Review: Mandorla Letters: for the hopeful, by Nicole Mitchell Gantt

In Mandorla Letters: for the hopeful, composer/improviser/flautist/“imagination practitioner” Nicole Mitchell Gantt writes, “The known reality (the cold, hard facts of what is known) is considered ‘superior’ to mystery (the immeasurable unknown); logic is considered ‘superior’ to emotion/intuition; religion and spirituality are considered ‘inferior’ to science” (193). Mitchell Gantt does not subscribe to this perspective, and her book remains true to her belief that imagination, mystery, intuition, spirituality, and other sidelined ways of thinking and being offer the best hope to address the fallout from what she calls, intentionally in lower case: “the western problem.” With as much attention to visual elements as written, and alternating between “memoir,” “manifesto,” “Black speculative novella,” and ruminations on her work, process, and collaborators, Mandorla Letters crosses the boundaries and expectations for books on university presses. True to her artistic roots in Chicago’s enduring Black arts collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative...