Christine Sun Kim’s archive of deafness in pop culture, Guadalupe Rosales’s East Los Angeles memoir, and Kent Monkman’s behind-the-scenes look at a Vermeer painting set the tone for a choose-your-own-adventure season in art books this fall. With far too many novels, catalogs, essay collections, and photography books arriving over the next three months to cover them all, these 15 stood out to us. 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 captures “what it feels like to hold something that is so meaningful.” That sensibility runs throughout her memoir, where images and other ephemera drawn from the Los Angeles Chicana artist and educator’s personal archive are inseparable from the experiences that led to their creation. Filled with photographs of family, teenage friends, lowriders, and party flyers reminiscent of those in her portal-like, multimedia installations, the book underscores the importance of telling one’s own story, particularly for those whose histories are not reflected in existing archives. —Phillip Pyle
Christine Sun Kim: Deaf Material | Primary Information, September 15
Christine Sun Kim has range — her drawing, installations, and video work can be biting, hilarious, and deeply moving all at once. Featuring more than 600 images of deaf representation in mainstream culture — from memes and advertisements to disability signage, art, and more — gathered by Kim through taking or finding them, this book serves not only as a corrective to the absence of a comprehensive archive but also as a window into the mind of one of the most compelling artists working today. —Lisa Yin Zhang
Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales by Elizabeth Alexander | W. W. Norton & Company, September 15
As poet, scholar, and Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander’s The Light of the World has remained with me for years. Released in 2015, three years after the sudden death of her husband, artist Ficre Ghebreyesus, the lyrical memoir was threaded with the painful specifics 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 probing a question artists have long pursued: 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 of them, we see starving children wandering all day with empty pots instead of toys, asking for food. There is 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. Only grief and rubble everywhere.
This moving collection of photographs, poems, and essays by National Book Award finalist Fady Joudah tells their stories. His words and those of others make clear that the greatest chapter of Palestinian resistance and survival is now being written by the children of Gaza. —Hakim Bishara
