‘This site cannot be reached’: College community loses access to Odyssey Bookshop
For 15 days, the Mount Holyoke College community lost online access to Odyssey Bookshop, the bookstore closest to its campus and one of the few businesses located in the Village Commons. Mount Holyoke News’ staff has followed this situation closely, even as both the problem and its eventual resolution appeared to be hidden from view.
The problem was first addressed in early February attempts to reach the Odyssey Bookshop’s website online would result in an error message displaying that connecting to the site had taken too long and had now timed out. This could be caused by any number of issues, such as poor connection to the internet — the site crashing — or the Odyssey site being down for maintenance by the store. Eventually, Odyssey Bookshop addressed the connectivity issue.
Mount Holyoke professor Dr. Vanessa Rosa speaks at Odyssey Bookshop
J. Vanessa Lyon speaks at Odyssey Bookshop on new novel
A queer romance set in Harlem’s art scene is the subject of “Lush Lives,” the first fiction book published by author J. Vanessa Lyon under her own name. On Tuesday, Sept. 12, the Odyssey Bookshop invited Lyon to speak about the book, marking Lyon’s first bookstore reading. Prior to “Lush Lives,” Lyon wrote “The Groves,” an Audible original, and “Meet Me in Madrid” under the pseudonym of Verity Lowell. Lyon is an art history professor at Bennington College, a liberal arts college in Vermont, and her academic background shines through in “Lush Lives.” The book’s protagonist, Glory, explores the rich and storied history of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when Black creativity in the arts flourished, and how it connects to her own experiences in the modern day.
Daniel Black and Major Jackson discuss Black’s latest novel at the Odyssey Bookshop
“Daddy’s mind left like a dream at dawn, and now the encounter could only take place in my imagination, so that’s where I went,” the author’s note of Daniel Black’s latest novel, “Don’t Cry For Me,” reads.
Black, who won the Distinguished Writer Award from the Mid-Atlantic Writer’s Association in 2014, published his newest work, “Don’t Cry for Me” earlier this month.
Anna Maria Hong Talks Poetry and Prose at Odyssey Book Reading
Pictured above: the headshot of Anna Maria Hong.
By Amelia Scarponi ’23
Staff Writer
On the evening of Thursday, Oct. 29, the Odyssey Bookshop welcomed Anna Maria Hong, assistant professor of English at Mount Holyoke, to read from and speak about her second poetry collection “Fablesque.” The collection was awarded the Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry in 2020.
Published in September, “‘Fablesque’ harnesses the power of old tales to dispel the disenchantments of women and animals in the #MeToo era,” according to its blurb. “The poems and prose pieces allude to animals real or imaginary, sometimes fantastical and often mythical,” Hong explained at the reading. Hong was joined by Andrea Lawlor, assistant professor of English at Mount Holyoke and author of “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.”
Though the pandemic led to the closure of campus and mandated social distancing, Zoom provided a relaxed and personal conversation between author and audience. Hong recognized the stress of the presidential election with a bit of humor, encouraging “everyone to make this a relaxing experience, lie on the floor, have a second glass of rosé or do yoga. Remember, we can’t see you,” she laughed. “It’s been another terrible week, almost crushing, but I would like to dedicate my first poem tonight to those who are voting for the first time in force, including my students,” Hong said.
“Siren,” the first poem read, is an ode to her love of sonnets and the comfort she feels working with a confined form. It conveys the double standards and obstacles women face. “Rip out the knees of the patriarchy,” Hong read. “No one cares if you're half-beast if you’ve got a great rack.” She confessed she is always aiming for wit, though rage is certainly on the surface of every word.
Erica Hawes ’22 tuned in from Bristol, England. “I’m a bibliophile, and the Odyssey felt like my second home,” she said. “I never left [campus] without purchasing a new book. Attending author readings and events with my friends was a weekly occurrence! Even though it’s 12 a.m. and my friends and I are all on different continents, we feel like we are back on campus together. Professor Hong is an incredible professor and her humor was not lost through Zoom.”
Lawlor influenced the dialogue during the Q&A session, laughing, “I don’t want to hog all the question time.” But members of the audience weren’t shy to ask questions as the event progressed. Lawlor kicked off the Q&A with praise and curiosity about Hong’s relationship to lyrical writing and sound, asking if it has been a driving agent in her work.
“I’ve been drafting these sonnets for several years. At some point I figured out that sound was smarter than I am,” Hong responded. “Sometimes I know what sound is but I don’t know what the word is. At the end of the day, I love working with the music of language.” Her inspirations range from Sylvia Plath to Gwendolyn Brooks.
One audience member asked how teaching influenced Hong’s writing. She admitted that she resisted teaching before discovering it was her second calling, which gave her the energy and passion to write. “If you have the privilege to teach about writing, you always think about writing,” she said.
Another individual expressed curiosity about finding the motivation to write. “Truthfully,” Hong replied, “I’m not as disciplined as I’d like to be. I write when I can and I try to make it a priority. I’ve found you really have to work with yourself if it’s something you love.”
Currently, Hong is working on a new collection of poetry “for her own sanity,” as well as a collection of daily meditations combining collage and prose in collaboration with visual artist Jill Moser. Moser is an abstract painter based in New York whose work is displayed in galleries and museums throughout the United States, most notably in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hong ended with some words of wisdom that double as a glimpse of reality for aspiring writers: “The majority of my work is discarded, but there are poems that really fight for their lives, that still want to be written.”
Professor Elizabeth Young reads from “Pet Projects” at the Odyssey
First-year Eleanor M. Rasor holds book launch at the Odyssey
DeLucia talks alternate histories and memory
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
DeLucia, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke, was there to discuss her recently published book, “Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast.” DeLucia specializes in indigenous history. “Memory Lands” retells the narrative of a 17th century uprising in which the native residents of southern New England fought to expel the English colonial presence that infested their homeland.