New Books in Language and Translation

Who has the “right” to learn Mandarin Chinese? In Multiracial Mandarin: Asian Americans and Impossible Language (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. David Shuang Song examines how matters of race and privilege shape US Mandarin language education and who has access to it. Through a two-year ethnographic study of two Bay Area high schools where diasporic and heritage speakers learn Mandarin alongside Black and Latinx students, Song advances a sociological and educational–linguistic inquiry into how language interacts with our understanding of identity and equity.
Comparing classroom activities in two public schools, Dr. Song investigates teachers who seek to make Mandarin accessible while detaching it from its cultural roots. As he explores the difficulties of limited resources, racial inequality, and pedagogical practices inherent in multiracial Mandarin instruction, Dr. Song shows how language education complicates how educators understand Asian American students and troubles conventional conversations around race and racial equity in schools.
Arguing that language practice and instruction must always be considered in relation to diaspora, ethnicity, and racialization, Multiracial Mandarin offers a frank analysis of the risks and benefits of teaching a diasporic language and asks if this practice ought to be replicated in more schools. As he applies innovative conceptual frameworks for talking about language among Asian Americans, Dr. Song’s timely and theoretically sophisticated analysis has wide-ranging implications for how students, teachers, and administrators approach essential questions around education, privilege, and language survival.
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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The podcast covers the book Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo (U Washington Press, 2025), which is about satirical speech traditons from Amdo region of Tibet and the role of zurza in Tibetan cultural production and modernity. Tune in to find out more about satire, languages, cultures of what's funny and why.

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In this latest Books for Better Understanding video from Notre Dame Press, David Carlson facilitates a conversation between Marian Schwartz and Dan Mahoney about Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's March 1917 The Red Wheel, Node III available in English now for the first time. Schwartz and Mahoney discuss the historical, literary, and cultural significance of MARCH 1917.

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It has long been understood that illness is influenced not only by our bodies' physiology, but also language, culture, and meaning. Healing and the Invention of Metaphor: Towards a Poetics of Illness Experience (Cambridge UP, 2025), written by renowned cultural psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer, explores of the influence of metaphor, narrative, and imagination in experiences of suffering and processes of healing across cultures. It emphasizes how metaphor can open a window to the hidden mechanisms of healing driven by meaning and symbolism, myth and imagination. At the same time, it offers a rigorous critical account of the metaphors embedded in the epistemology and practice of contemporary biomedicine, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. In doing so, it exposes the sociomoral and political dimensions of these dominant approaches to understanding and treating illness.
Laurence J. Kirmayer is Distinguished James McGill Professor and Director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University. He directs the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. He is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada.

Dr. Anya Daly is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics in the School of Arts and Society, University of Tasmania. Interdisciplinary collaborations are at the core of Anya’s research interests. She investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of psychiatry, embodied and social cognition, enactivism, ethics, aesthetics and Buddhist Philosophy.

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Today I’m speaking with David Bentley Hart about his book, A Gathering of Leaves: Extravagances and Ephemera, from the University of Notre Dame Press. David is a multi-faceted scholar who has contributed to the fields of philosophy, religious studies, and baseball, among others. The volume we will be discussing today is a collection of essays mostly originating from his website, Leaves in the Wind. The essays span a wide array of ideas, jumping from Ty Cobb’s undeserved reputation to the merits and deficiencies of writers like Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, and Cormac McCarthy. David also considers contemporary politics and the challenges writers face with the widespread diffusion of artificial intelligence. Each subsequent essay is both unexpected and often delightful. David is known for his vibrant style, and one can’t help but feel that they need to spend more time consulting their dictionary. In fact, David even recommends one, or rather recommends Nabokov’s favorite: Webster’s International, Second edition from 1944. Unabridged, of course. I'm so grateful to get the opportunity to speak with David Bentley Hart about A Gathering of Leaves.
David Bentley Hart is a writer, religious studies scholar, philosopher, cultural commentator, and writer of fiction. Read his Substack.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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