Review by Kevin Brown

The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, Shechtman’s lengthy title and subtitle might make readers think they know what they’re getting when they open her book, but they would be mistaken. While the crossword puzzle is certainly one of Shechtman’s interests, there is much more going on here, for good and ill, depending on what readers are looking for.

If one wants the focus to remain on crossword puzzles, she has an interesting perspective, given that she published her first New York Times crossword puzzle when she was nineteen, and given that she is female. Despite the male-dominated landscape of the CrossWorld today, Shechtman points out several important women who helped shape the development of the puzzle. Similarly, she points out the continued sexism of that CrossWorld, not merely in the fact that most puzzle creators are male, but in the clues and solutions one would see.

If the reader is only looking for a book on crossword puzzles, though, they’ll be disappointed to find that Shechtman spends only about half the book, at best, on that area. Instead, she has written what she refers to near the end of the book as a “memoir wrapped in a cultural history.” The memoir aspect of this book centers around her struggles with anorexia, connecting that to her fascination with crossword puzzles. This part of the book also pulls heavily from feminist theoreticians and Freudian analysis, as Shechtman uses both of those approaches to understand who and how she is. Those sections might push a reader looking for a history of crossword puzzles.

That said, the combination largely works. Shechtman clearly lays out the connections between gender and crosswords and anorexia, helping readers to see how she puzzled her way through her life, in more ways than one.

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The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle by Anna Shechtman. HarperOne, March 2024.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Guest Post by Jack Bylund

In God is a Black Woman, author and professor Christena Cleveland confronts the faults of the mainstream Christian deity, whom she refers to as “whitemalegod.” A perpetrator of endless wrongs in society, the whitemalegod that Cleveland interrogates is found at the heart of racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and toxic masculinity, among others. Cleveland makes her case for mainstream Christianity’s role in these issues succinctly and effectively, providing compelling evidence from recent events and her own upbringing in Christianity; stories drawn from her life prove as compelling and honest as they are tragic and too common.

All the while, Cleveland presents a narrative of her travels through France on a pilgrimage seeking out Black Madonnas—statues of the Virgin Mary throughout the world who are Black. In her efforts to connect with these works of art, she enumerates the multifaceted ways in which Black Madonna—the titular figure of the book—contrasts with and rejects the white supremacist ideals of whitemalegod. She applies Black Madonna ideology to modern issues and rhetoric. Most of all, Cleveland gives hope for people in need of a God who truly loves amid the post-Trump rise in Christian hatred and nationalism.

God is a Black Woman by Christena Cleveland. HarperOne, February 2022.

Reviewer bio: Jack Bylund teaches and studies English literature and fiction at Utah State University. He loves contemporary lit, Panda Express, and books about the end of the world.