New Books in Gender

A glass slipper, a fairy godmother, a transformed pumpkin, lizard footmen and seamstress mice: these familiar images evoke a very particular story, one where hopes and dreams for a new life might come true. Adaptations of Cinderella branch out through history and across the world, from early illustrated books to modern children’s and young adult novels, and contemporary films. Cinderella: A Cultural History (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2026) by Dr. Michelle Anya Anjirbag aims to answer the question, why does Cinderella still inspire so many of us with her story?
Beginning with the literary versions of the tale that were popularized by collectors and writers such as Basile, Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, this book looks back at the folktales that informed them, out to the various countries and cultures that share similar stories, and then forwards to what writers, illustrators, filmmakers and other storytellers continue to do with the Cinderella narrative. Instead of taking a strictly historical approach, it explores the ways heroes, villains, helpers and symbols appear in different interpretations, illustrations and adaptations. It draws connections between the historical and contemporary preoccupations, concerns and hopes that the Cinderella story still addresses in the 21st century, and celebrates our enduring desire for enchantment and transformation.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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From the preeminent scholar on Black masculinity in America, Save a Seat for Me: Notes on American Fatherhood (Simon & Schuster, 2026) is Mark Anthony Neal’s attempt to bring his scholarship on fatherhood to a broader audience. Save a Seat for Me embraces the nuances of how contemporary frameworks of masculinity informed by unprecedented advances in women and LGBTQ communities have necessitated a reimagining of the societal expectations a father plays in the public and private sectors of their homes. The soul of this book centers on Neal’s confrontation of the various political, cultural, historical narratives and messages that inform the role of Black fatherhood, and fatherhood at large, which has put him at odds with the way he fathers his own children. Raised by a working class father, during a time when American society conceived of the role of father as protector, provider, and disciplinarian, Neal struggles with these expectations as his education (a doctorate's degree), profession (tenured professor at one of the best colleges in the country), and financial position (making more money than his father ever did) are drastically different than that of his father. Linking his father to his own fathering of his two daughters, Neal grounds his intellectual arguments about Black fatherhood in experience and emotion makes for a vulnerable read, as well as a transformative one. In our culture, the public performance of fatherhood keeps us from wondering what the practice of being a father looks like in private. Neal is opening a long overdue door to the interiority that Black men particularly—and men living in a patriarchal society generally—have only learned existed in the last twenty years.

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Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals how illicit exchanges of money and commodities involving sexual encounters between Korean and Japanese women and US soldiers provided the material foundations of the regional economy across Korea and Japan during the Korean War. Against the conventional view that illicit exchanges exist outside the formal economy and legal regulations, Dr. Jeongmin Kim examines how the interlinked markets for transactional sex and goods crucially constituted the transpacific formation of US military base capitalism in post-World War II East Asia. Going beyond what is commonly categorized as prostitution and violence in Cold War archives, Dr. Kim weaves together stories from the myriads of mundane records scattered around multilingual archives to document larger transnational webs of the war economy.
From Korean women who brought camel blankets and whiskey to local markets in Seoul, to middle-aged Okinawan women dealing in US military notes, Dr. Kim uncovers the crucial roles that local women played in circulating war supplies and currency across the region through their sexual and intermediary labor. The result is an intimate and global history of the Korean War that urges us to rethink the often-antithetical relationship between sexual intimacy and market economies in the context of war and occupation.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Todd Berliner's Hollywood Renegade: Elaine May, Mikey and Nicky, and the Making of a Masterpiece (U Texas Press, 2026) examines Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky with stands out in the history of Hollywood. After a troubled production, massive cost overruns, and lawsuits between May and the studio, the film received scathing reviews and failed at the box office. But the very qualities that initially alienated viewers and reviewers led later generations to regard the film as an overlooked masterpiece.
Written and directed by the period’s only female New Hollywood filmmaker, Mikey and Nicky has not received the attention given to other unconventional films of the 1970s. But May worked for years to give each moment of the movie multiple areas of interest. She made every character, even peripheral ones, nuanced and memorable. And she designed every scene, even minor ones, as a performance event. Her lead actors, Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, thrived under her unorthodox directing style, earning acclaim even from reviewers who hated the movie. Decades in the making—years of scriptwriting, a shoot that spanned ten months, and three years spent editing—Mikey and Nicky shows us what Hollywood cinema can accomplish when talented filmmakers challenge Hollywood’s limited notion of professionalism, rejecting the harsh time pressures of commercial filmmaking in order to get the most out of every scene.

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El Salvador Reborn: Abortion, Environment, and the Politics of Survival in a Postwar Nation ( examines the nation’s efforts to reshape its identity after the Peace Accords amid declining Cold War tensions. The book explores activism in postwar El Salvador by focusing on two key organizations, Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto and Foro del Agua, highlighting their political strategies during a critical moment in El Salvador’s formation.
Linton-Villafranco makes the case for a holistic conception of life that integrates land, body, and community sovereignty, weaving reproductive justice with environmental activism to promote a broader, interconnected understanding of life and rights in El Salvador.
Mellissa Linton-Villafranco is an assistant professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation, where she also coordinates the LGBT Studies Certificate.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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