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Here's the beautiful cover for the Indian edition, by Penguin Random House India. Order your copy here.
THE LAUGHTER
An aging white male college professor develops a dangerous obsession with his new Pakistani colleague in this modern, iconoclastic novel that is as powerful, riveting, and disturbing as Lolita, Disgrace, and A Little Life.
Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured professor of English, is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet, staid life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor.
Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver’s long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession after her teenaged nephew, Adil Alam, arrives from France to stay with her. Oliver becomes a mentor to Adil, using his friendship with the boy to draw closer to his aunt. Getting to know them, Oliver tries to reconcile his discomfort with the worlds from which they come, and to quiet his sense of dismay at the encroaching change they represent—both in background and in Ruhaba’s spirited engagement with the student movements on campus.
After protests break out on campus demanding diversity across the university, Harding finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems. As Ruhaba seems attainable yet not, and as the women of his past taunt his memory, Harding reacts in ways shocking and devastating.
Sonora Jha has created a complex character both in tune and out of step with our time, an erudite man who inspires and challenges our sympathies. As the novel reaches its astonishing conclusion, Jha compels us to reexamine scenes in a new light, revealing a depth of loneliness in unlikely places, the subjectivity of innocence, and the looming peril of white rage in America.
An explosive, tense, and illuminating work of fiction, The Laughter is a fascinating portrait of privilege, radicalization, class, and modern academia that forces us to confront the assumptions we make, as both readers and as citizens.
Praise for The Laughter
Read the New York Time’s Review Here
how to raise a feminist son
A love story that will resonate with feminists who hope to change the world, one kind boy at a time
From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, we have big work to do when it comes to our boys. This empowering book offers much-needed insight and actionable advice. It’s also a beautifully written and deeply personal story of struggling, failing, and eventually succeeding at raising a feminist son.
Informed by the author’s work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, and other parents and boys, this book follows one mother’s journey to raise a feminist son as a single immigrant woman of color in America. Through stories from her own life and wide-ranging research, Sonora Jha shows us all how to be better feminists and better teachers of the next generation of men in this electrifying tour de force.
Includes chapter takeaways, and an annotated bibliography of reading and watching recommendations for adults and children.
Here's the beautiful cover for the Indian edition, by Penguin Random House India. Order your copy here.
Praise for How to Raise a feminist son
"Jha issues an urgent, fervent plea to raise feminist sons in this trenchant guide. At times touching and always impassioned, this is an excellent resource for like-minded parents."
—Publishers Weekly
“In How to Raise a Feminist Son, Jha weaves her own fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking, and always beautiful story of raising her own feminist son with careful research, insightful interviews, and helpful advice. There were countless times in reading this book where I found myself reevaluating things I had told my own sons and setting new goals for things I would teach them in the future. True love sees you for who you are, and true love holds you to account when you fall short of who you can be, because true love knows what you are capable of. This book is a true love letter, not only to Jha’s own son but also to all of our sons and to the parents–especially mothers–who raise them.”
—Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre
“You can’t punish your way to a more feminist world, I’ve long believed; you have to create, encourage, invent that world, especially in how you raise kids, but that’s only one reason Sonora Jha’s book is exhilarating and inspiring. It’s a beautiful hybrid of memoir, manifesto, instruction manual, and rumination on the power of story and possibilities of family I can’t wait to put in the hands of everyone raising kids or thinking about how we do it and how it could be different.”
—Rebecca Solnit, author of The Mother of All Questions
“Essential reading for any parent, loved one, or teacher seeking to raise feminist boys in these times. A strong case for how teaching our boys to show vulnerability, empathy, and remorse can be the path to freedom. Sonora Jha asks, ‘Can boys be feminists?’ The answer is a resounding YES.”
—V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of The Vagina Monologues and The Apology
“We need to grow better men. In this fierce, elegant, necessary book, Sonora Jha tells us how she did just that. Weaving together the personal and the political, Jha fearlessly examines our current moment and how it affects the young men among us. How to Raise A Feminist Son scorches, illuminates, and above all challenges us to do better.”
—Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble and Monsters
“Jha has written a beautiful and honest ode to imperfect parents everywhere who are trying to raise kind, compassionate, confident feminist sons.”
— Ms. Magazine
"(Feminist Son) explores race, gender, pop culture and power dynamics, and consistently acknowledges the imperfections inherent in pursuing ideals ... Sonora Jha encourages readers to embrace the difficulties and the joys simultaneously."
— The Seattle Times
“The title may suggest this is a book for women raising sons, but men should also read this. It offers provocative insights into masculinity, feminism, parenting and immigrant identities.”
— International Examiner
foreign
In a village in India, a forsaken man is about to kill himself in quiet despair. A million miles away, Katya Misra is celebrating a perfect evening in her fine, academic life in Seattle . . . until she is informed that her teenaged son Kabir has run away to India in search of a father he has never met. Contemptuous of her homeland and determined to bring Kabir back where he belongs, Katya must follow her son into the home of a suicidal farmer, in a village where, every eight hours, a man kills himself. Here, as Kabir's father inspires his son with his selfless social work, Katya finds an ally in the farmer's wife Gayatribai, who saves Kabir's life by damaging her own, and in return asks for Katya's help in keeping her husband alive in the suicide epidemic that has gripped this treacherously changing nation.
Whipped up in a world of violent protest rallies, mass weddings, inglorious suicides, and a love that demands to be rekindled, Katya must learn whose life can be saved and whose she should just let go.
Available in the United States soon. More details to come.
Advance Praise for Foreign
"Sonora Jha’s riveting and ambitious debut novel Foreign dazzles with its sweeping international perspective, but it’s the novel’s heartbreaking and intimate core that is its greatest achievement." Peter Mountford, The Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism
"A heartrending, heartwarming tale of maternal love battling the allure and despair of the suicide fields. A sparkling debut." Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill's Secret War
"Sonora Jha's heroine is American in India, Indian in America; single and a mother; in love but stubbornly independent; human and female -- in other words, she is always foreign. In its telling of one woman's collision with the desperations of her homeland, this extraordinary debut novel offers the intimacy of the contemporary while sustaining us in a narrative that is sweeping, beautifully written, revelatory, and utterly absorbing." Honor Moore, The Bishop's Daughter
alone together
ALONE TOGETHER: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19 is a collection of essays, poems, and interviews to serve as a lifeline for negotiating how to connect and thrive during this stressful time of isolation as well as a historical perspective that will remain relevant for years to come. Ms. Haupt rallied a diverse roster of more than 90 authors to contribute their work to ALONE TOGETHER, free of charge, including Kwame Alexander, Jenna Blum, Andre Dubus III, Jamie Ford, Nikki Giovanni, Pam Houston, Jean Kwok, Major Jackson, Caroline Leavitt, Ada Limón, Dani Shapiro, David Sheff, Garth Stein, Luis Alberto Urrea, Steve Yarbrough, and Lidia Yuknavitch. All net profits will be donated to The Book Industry Charitable Foundation, to benefit booksellers in financial need.
Recent Reviews
Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (288 pages; Central Avenue Publishing; edited by Jennifer Haupt) is a collection of essays, interviews, and poems meant to serve as a resource for connection, hope, and grief in our pandemic world. (All proceeds from the book will be donated to The Book Industry Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit that organizes programs to ...
The new collection from Grand Central Publishing, "Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19" is edited by Seattle author and journalist Jennifer Haupt, and features essays...