one grandchild after their romantic night together her senior year of high school. The Half of It is a novel filled with humor, heart, and grace. Fay is the author of several books, including Shelter Me, City of Flickering Light, and Catch Us When We Fall. In an essay for Lit Hub, she writes about focusing her novel on a protagonist who is not young, but not old.
BC grad named a local poet laureate
Boston College graduate Lynne Viti has been named poet laureate for Westwood, Massachusetts. In her role as the town’s poet laureate, Viti will encourage the reading and writing of poetry, mentor a teen poet, and write several poems for local events and holidays. She currently facilitates a poets-in-the-schools program and a poetry workshop at the Westwood Public Library, but hopes to expand those offerings. She also plans to hold community poetry slams and a poetry contest. Viti’s most recent collection of poetry, published in 2022, is titled The Walk to Cefalù. Her other poetry titles include Dancing at Lake Montebello and Baltimore Girls. Her short fiction collection is Going Too Fast. Read more here and in the Boston Globe.
Shrayer’s Immigrant Baggage
Boston College Professor Maxim D. Shrayer will read from and discuss his new literary memoir Immigrant Baggage: Morticians, Purloined Diaries, and Other Theatrics of Exile (Cherry Orchard Books, 2023) at a Boston College event on April 24. Through a combination of dispassionate reportage, gentle irony, and confessional remembrance, Shrayer writes about traversing the borders and boundaries of the three cultures that have nourished him—Russian, Jewish, and American, according to the book’s publisher. Shrayer parses a translingual literary life filled with travel, politics, and discovery—and sustained by family love and faith in art’s transcendence. Each chapter recaptures a moment of displacement and an item of the author’s immigrant baggage—material and immaterial. “Composed in the time of the pandemic, this book is a partial record of my immigrant discoveries, transgressions, and valedictions,” Shrayer said. The BC event will take place at 4 p.m. in Gasson Commons, room 112. Read more in BC News.
Jesuit Saints and Blesseds
During his recuperation from a battlefield injury, Ignatius of Loyola experienced a conversion and received inspiration from reading about Jesus Christ and the lives of saints. A new book from Jesuit Sources, Jesuit Saints and Blessed: Spiritual Profiles, may offer readers a similar sense of inspiration. Edited by Jacques Fédry, S.J., and Marc Lindeijer, S.J., with a foreword by Jesuit Superior General Arturo Sosa, S.J., and historical introductions from the late Catholic historian John W. O’Malley, S.J., the book features 70 biographies, both devotional and informational, compiled by Jesuits from around the world. Jesuit Saints and Blesseds aims to introduce this community of holy men to contemporary readers and to inspire them to be selfless in their own pursuit of a greater good. Jesuit Sources, housed in Boston College’s Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, publishes Jesuit primary sources, monographs on the Jesuits, and auxiliary literature in Jesuit Studies.
From nothing
A new book by Boston College Associate Professor of Theology Brian D. Robinette explores the doctrinal, social, and spiritual significance of a central yet insufficiently understood tenet in Christian theology: creation “from nothing.” In The Difference Nothing Makes: Creation, Christ, Contemplation (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), Robinette “offers an extended meditation on the idea of creation out of nothing as it applies not only to the problem of God but also to questions of Christology, soteriology, and ecology. His basic argument is that creatio ex nihilo is not a speculative doctrine referring to cosmic origins but rather a foundational insight into the very nature of the God-world relation, one whose implications extend throughout the full spectrum of Christian imagination and practice. In this sense it serves a grammatical role: it gives orientation and scope to all Christian speech about the God-world relation.”
