Praise for:Daily Fare
Kathleen Aguero, Editor University of Georgia Press $32 (233p) ISBN 978-0-8203-1498-3

In 17 personal essays, writers from outside the white male tradition offer varying perspectives on their place in society. Though some essays devolve into breast-beating or celebrate minor epiphanies, most are more engaging. Toi Derricotte’s episodic memoir of her stint as the only African American at an artist’s colony recounts some condescending white behavior: “Now that I am the `known’ black here, everything with a tinge of blackness on it is delivered to me.” Kiana Davenport, half Hawaiian and half Caucasian, warmly remembers finding her identity at a New York City YWCA, in the company of a woman from South Africa and another from India. Leslie Lawrence, a lesbian and feminist, offers an amusing and sunny story of how she conceived a child through alternative (“there’s nothing artificial about it”) insemination. Jack Agueros, reflecting on the diverse foods of multicultural New York, concludes, “Ah, Bread, you make me realize that it is hard and wasteful to be purely ethnic in America–definitely wasteful to be totally assimilated.” Aguero, a poet, is the author of Thirsty Day . (Apr.)