My Good Son, a new book by Boston College alumna Yang Huang, is winner of the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize. In the novel, Huang explores both the deep power and the profound burdens of parental love through the story of Mr. Cai, a tailor in post-Tiananmen China, and his only son Feng. Like many of his generation, Mr. Cai’s most fervent desire is for his son to succeed. He manages to get Feng to pass his entrance exams, and turns to an American customer, Jude, to sponsor his studies in the States. This scheme, hatched between the older Chinese man and a handsome gay American ex-pat, exposes readers to the parallels and differences of American and Chinese cultures—father-son relationships, familial expectations, sexuality, social mobility, and privilege. Huang grew up in China’s Jiangsu province and participated in the 1989 student uprisings. She graduated with an M.A. in English from Boston College. Her other works include in My Old Faithful (winner of the Juniper Prize for fiction) and Living Treasures (winner of the Nautilus Book Award silver medal in fiction). Learn more in this Q&A with the author (scroll down).
Father and son
Catherine the Great, a Dutch Golden Age masterpiece, and a shipwreck
In 1771, a merchant ship out of Amsterdam, Vrouw Maria, crashed off the stormy Finnish coast, taking her historic cargo to the depths of the Baltic Sea. The vessel was delivering a dozen Dutch masterpiece paintings—including The Nursery by Rembrandt’s student Gerrit Dou—to Catherine the Great. The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure (Simon & Schuster | Pegasus Books, 2020), a new book by Boston College scholar Gerald Easter and travel writer Mara Vorhees, combines art, history, and maritime mystery into a gripping tale of the loss and recovery of Vrouw Maria. Easter is a professor of political science who teaches and writes about Russian/East European politics and history. The book was highlighted by Smithsonian magazine. An excerpt was published by the Daily Beast.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged art, nonfiction, Political Science department, Russia
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Christianity’s earliest mystic
In the new book Paul: Christianity’s Premier Apostolic Mystic (Cascade Books, 2021), Boston College Professor Emeritus of Theology Harvey Egan, S.J., a renowned scholar of Christian mysticism, writes about Saint Paul the Apostle, Christianity’s earliest mystic. Fr. Egan focuses on Paul’s mystical consciousness and mystical life—the explicit and direct consciousness of the immediate and direct presence of the Trinity and/or Jesus-Messiah. It underscores mystical experience not only as discrete, individual experiences but also as experience in the sense that an experienced musician instinctively knows and loves music. From the light issuing from the risen Jesus-Messiah, whom he encountered on the Damascus road, Paul mystically read the Jewish Scriptures and comprehended that God consummated Israel’s history through the sending of Jesus-Messiah and the Holy Spirit. Fr. Egan taught at BC for 40 years. He is the author of several books, including Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life, and Christian Mysticism: The Future of a Tradition, and he produced a multimedia lecture series called “The Christian Mystical Tradition.” He also recently published an article titled “Ignatius, Prayer and the Spiritual Exercises” for The Way, an international journal of contemporary Christian spirituality, published by the British Jesuits.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Catholic, Jesuit author, Theology Department
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Writings from Maxim D. Shrayer
BC Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies Maxim D. Shrayer writes about his foray into the labyrinth of Russian bureaucracy in the essay “A Return to Kafka” for Tablet, a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture. He also conducted a Q&A with Cynthia L. Haven about her new book, The Man Who Brought Brodsky into English: Conversations with George L. Kline, via 3 Quarks Daily. Earlier this year, on the occasion of his father David Shrayer-Petrov’s birthday, he published an English translation of Shrayer-Petrov’s short memoir of Russian chansonnier Alexander Vertinsky, in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Shrayer is an author, editor, and translator whose publications include Of Politics and Pandemics: Songs of a Russian Immigrant, Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story, Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, and Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature, among other titles.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Eastern/Slavic/German Studies Department, Russia
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Losing touch
In a new book, Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy Richard Kearney offers a timely, clarion message about importance of the sense of touch, an essential essence of our humanness. Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense (Columbia University Press, 2021) captures Kearney’s meditation on what he calls touch hunger, exacerbated by our digital age. He says that people have forgotten how important touch is, but that tactile communication—to touch and be touched—is absolutely fundamental to our physical and mental well-being. BC News | GBH Radio
The Sun and the Moon
Boston College alumnus Chuck Abdella has published a new young adult fantasy novel titled The Sun and the Moon. From the author: “Centerton seems like a typical suburb with a normal high school, filled with ordinary students, but that’s only half the story. The world is more complicated than anyone at Centerton High might believe. The world is in danger—possibly two worlds.” Abdella is also the author of the four-book fantasy series The Outcasts. He teaches history at a high school in Massachusetts.
Learning to Pray
James Martin, S.J., who received the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry Alumni Distinguished Service Award in 2018, has written a new book that offers a comprehensive guide to prayer for everyone from the doubtful skeptic to the devout believer. Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone (Harper One, 2021) looks at ways to pray, what happens when you pray, and challenges in the life of prayer. Prayer, according to Fr. Martin, is open and accessible to anyone and has the power to transform those who make it a regular practice. Fr. Martin is a bestselling author whose previous works include The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, Jesus: A Pilgrimage, and Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity, among other titles. Fr. Martin talks about his new book in this video.
The rise of segregated churches
In his new book, historian and Boston College alumnus Richard Boles argues that, contrary to the traditional scholarly consensus, a significant portion of northern Protestants in the United States worshipped in interracial contexts during the 18th century. Yet in another 50 years, churches were by-and-large segregated. Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Churches in the Early American North (New York University Press) breaks new ground and explains the origins and history of racial integration and segregation in northern colonies and states. Boles draws from the records of more than 400 congregations to scrutinize the factors that made different Christian traditions either accessible or inaccessible to African American and American Indian peoples. It also uses patterns of church participation to illuminate broader social histories. Boles earned a bachelor of science degree and a master’s degree in history from Boston College. He is an assistant professor of history at Oklahoma State University.
Radical hospitality
In an era of border anxiety and increased refugees and migrants, a new book co-written by Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy Richard Kearney and Melissa Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of the practice in the Carroll School of Management Portico program, seeks to cultivate a willingness to be open and welcoming to new voices and new understandings. In Radical Hospitality: From Thought to Action (Fordham University Press, 2021), Kearney and Fitzpatrick show how radical hospitality happens by crossing borders, literal or figurative, and opening oneself in narrative exchange to someone else, a stranger or perhaps even an enemy. According to the authors, amidst the fears, dogmas, and demands for certainty and security that push us toward hostility, we also desire to wager with the unknown, leap into the unanticipated, and celebrate the new. Radical Hospitality will be formally launched at the Guestbook Project’s April 24 symposium on “Digital Peace Pedagogy: The Risk of Narrative Exchange.” Read more on BC News.
Review of Paul Farmer’s book
Canisius Professor of Theology James Keenan, S.J., vice provost for global engagement at BC, reviewed Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History by Dr. Paul Farmer. In his new book, Farmer, the renowned physician and anthropologist who founded Partners in Health, details his experience in West Africa during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. He relays harrowing stories of Ebola victims while tracing the region’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Fr. Keenan calls Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds “astonishing” and “unforgettable” and writes that “there is much wisdom throughout this magisterial work.” Read Fr. Keenan’s review of Dr. Farmer’s book in America magazine.
Posted in Boston College Book Reviewer
Tagged Africa, ethics, global health, Theology Department
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