University of Denver Fall 2022

New titles ponder pressing problems and life experiences BOOKS By Tamara Chapman

The far-reaching effects of violence against women In the United States, a woman is sexually assaulted every minute and a half. Across the 50 states, that’s 960 sexual assaults every day, Sunday through Saturday, January through December. Just as shocking, every 16 hours, a woman is shot and killed by a former or current intimate partner. Those numbers galvanized trauma “With grace and power, this mesmerizing memoir swirls from continent to continent, decade to decade, through a journey of identity, memory, loyalty, and loss. Part map, part family tree, We Take Our Cities with Us provides an intimate glimpse into what it means to make a home in the global modern age. Sorayya Khan is an exquisite storyteller.” —ELEanor HEndErson “This extraordinary memoir traverses a deeply personal terrain dotted with questions of identity, culture, and belonging. Khan engrosses the reader with myriad journeys, histories, and piercing insights. Thoroughly gratifying.” —raza rumi E ven when we leave them, our cities never leave us. After her Dutch mother’s death, Sorayya Khan confronts her grief by revisiting their relationship, her parents’ lives, and her own Pakistani Dutch heritage in a multicultural memoir that unfolds over seven cities and three continents. We Take Our Cities with Us ushers us from Khan’s childhood independence forged at her grandparents’ home in Lahore; to her adolescence in Pakistan’s new capital, Islamabad; to Syracuse and Ithaca, New York, where Khan finds her footing as the mother of young, brown sons in post-9/11 America; to her birthplace, Vienna, where her parents die; and finally to Amsterdam and Maastricht, the cities of her mother’s conflicted youth. In Khan’s gripping telling of her immigrant experience, she shows us what it is to raise children and l se parents in worlds other than your own. Drawing on family history, geopolitics, and art in this stunning story of loss, identity, and rediscovery, Khan beautifully illuminates the complexities of our evolving global world and its most important constant: love. sorayya KHan is the author of the novels City of Spies , Five Queen’s Road , and Noor . The daughter of a Pakistani father and a Dutch mother, she was born in Europe, grew up in Pakistan, and now lives in Ithaca, New York, with her family. Machete J oy Ca tro, s e r i e s ed i tor Mad Creek Books, an imprint of ThE oh i o STaTE Un i vErS i Ty PrE S S Columbus ohiostatepress.org author photo Barbara Adams cover art skyline (Blue Planet Studio), river and sun (gina/Adobe), hydrangea (public domain, 1755) cover design adam b. bohannon “We Take Our Cities with Us is an exquisite memoir, a dazzling exploration of time, place, and self. I loved it.” —L i Ly King

A memoir explores the emotional landscapes of a peripatetic life Throughout her life, alumna Sorayya Khan (MA ’85), the daughter of a Dutch mother and Pakistani father, has been called on to adapt to different landscapes, cultures and contexts. Born in Vienna, Austria, she spent much of her childhood and adolescence in Pakistan. She moved to the U.S. for college and later met

“A memoir of uncommon delicacy and emotional force. . . . This is an intimate, beautiful, and lasting book.” —Claire Messud

A Memoir K h a n

A Memoir

S o r ay ya K h a n

MaD CrEEK BooKS

psychologist Anne DePrince into action. A Distinguished University Professor in DU’s Department of Psychology and an internationally recognized expert in violence against women, she’s the author of the newly released “ Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence against Women ” (Oxford University Press, 2022). In its fast-paced 172 pages, DePrince examines the ramifications of intimate violence—its staggering toll on families and children, on classrooms and workplaces, on the economy, on public health and safety. But she also ponders why, after extensive and heartfelt efforts by advocates and public officials, the problem persists. “Over fifty years,” she writes, “people have marched

her husband while a student at what is now DU’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. Her two sons were raised in Syracuse and Ithaca, New York, in a post-9/11 world not always hospitable to brown boys with “suspect” heritage. And over the years, she traced her family’s story—and thus her story—through various geographic coordinates, from Amsterdam and Maastricht to Lahore and Islamabad. In “ We Take Our Cities With Us: A Memoir ” (Mad Creek Books, 2022), Khan reflects on the enduring presence of

the people and places that have shaped her life. The author of three novels, she is known for delicate prose and an eye for telling detail. This memoir has earned high praise from two of the literary world’s most respected denizens. Author Claire Messud

and made laws, created services and studied their impact, and fought over the legitimacy of violence against women as a problem. And still a woman is a victim of intimate violence every ninety seconds.”

called it “an intimate, beautiful, and lasting book,” while novelist Lily King labeled it “a dazzling exploration of time, place, and self.”

An alumna’s chapbook shares poems from a pandemic For the first unsettling months of the coronavirus pandemic, award winning poet and essayist Kathryn Winograd (PhD ’89) sought solace in nature and found peace in writing. She spent April of 2020 writing poems, many of which were recently published in a chapbook, “ Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from

As discouraging as this can be, DePrince finds hope in the power of passion and collaboration. She invites readers to become advocates, to help solve the problem, noting that “the causes and consequences of violence against women are interconnected with the great public issues of our time … .” In other words, if readers want to see progress in any number of areas—immigration, perhaps, or education outcomes, gun crimes, economic security, you name it— addressing violence against women is a good place to start.

Learn more about DePrince’s work on violence against women at magazine.du.edu.

a Pandemic ” (Finishing Line Press, 2022). “I wrote the poems … during National Poetry Month during such a terrible time and found such peace in my

18 | UNIVERSITY of DENVER MAGAZINE • FALL 2022