The American Gun / Jessica Femiani / 2024

The American Gun / Jessica Femiani / 2024

I traded books with Jessica when I visited Oneonta in October. The American Gun is a cutting chapbook about gun violence in the United States. I can’t say the collection taught me anything new. We have lived through and remember each of the mass shootings and massacres described in this collection. The collection doesn’t make me look at them in a new light. Femiani doesn’t aestheticize the loss. Rather, reading them altogether, spoken so plainly, really hammers in the incomprehensible amount of violence we have allowed to become normal. Femiani’s chapbook attempts to un-numb the US soul. I read it by a pond reflecting the red and yellow autumn leaves, after having a challenging conversation with a guilt-ridden Zionist who thanked me for teaching a poem by Black Jewish poet Aaron Samuels during a workshop. I, like Femiani’s book, don’t have clear answers to how to defeat the newest wave of fascist-terrorist violence. I struggled with my numbness as I read the collection. I thank Femiani for making me struggle against it. 3 out of 5.