Shake Loose My Skin / Sonia Sanchez / 1999

In 2024, does your house have lions by Sonia Sanchez was one of my favorite reads. Shake Loose Your Skin is my first deep dive into Sanchez’s work and it provided a curious snapshot into her legend. does your house have lions? is likely the apex of her career, as she has only published one book after this new and selected, and the poems from dyhhl were by far was the best part of the new and selected. In content, many of the poems and essays in this collection grapple with gendered violence and surviving toxic masculinity in intimate relationships. Sanchez details the pain of adultery and addiction repeatedly in a confessional and heartbreaking voice with little literary stunting. Reading Shake Loose Your Skin made me feel the same way I did after catching up with a homegirl after far too long and too much has happened. I was pleasantly surprised to find a long poem dedicated to Tupac Shakur. Giovanni had a poem for Tupac too and it makes me happy knowing all the dope Black women were writing poems for him. 3 out of 5. 

Pimp / Iceberg Slim / 1967

Pimp / Iceberg Slim / 1967

Pimp is the memoir of Robert Lee Maupin, who spent 24 years of his life enslaving women in sex work and performing a variety of other cons for a life of lavish, fear, drugs, degradation, and prison. I’d like to imagine that this memoir is simply unpublishable these days, but we have a rapist in the White House. America likely has the appetite for a Pimp 2.0. 

Maupin narrates his life with stunning narrative clarity and verve. Pimp is a masterclass on pacing. Reading Pimp is like watching a car crash in hi-definition with multiple camera angles to zoom and hawk out: it’s spellbinding and horrible. Pimp combines flashy writing with probing observation and reflection. Maupin doesn’t cut himself much slack in acknowledging the wretchedness of his crimes. He doesn’t try the readers’ patience in asking for a forgiveness or compassion he doesn’t deserve. In this way, Maupin creates an enticing ethos, giving the reader the sense that they are truly glimpsing into the life of a hardened Black criminal underworld. Maupin makes the reader a trick, using their morbid curiosity and desire to eat the other as a hook for his self-mythos. Likewise, the rugged oscillation between cold observation and confessional trauma dumping on the page likely mirror the same charisma that ensnared a number of young women in the flesh. 

As in any memoir, the writing obviously cuts away some of the complexities of life, using composite characters and so forth, to present a narrative that’s easier to follow. Sometimes, the narrative voice is so street it’s comic. By the third time, Maupin claims to “skull-note” something, I’m facepalming at how goofy he sounds. There’s also a scene where Maupin describes his first con--dressing in drag to lure in and rob white tricks eager for Black pussy--which reminded me of the homoerotic and genderbending scenes of Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle. Early on, I realized that Paul Beatty actually satirizes Iceberg Slim’s voice in The White Boy Shuffle, from the slang to the fishbowl voyeurism into Black poverty to the queer scenes. 

I wanted to read Pimp to potentially teach it in a hip-hop literature course alongside To Pimp a Butterfly. Unfortunately, it feels irresponsible to teach Pimp. It provides too much fodder for an undergraduates’ racist biases. Even if you had an undergraduate class with the social savvy and chops to engage the text, it is simply too misogynistic, foul, and horrifying to expect many people to stomach it. In the copy, Maupin calls Pimp a manual, akin to the Art of War by Sun Tzu. It’s true enough. Maupin does provide the rationale and strategy for enslaving women and dodging the law. It’s definitely outdated by now, but some principles likely still apply. Yet, I’m still tempted to teach it. Like The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Pimp opens with a first-person description of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. Pimp is another side of the coin of the violences of racism, poverty, patriarchy, and misogyny. What it says about America is horrifying, but bitterly honest. 

Pimp ends with a story of Maupin’s reformation into a best-selling writer with a wife and three daughters, living a square-ass life. Whether Maupin deserved this redemption or not, his story does demonstrate the ability of people to grow and change into functional members of society. His stints in prison were truly wretched, but justice and healing aren’t transactional. In any ethical world, Maupin would have carried the weight of his crimes for life and he likely did. Some of the best writing in Pimp comes from his descriptions of prison--including an eye-popping prison break. I want to talk with prison abolitionists about Pimp. Maupin’s stunning writing, reformation, and reflection raise questions about abolition, crime, and justice worth teasing out if you can bear the disgusting realities of its world.  

5/5

Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences / Richard Pryor / 1995

Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences / Richard Pryor / 1995

I'm utterly confused by the doting and glowing reviews of this book online. Richard Pryor, while a comedic genius, perpetrated so much violence against women and did so little to repair his relationship to gender that I hardly feel bad for him as he describes the horrors of MS and lighting himself on fire. I literally listened thinking, ah God is trying to humble this man and make him slow tf down and elicit an ounce of empathy from his soul for the women he uses and sees as less than human, and even with all the chances he's been given he's still making jokes about pedophilia, domestic violence, and his abuses.  Pryor begins with a Richard Wright-esque description of his early life in whore house, including moments of abandonment and being sexually assaulted by a local man who later reappeared in his life when he was famous and had Richard sign an autograph for his kid.  In an ars poetica like moment, Pryor describes how once he slipped in shit and made people laugh and that he's been doing that his whole life.  Reading this book gave me insight into its historical moment, especially in terms of how some folks may have engaged with the Black Radical Tradition, as well as the way the industry will elevate a so-called genius and pimp him for his ability to make them money, at the expense of his victims and himself.  Pryor never seemed to learn the lesson, thinking the cliche and flat wisdom about humankind all being one (especially in terms of our need for pussy) and needing to bask in sunshine every once in a while is somehow profound. I'm appalled at how a man can live so much and learn so dramatically little. While the book has its moments of humor, it was hard to enjoy them when he had just finished describing firing gunshots at an intimate partner. He narrates his acts of abuse with an unabashed shame, repeatedly claiming there was nothing he could do to improve his behavior, face his drug addiction, and so forth.  Utterly tragic and sickening.  1.5/5 

Bread and Circus / Airea D. Matthews / 2023

Goddamn. Matthews has both childhood trauma and academic poetic muscles at intense levels. There’s a poem where a therapist asks the speaker to talk about a moment she didn’t regret and the speaker talks about helping her father shoot heroin once. I would completely understand it if a poet with this extreme of a memory bank to draw from spent their whole lives writing sobbing confessional poems, just trying to bear witness and heal. Matthews manages to do so much more than that. There are erasure poems of economic theory (Adam Smith and Guy Debord) that make the reader consider the ways the speaker’s womanhood, and in turn the trauma the world has given her, has been commodified and the violence therein. While some of the erasure poems aren’t mindblowing, they do an excellent job of teasing out how violent public systems create these intense personal traumas. To read Bread and Circus is to sit with someone who has extraordinary life experience AND has done an incredible amount of work to contextualize and think critically about it. 4 out of 5. 

The Souls of Black Folk / W.E.B. Du Bois / 1903

The Souls of Black Folk / W.E.B. Du Bois / 1903

I’ve read chapters of this book during my degrees and decided I had to return to read the whole thang to understand the Black Radical Tradition better. Du Bois pours his soul into every word of the text, diving between astute economic and historical truth-telling, musical criticism, and personal essays on Atlanta and the lives of everyday Black folk in the Jim Crow south. It’s all the more painful to see Du Bois’s legacy so under-talked about and misrepresented as a mere counterpoint to Booker T. Washington. It was painful to read his chapter on education, which might as well be about contemporary under-funded schools in the US. This round of reading helped really color in the picture of just how fucked the South was economically before and after the Civil War, especially during the Reconstruction period. Du Bois’s thoroughness is so earnest and unearned by this country. Amerikkka did not and does not deserve souls as beautiful as Du Bois. 5/5 

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition / Cedric Robinson / 1963

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition / Cedric Robinson / 1963

I have no business criticizing this book, largely because I’m out of my depth, especially when Robinson gets REAL specific about the economics of 17th century UK. An interesting paradox about the book is that its the technical language and academic discourses, when utilized, isn’t inaccessible to a lay audience; yet the range and scope of the project of the project was so expansive, it definitely demands re-reading to fully absorb Robinson’s ideas and arguments, much as Angela Davis suggested in her blurb. Because contemporary US Black scholars sometimes fail to think beyond the US, I was impressed to find such a comprehensive history of the Black Radical Tradition that included the history of the Caribbean and Latin America. There’s a chance this book doesn’t include feminist perspectives enough, as there are likely more women who figure into this tradition in ways unacknowledged herein, Sojourner Truth for example. The conversations and relationships between the international communists and Black communities, the consistent and furious revolts against slavery, his contextualizing of Du Bois and Cesaire, and many other moments re-organized my understanding of Black history in the Americas. While reading, I had the stupefying realization that other ideas familiar to me likely originated from Robinson’s masterpiece. I want to re-read this book with people smarter than me. 4.5/5  

Dark Days / Roger Reeves / 2023

Dark Days: Fugitive Essays / Roger Reeves / 2023

Roger Reeves is one of my favorite poets, so I came into this collection with high hopes that were somewhat dashed. Don't get me wrong, Reeves has moments of absolute brilliance and I frequently turned over ideas. “Through the Smoke, Through The Veil, Through the Wind,” “A Little Brown Liquor,” and “Peace Be Still” I may even consider more or less flawless. I would teach some of these essays in a heartbeat. I have already recommended others to friends. But his essays frequently had me asking “where are you going with this?” as he weaved disparate, though artful, allusions from hiphop to theory to the canon to social media in a sometimes dizzying and ultimately unsatisfying way. At times, these hiccups are minor, like when Reeves overreads Future, attributing a cool interpretation of a lyric to Future's intention rather than the Reeves’ own genius. At other times, the hiccups sour entire essays, even when Reeves's insights and close readings are otherwise pretty damn sharp. Take his essay “Poetry Isn’t the Revolution, but a Way of Knowing Why It Must Come,” where he discusses enunciation and the power of the word that puts the speaker at risk of death. His argument then takes a turn straight into a wall as he uses LOOK by Solmaz Sherif as his most contemporary example. While LOOK is undeniably an excellent work of art, enunciation it is not.  Rather than exploring the ways poetry can assert itself in the political arena to take on true, necessary risks, Reeves acts like the literary salon is the battlefront. But lemme watch my unlettered mouth and just get to the rating. Can't believe I gotta give my favorite poet a 3.25 out of 5. 

Somewhere We Are Human / edited by Reyna Grande / 2022

Somewhere We Are Human / edited by Reyna Grande / 2022

This is the undocumented anthology we've needed for years. Exquisitely curated, it features the voices of undocumented migrants across Latin America, Asia, and Africa and from a range of intersecting identities. It's delightfully queer forward. While I knew my friend Mariella Mendoza was featured in this collection writing urgently about their connection to Native communities and land defense work, I was stunned to find Azul Uribe's story. Azul was a Mormon in Cedar City who was persecuted by her own congregation and ultimately deported. I cried on the train when I read her story because it was too close to home. I lived in Cedar City. I can only imagine it 20 years ago, how much worse its racism must have been, how callous and inhuman it was when I knew it. Azul could've been my neighbor, my hermana if she wasn't stolen from her home. Other compelling essays include Yosimar Reyes' depiction of his undocumented community, the essay of an undocumented lawyer reflecting on the limitations of the legal system in providing viable avenues of resistance for undocumented movements. I especially was moved by and cried on the train again when I read Reyna Grande's essay about the generational distances created between families by migration. I can see the distance in worlds of understanding between my mother, my sister, and my niece all too well. The only essay that felt almost out of place was the essay by the decorated soldier, who managed to hold onto some sense of idealism about the USA despite the injustices in his own narrative. His inclusion makes sense, however, to cover a range of the undocumented experience in to demonstrate that even military excellence will not save you from the dehumanization of the system. 5/5

Rummage / Ife-Chudeni O. Aputa / 2017

Rummage (Little A, 2017) by Ife-Chudeni O. Aputa

“Brave” is a word commonly overused when describing contemporary poetry, but in regards to Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa’s debut collection Rummage, “brave” is an understatement. Rummage is not a book of easy answers. “For me, the poem is not for a space to make arguments or come to definitive answers or full stops,” Oputa told Pen America in a 2017 interview. “For me, the poem is a space for questioning, exploration, and sitting with the unknown.” True to her word, Oputa’s explorations of desire, heartbreak, and trauma do not shy away from the truth for the sake of the speaker or the reader. Rummage challenges readers to create space for a speaker who has wrestled with violence and has not always left the mat blameless.

But in this ugliness, Oputa continually finds grace. “Ode to Shame” and “Kwansaba for my Mother” are particularly stunning for their ability to draw strength and wisdom from some of the speaker’s most debilitating moments. Both the ode and the kwansaba are poems of praise, and in both cases, emerge from events many do not find survivable, much less praiseworthy. In “Ode to Shame,” the speaker asks Shame for forgiveness for all the harm she’s done in its name.

I wanted

to be a weapon, a forest, a city that burns 

one hundred degrees and more

and never turns to ash. (4)

These lines precisely describe the agony of shame and the hunger for self-punishment and vengeance that come with it. In “Ode to Shame,” shame may not be completely expelled or overcome, but by acknowledging the ways we misuse shame to hurt ourselves and others and by refusing to continue to do so, its harm is limited and its lessons are accepted. As the first poem in Rummage, “Ode to Shame” sets up the collection as one ready to work through whatever shame has to offer without letting it consume the speaker.

Sometimes this shame is relinquished, sometime it sits fierce but surmountable at the bottom of the page, sometimes it passes, and other times, it is bonding. A kwansaba is an African American form that celebrates family written in seven lines with seven words each where no word exceeds seven letters. In “Kwansaba for my Mother,” for example, Oputa describes a moment where the mother’s body is violated in front of the speaker. The title of the poem sets us up to expect a warm, heartfelt poem about the mother and the body of the poem reverses those expectations and asks the reader, what does it mean to try to find meaning in these moments of harm? If read as a traditional kwansaba—that is, if we attempt to read the poem in search of something to praise or be grateful for—the title would seem to exult the mother for her strength to overcome the harrowing ordeal, and likewise, the last line would seem to celebrate the mother and the speaker for their joint survival. “My heart glows dark with our silence,” the speaker tells us (emphasis mine, 9). The silence here seems to bond the speaker and mother, a secret kept and disclosed with care, a heart that witnesses and burns heavy with its empathy. For many communities of survivors, silence and isolation are shared experiences, ones that Oputa masterfully uses to build spaces of sharing and understanding. Oputa’s work honors the sacrifices and losses too often kept silenced for survival, and in doing so, she makes the celebration of survival possible.

Oputa’s kwansaba is in direct conversation with one of the greatest contemporary poets to ever touch the pen: Lucille Clifton. In Clifton’s tenth collection, Mercy, the title poem discusses another sexual assault in terms of mercy, gratitude, and fury with a form as compact as a kwansaba. Oputa’s kwansaba asks us as many difficult questions as Clifton’s short poem. For Oputa to gift the reader a poem with the concision, the precision, and the brutal wisdom of Clifton’s “Mercy” in their debut collection is a testament of her poetic prowess and promise.  

The measure of any collection of poetry is its ability to give words to the unsayable. In Rummage, different silences haunt the collection like a web. As if in perfect symmetry, the only other word that seems to appear as frequently as “silence” is “mouth.” Throughout Rummage, the speaker’s mouth violates and is violated. It is the place in which a group of bullies can “disappear” to escape punishment (11). And it is also the vehicle through which some of the power of these violations can be undone. Oputa’s caliber as a poet is proven by her ability to confront these silences and siding with the truth, no matter how harrowing.

If to “rummage” means to make a clumsy search through a subject, Oputa’s collection is so carefully knitted it undercuts the title. Each of its sections are tightly focused, weaving layers of meaning that make the poems remain fresh with each new read. And as if Oputa’s lush language wasn’t enough to hypnotize any reader, the collection also features two long poems (including one cutthroat contrapuntal and something I want to call a quadruple sestina) which could kick the legs out from beneath even the most seasoned poets.

The word “rummage” appears only once throughout the collection: In “Portrait of Memory with Shadow,” the speaker is a collective of seven-year-old girls who take turns straddling and kissing a smaller and reluctant seven-year-old boy, hidden from his mother: “He learned obedience swiftly, / parted his lips and let us rummage” (11). The title of the collection thereby directs us to one of the speaker’s most searing moments of shame and references the way love and sexuality warp throughout the collection.

The second poem of the collection, “We are sitting around discussing our shame,” features another haunting confession of youthful sexual trespass. In this way, Rummage does not feign to be something it is not. After the cathartic “Ode to Shame,” where the speaker provides the reader with a healthier approach to shame, the mettle of this approach is put to the test. By the second poem, you know what sort of collection you are stepping into: a collection brave enough to present shameful acts for discussion in an attempt to overcome them.

Both “Portrait of Memory with Shadow’ and “We are sitting around discussing our shame” fill me with fear. I fear for those harmed by similar violences, and also, I fear for the speaker. Through experience and conversation, I know moments of maladroit sexuality in childhood are not unusual, but at a time where there’s a general expectation for narratives to be ethically seamless, I fear these confessions will be shouted back down into silence, where they will fester and go unaddressed. For me, these two poems were healing, if only for the reminder that I’m not alone in being forced to muddle through similar shades of violence throughout childhood.  

I want to live in a world where the forms of shame discussed in Rummage are not silenced, where the confessions of Oputa’s speaker can be met with something other than social death. Throughout the collection, the arc of each gut-dropping section resolves with a form of community, a form of self-knowledge, or another form of care, where the isolation of shame is vanquished, where vulnerability is rewarded with a certain kind of peace. Search and the diligent reader of Rummage will find a “version of you not as loneliness, but better—… a new myth all your own” (53).

After spending three days in the hospital after almost attempting suicide, I did not expect to ever find a piece of writing that could gracefully encompass the extent of the shame and heartache I felt and continue to feel because of my own traumas. Sometime in February, I opened the collection once again on the bus and became so absorbed not only did I miss my stop, by the time I looked up the bus had completed its route and I was back at home again, the book of poems trembling in my hands. In March, I learned one of my most important friends had killed herself. A victim of many of the same violences described in Rummage, I wish I could have shared the collection with her to offer her a small piece of the relief and salvation Rummage gave me. Thank you, Oputa, for giving me a collection to help me work my way through my own pain and forgiveness. Rummage has been my balm, my salve, a buoy for when the storm threatens to drown me.

April Round-up ft adrienne marie brown, Dayna Patterson

WE WILL NOT CANCEL US / adrienne marie brown / 2020

What a challenging, compassionate book! I’m glad our social justice movements are amplifying voices as brave and nuanced as brown’s. I read this book in one sitting, and it took maybe two or so hours, carried through by her lucid and urgent writing, her asking the questions we need to consider to continue to grow the abolition movement.

I’ve grown a distaste for some of the prison abolitionist communities I’ve known, only because some seem to know much more about what they’re against than what they’re for. Sometimes they too gleefully launch obvious critiques against our current system while not actively seeking to build up alternatives to carceral justice. There are abolitionists who don’t give people in their own communities the resources and time to work through conflict or harm. Abolition demands that we build systems that truly care for and protect people, which means we need to get used to giving our time and mucking through the yuck of our comrades decision-making, traumas, and so forth to gain enough clarity to understand what needs to be healed, because that’s the only way to prevent violence instead of simply exiling it to another community.

I give this book a 5/5. I recommend it for anyone interested in social justice, social work, Black studies, feminism, and queer lit.

If Mother Braids a Waterfall / Dayna Patterson / 2020

Perhaps feeling limited by all the stereotypes and connotations of bitterness and fury that ride along with ex-Mormon, Patterson coins a new terminology and in doing so carves out a new space for herself in what she calls the post-Mormon. Becoming post-Mormon is a process of grieving, where Patterson writes letters to her ancestors in attempts to honor or decipher their legacies, where poignant moments in Mormon history are unfolded from their origami shapes, and where Patterson finds not only sorrow but relief. My favorite poems are “Still Mormon,” “Our Lord Jesus in Drag,” “When I Beach,” “Thirty-Three Reasons Why: A Partial List,” and “I Could Never Be a Jehovah’s Witness.”

I recommend this book for anyone interested in Mormon studies, the West, religion, and genealogy through verse. 3/5

The Desert Hides Nothing / Ellen Meloy and Stephen Strom / 2020

This book is precious for the way it helps others appreciate and understand the beauty of the Southwest in all its hot, sandy, and dry beauty. Quick vignettes of Meloy’s startlingly poetic prose seduce readers into the landscape with odes on flowers, remoteness, liquid silence, ancient sea beds and more. As someone who somewhat grew up hating our desert, Meloy’s words invite me in, tell me what to look for, help me see the richness where my eyes once only saw thirst and sunburn. Strom’s photographs invite deeper meditation and contemplation, at once realist and abstract. Anyone living in the Mountain West knows it’s immensely difficult to capture the beauty of this place on camera. Strom’s photographs have a detail and breadth that lulls your eyes to meander over its pixels. I’m grateful for this book and will be using it to help my friends understand the beauty in this stark, dehydrated place.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in landscape photography, the West, environmental literature, and poetry. 5/5

Index of Haunted Houses / Adam O. Davis / 2020

Fans of John Sibley Williams rejoice! Here comes another moody lyricist with an eye capable of seeing in the darkness. These poems read bullet-fast if you let them, passing by like ghosts, leaving you shifted—troubled and intrigued at the same time. There’s an interesting wrestle with the hauntings of racism in “Pacific Americana,” where the poet moans “Forgive us, History. We orphan everything we touch.” Those curious of whether or not they’d vibe with the poetics and imagery of this book, here’s a litmus test: Can you appreciate the haunted stillness of this image from “Ghost Story, 2020”:

The Earth a blue penny in a black pool.

My biggest beef with this collection is that when I interviewed Adam O. Davis for the Utah Book Festival in 2020, he seemed to imply that he didn’t really believe in ghosts. As someone who regularly communes with the religious, psychics, poets, spiritualists, and mystics, it seems clumsy to write a whole book using ghost as a lyric metaphor for your grief if you have not been haunted. The ghost seems boiled down to something abstract, rather than something visceral here.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in lyric poetry, contemporary American poetry, or someone who just needs something moody to play in the back of their skull.

August to March Round-Up: 27 Books!

Hello world,

August 2020 to October 2020, my only real goal every day was getting through my workday. My therapist specifically had me working on not caring how productive I was each day, so I can base my self-love and self-worth on something other than my productivity. I appreciate my therapist for the revolutionary challenge and change she sparked in me and my sense of self. It really helped connect me to a truer, more peaceful version of myself. Anyway, personal growth aside, I managed to keep reading a lot, but fell very behind on the book reviews. In late March 2020, I made the goal of writing a book review for every book I read throughout a year. In a desperate attempt to keep by my personal goal, here’s a round-up of 27 books I read that I didn’t get around to writing a complete blog post for.

Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas / Roberto Lovato / 2020

One of the most comprehensive books on the contemporary Salvadoran migrant experience ever written. I hope it becomes a classic in Central American and Latinx studies. It’s all here: 1932, the civil war, migration, understanding gang violence, and one man’s reflections and making sense of it all. It’s a book I wish I would have read when I was 13. Lovato is one of our fiercest and sharpest voices. With the swagger of a once-gang member, once-born again Christian, and once revolutionary, Lovato writes in searing, lucid prose. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Latinx and Latin American histories, international politics, memoir, war literature, or gang literature. 5/5

The Book of Delights / Ross Gay / 2019

Written during the Trump era, Ross writes blunt, poetic observations of his daily life, in an attempt to flesh out the delight. In doing so, Ross opens our senses to the wonder and deliciousness, sometimes quotidian, sometimes spectacular, always somehow ubiquitous. Listening to this book is one of the most healing things I’ve done and practiced in the past month. This is not a book without its share of sorrow and loss, but a practice in staying present in the moment and finding the stars in the darkness. I recommend this book to everyone, but especially think it provides a valuable contribution to Black studies, as it focuses on Black joy rather than Black suffering. 5/5

Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way / Lao Tzu, rendered by Ursula Le Guin / 2019

I first discovered the Tao Te Ching through a poetic rendition of it in my local library in 8th grade. It was about the same time I discovered The Gospel of Thomas and The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom, two books that rattled my sense of self and the world. At the time, it provided me with a larger sense of meaning and spirituality when my then-Mormon worldview began to fray at the edges.

When I saw that literary powerhouse Ursula Le Guin had a rendition, I got my hands on it immediately. I worked my way through this book in the mornings and re-discovered some of the hardest earned lessons of my life, elucidated in pocket-sized stanzas in a language clear as water. They served as important reminders in a world constantly trying to distract us and convince us of other urgencies and priorities. Le Guin’s rendition is by far my favorite. It includes helpful—not distracting or pedantic—footnotes that help you wrestle with the meaning of the text. The notes includes critiques, etymologies, competing translations, Le Guin’s own wrestlings with the difficult language and sometimes obscure meaning.

Many of the translations of the Tao te Ching lose its humor, its fluidity and its clarity, reveling instead in obscurity and literalism. Le Guin makes Lao Tzu feel human. I recommend this book to everyone, especially martial artists, philosophers, the religious, and anyone going through traumatic experiences. 5/5

Letters to a Young Brown Girl / Barbara Jane Reyes / 2020

I was first introduced to Barbara Jane Reyes through Soleil David during my MFA program. I am incredibly indebted to her as Reyes is—or at least should be—one of the most important voices in poetry land, especially when it comes to women of color. Written mostly in prose poetry, Letters to a Young Brown Girl reads with the clarity and down-to-earth-ness of Yesika Salgado and the blade of Natalie Diaz in my opinion, a great marriage of staple content and razor sharp form. Anyone looking for music recommendations will be grateful to see a series of poems inspired by songs important to Reyes coming of age. If you are trying to raise a young woman que no se deja, with as much metaphor as passion in her eyes, you want to pass along this book. If you are trying to raise a human who honors the grit and wisdom of the women in their lives, pass along this book. While aimed at a younger audience, it is not without maturity and wisdom. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Filipinx literature, Asian studies, YA literature, and contemporary poetry. 3/5

Summerlost / Allie Condie / 2016

I should begin this quick review by admitting, I was very resistant to liking this book. It’s about Cedar City, a place where I worked overtime almost every week, basically had zero friends, was suffocated by whiteness and conservativism, and where I was incredibly lonely. Condie’s attempts to portray the place in a wistful, poetic, and even beautiful light were not welcomed by me!

Condie’s middle-grade novel covers the story of a young biracial (white and Asian) girl who has recently lost her father and younger brother to a car accident. Written in short, micro-fiction sized chapters, the book moves along quickly while somehow still capturing the smell-the-roses pace and atmosphere of life in rural Utah. Grief, especially at such a young age, is difficult to capture. Yet here, with tenderness, Condie renders the healing of a young girl, who finds ways to treasure and remember those she has lost, while developing new relationships and memories to push her forward. I'm also heartened—and I should say it, impressed!—to see the inclusion of a biracial Asian American character without letting racial issues subsume the rest of the book. The protagonist is a fully developed character and not merely a microcosm of larger race issues.

I recommend this book for everyone, especially 1) children dealing with grief and death, 2) white people trying to learn how to write POC characters, 3) people who need an easy read that will nurture and warm them and won’t demand your work brain to be on without sacrificing craft. This is a book you can cozy up to after a difficult day. 5/5

Appropriation: A Provocation / Paisley Rekdal / 2021

Writing about cultural appropriation usually makes me wanna pull my hair out. Even when I agree with the authors of the think pieces and hot takes, it’s a hard thing to talk about without sounding like you are too woke, foaming at the mouth, the champions of so-called “cancel culture.” Here, Paisley steps into these troubled waters with the grace of a dolphin who knows choreographed swimming routines. She manages to talk about these thorny issues with a clear-eyed precision, compassion, and without become belaboring. The fear of offending someone and clumsily crossing a line haunts many contemporary writers, so it is especially apt and touching to see this collection of essays written to an imaginary student, wrestling with insecurities and difficult subject material, who is asking for advice. This book should be required in every creative writing curriculum, and it should have been required decades ago. It would have saved many a young writer from the grief of muddling through these complicated issues on their own. It would have saved quite a few from getting their work trampled for sloppy renditions of cultures they didn’t know enough about.

I recommend this book to every creator, writer, and artist. It should be a staple of ethnic studies. It should win a grammy too. 5/5

Hood Criaturas / féi hernandez / 2020

féi deserves a spot in poetry right next to Danez Smith and Christopher Soto. Nonbinary, undocumented, and 100% magical, their debut collection of poems has an explosive use of form from the guttural anger of the prose poems “dontcomeformyhood” and “Brunch” to the slick quatrains of “When They Leave, a Pantoum.” While the collection deals with the very real traumas of PTSD and migration, it also celebrates and fights for its joy in poems like “first real nations of nations”. féi has so much soul and punch. I am grateful to get to peer into their light. I recommend this book to anyone interested in undocu literature, LGBTQ+ literature, Latinx literature, “political” poetry and contemporary poetry. 4/5

American Grief in Four Stages / Sadie Hoagland / 2019

14 stories in 155 pages, each with their own seductive sadness. I found myself sinking deeper into my seat, lowering into the sofa breathing this one in deep. These are inglorioIus struggles: a military veteran half-heartedly attempting to kindle a romantic relationship, a teenager trying to make sense of the suicide of his bright and popular little brother. The only reason I’m not giving this five out of five is because a few stories didn’t jump as high as the others, including “Fucking Aztecs” which repeats unfortunate stereotypes about natives. I especially dug stories like "Dementia, 1692”, which takes us back to witch hunts in Puritan America with a glass melting rhythm and sorrow. I recommend this collection to anyone interested in short fiction. 3.5/5

The Beethoven Sequence / Gerald Elias / 2020

I didn’t finish this political thriller. I stopped on this passage and realized all my suspicions that The Beethoven Sequence was, in fact, a bad book, and not simply a book that I wasn’t really interested were true. I especially hated that this book used the really politically fraught story of a man falsely accused of sexual violence as a mere plot device. Here is the passage that made me finally give up on reading, admittedly a couple of hundred pages too late:

“I’ve got this Mr. Clean fantasy,” she says, kissing the top of his head. “I have this thing about bald men. Have I ever mentioned that?”

“Even bald sex offenders?”

“They’re the best kind.”

His hand is inside her bathrobe, and he stands up to make it easier for her to find his zipper. He hasn’t been with a woman since the nightmare started eleven years before. Before his wife left him. Before he spent nine lonely years in prison. He can’t wait any longer. He presses his mouth against hers and she presses back. He pins her on her back on the kitchen table. She tears at his jeans and underpants and grasps his penis, pulling it insider her. He unties her robe and squeezes her breasts, hard. Eyes closed and her head back, she supports herself on her elbows, wrapping her legs around Whitmore’s waist. Her right hand falls into Whitmore’s dinner plate. As he presses into her, she grabs a handful of potato salad and coleslaw and smears it over his face and stuffs it into his mouth. Covering his lips with hers, the two of them tongue the food back and forth from one mouth to the other.

“You like chicken?” she whispers as she licks his face.

“What kind of question is that?” he pants. “Yeah. I suppose.”

“Good. Me, too.”

Feeling behind her for the remains of a chicken drumstick, she clutches it and slowly slides it into and then out of his mouth, as far as it will go, both of them licking at it, sucking on it. She wraps an arm around his neck as he rides her, his body spasming out of control. His wraps his arms around her back, pulling her toward him. He wants it to go on forever, but it has been such a long time. He shudders as he empties himself into her. He sinks onto her chest, panting, laughing, and crying at the same time.

“House confinement has its rewards,” he says, when his breath returns.”

I don’t recommend this book. 0/5

Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype / Clarissa Pinkola Estés / 1989 & Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men / James Sollis / 1994

I read Women Who Run With Wolves because it was recommended to me my many women of color in my life and even my therapist. I read Under Saturn’s Shadow, similarly, because men of color close to me found this title powerful. Both these books strengths are also their greatest weaknesses. Namely, they both essentialize and flatten men and women a tad bit too much to fit into the archetypes they are interested in. As someone whose gender identity and expression doesn’t fit neatly into femininity or masculinity, I struggled a lot to see myself in either book, although I felt pieces of both deep inside me. Women Who Run With Wolves is especially for women who have had to repress themselves under the pressure of racism and patriarchy. Under Saturn’s Shadow is especially for men with a lack of father figures in their lives. Both have deep poetic moments that will sweep you off your feet—it just might not be the norm. If you aren’t into Freudian and Jungian psychology, these probably aren’t for you. I give both 2.5/5.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise / Gene Luen Yang / 2012

I stepped into the Avatar comic series tentatively. I read them for free online, even watched a couple dubbed on YouTube. At the time, I was dreadfully depressed and needed something to just get me to the next day. So I binged, escaping into the world of Avatar. I was impressed by how good the comics are! It’s hard to keep the integrity of such a beloved and masteful series, but Gene Luen Yang pulls it off! Here tensions between Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko emerge as Zuko begins to negotiate with the Earth Kingdom over colonized lands. The plot creates a powerful snapshot of some of the complex cultural mixing that happen during colonization and lived up to my hopes and dreams for the series. I recommend this to all youth and anyone interested in children’s literature. 5/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search / Gene Luen Yang / 2013

One of the greatest mysteries in the Avatar series is what happens to Zuko’s mom. This comic rewards fans’ patience and curiosity and doesn’t fail to deliver a powerful, coherent story, covering this important mystery in Avatar lore, doing a great job of capturing the struggles of women in oppressive marriages. I recommend this to all youth and anyone interested in children’s literature. 5/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Rift / Gene Luen Yang / 2014

This comic is especially good for talking with children about the complications of modernization and the importance of environmental stewardship. Avatar Aang fails to create balance in this issue, prioritizing friendships over peace between humans and spirits. This is a fraught decision, and Yang handles it well. 4/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Smoke and Shadow / Gene Luen Yang / 2015

This comic rewards us with the return of our favorite villain Azula, and she is somehow even more mad, reckless, and bone-chilling. She goes to ghastly extremes to disrupt Zuko’s reign in this one. Zuko learns hard lessons about the dark side of power and the importance of freedom. 5/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender: North and South / Gene Luen Yang / 2016

This series is especially good for talking about intracultural colonization and conflict. Katara and Sokka have to navigate not only coming from a defeated culture whose knowledge has largely been destroyed by war, but also trying to figure out power dynamics with sister tribes with more power. It is a little heavy on the politicking in my opinion, but a decent contribution the Avatar world 3/5

The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars / Michael Dante DiMartino / 2017

Again, I was impressed by how they sustained the integrity and the feel of the TV series. So, I enjoyed and was annoyed by all the same aspects of the comics as I was of the TV series. That said, I deeply enjoyed the way the series navigated the Korra and Asami’s lesbian relationship, creating believable conflict in a supportive family. The new villain is a logical outcome of the spirit world intermingling with the human world. 3/5

The Legend of Korra: Ruins of Empire / Michael Dante DiMartino / 2019

Here, DiMartino tries to create a redemption arc for Kuvira and deals with election stealing. It may have been the less-than-graceful attempts to reconcile Kuvira’s crimes and create a transformed character. It may have been the fact I was reading this alongside endless news about the US election. But this one had me as dissatisfied with it as I was with the Kuvira arc. 2/5

Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal / Ben Sasse / 2018

As I live in a red state, I follow conservative Reddit, am a registered Republican, and now read conservative books to try to understand how to best do cultural and social justice work in this state. Sasse is an interesting figure in the Republican party, voting to impeach Trump but otherwise your run-of-the-mill small-town Republican with a love of pickup trucks, fear of porn, and belief in small governments. I profoundly disagree with Sasse’s romanticization of US history. In one passage, for example, he strains, arguing that the US is exceptional for abolishing slavery, ignoring the fact that plenty of Latin American and European countries abolished slavery before us. Abolishing slavery is a low standard for “exceptional” behavior and even in the scheme of the rest of the world, we were mediocre at best. If you can get past the warped and idealized renditions of US history and tearful patriotism on occasion, you might feel the empathy Sasse has for people navigating the digital revolution and the love he has for community building. Sasse might get a little preachy about building an authentic meaningful work and family life and about avoiding the toxicities of social media, but the majority of Sasse’s observations are hard to disagree with. I recommend this book to anyone trying to understand contemporary US conservatism and contemporary American politics. 2/5

The Only Good Indians / Stephen Graham Jones / 2020

I fell in love with Stephen Graham Jones when I first read Mapping the Interior last February. Jones is literary without pretension, popular for his horror and fantasy that draws heavily on Native lore, social issues, and intergenerational trauma. In the first story, racism is just as threatening of a force as the fantasy monster, as he is chased by both bigoted white men and an elk-monster. In general, his characters are Native men at various levels of stuckness, trying and failing to gain a better grip on their social and economic circumstances. It’s absolutely chilling to see some of them descend into madness, narrated in a brilliantly eerie voice and turn. His characters speak like real people of color, swearing, throwing shade on white folk, and navigating fraught cultural heritages. I recommend this book to anyone interested in horror, fantasy, Native literature, and fiction. 4/5

Calvin and Hobbes: Volume 1 / Bill Watterson / 1987

My partner bought me this book for Christmas because I never really read Calvin and Hobbes much and the comic strip was an important part of her childhood and is a fundamental part of her humor. While these comics didn’t often make me laugh out loud, they are incredibly charming. I particularly enjoyed watching how the comics played with gender, sometimes even subverting some masculine expectations for a tickle. C&H is wholesome, pure playfulness is a world that seems to very interesting versions of that. 4/5

Homegoing / Yaa Gyasi / 2016

Following a well-worn path in Black literature, this novel covers the story of a family in a Ghanaian village, eventually torn apart by the slave trade. It alternates the perspectives of the family left behind in Ghana, as well as the part of the family that will become African American and carries us all the way to the present. I especially appreciated the African portions of the novel, as they traced less familiar terrain (to me), including 1) the story of family that did business in the slave trade and the conflict it created between relatives 2) the story of a queer son in Ghana, navigating African leadership and social pressures of the slave era, and 3) the story of a woman condemned for witchcraft and the death of her child. Deeply lyric and wounding, Gyasi’s writing is carefully carved, chiseled sharp and penetrating. I recommend this book to anyone interested in multiple perspectives in fiction, stories about intergenerational trauma, and Black literature. 4/5

My Woman Card is Anti-Native and Other Two Spirit Truths / Petrona Xemi Tapepechul / 2016

A transgender woman, language worker, actor, poet, playwright, model, and the Artistic Director of Angel Rose Artist Collective, Petrona Xemi Tapepechul is a beauty and joy we don’t deserve. She works with ANIS to preserve the Nawat language in Central America. This collection centers on identity development, especially in fraught politicized contexts. You can critique it for its bluntness, use of form, and the centering of its stanzas, but if you’re reading it for polished literary craft, you’re here for the wrong reasons. This is an enunciation of self, creating space in a world trying to kill you, and doing it with finesse. Xemi is a force. 3/5

Terroir: Love out of Place / Natasha Sajé / 2020

I should start this off by saying I am absolutely the worst person to review this book. Natasha Sajé has been my mentor, former professor, letter of recommend writer, and has—like any teacher—shaped me for better and worse. As a young slam poet, I troubled her office hours with my dreams of becoming a great writer, and she carefully, albeit brutally honestly, provided me with feedback, excellent opportunities, and a place to work out my relationship with writing. I got my feelings hurt a couple of times, some of which I blame on my own arrogance and naivete, and other times due to my own frustrations that Natasha was not the hip-hop-fluent, Spanish-speaking, Central American mentor I really wanted. Our relationship has evolved from one of student-teacher, to colleague-colleague in some ways. I would not be anywhere near where I am today without Natasha, and I’m indebted and grateful for her mentorship. Needless to say, however, our relationship is rich and complex.

As much as I got a small window into her academic presence and felt like I knew her, I knew extremely little about her life and what shaped her. My first year of grad school I read a short essay by Natasha online and was stunned to learn that Natasha was once married to a Black man and that he died tragically and that I likely first met her when she was in the throes of her mourning.

Terroir is an uncomfortable book for many reasons. It deals with the grief of losing her husband and her journey of growth as a white person on racial issues. There are some sticky moments, as when describing her father’s racism, Sajé writes out the N-word, among other slurs her father used. She describes people of color using the clichés of chocolate and food. And while I’m sure that there are a number of moments in the book that will make some people of color cringe, its value comes in Sajé’s willingness to be vulnerable and acknowledging her past mistakes. This is hard work, but as far as white people processing race issues goes, it’s a worthwhile effort.

My favorite parts of the book were the bits that described her queer coming-of-age and her lesbian marriage. Natasha did a great job capturing the beauty of her relationships, whether its with her late husband, current partner, or childhood caregiver. I recommend this book for anyone interested in reading up about relationships, memoirs, and white perspectives on racial issues. 2/5

Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA / Luis Rodriguez / 1993

A predecessor to Unforgetting above, Always Running tells the gritty tale of Luis Rodriguez’s turbulent coming-of-age, including the sex, drugs, gang life, and racism he experienced as a kid. It serves as a powerful map of his way out violent behavior, including the social and school programs that provided important outlets and space for Latinx youth to process issues important to their lives. Always Running includes a fiery argument in favor of ethnic studies courses in high school and the importance for youth of color to see themselves represented. Rodriguez highlights the young women who led his high school activism and the young girlfriends that were good influences on his life.

This book broke into my soul. It covers race riots, murders, drug addiction, the too often unacknowledged scars communities of color suffer generation after generation. It is a required read in LA county I heard, and it should be a required read everywhere in North America. 5/5

The Shadow of Kyoshi / F. C. Yee / 2020

Kyoshi’s conflict with Kuruk, her efforts to create effective change rather than petty vigilante justice, and her conflict with Yun create a tense path for her to follow. While I’m usually not a fan of the politic heavy aspects of certain Avatar storylines, Yee manages to make them interesting by portraying them through Kyoshi’s unique perspective as an orphan turned Avatar and her general clumsiness as Avatar. We get to share her frustration and confusion at the elaborate social rituals of the Fire nation for example. This book was the entertaining, adventurous, emotional read I was hoping for. I recommend it to anyone interested in Fantasy, Asian literature, LGBTQ+ relationships in literature, martial arts, and YA lit.

Disparates / Patrick Madden / 2020

in Disparates, Provo Writer Patrick Madden is purposefully frivolous, tacking in his essays tangential musings whose charm is found in their quirkiness, their dorkiness. This can be really tickling and clever if you are into the vibe, but in general they are the dad jokes of an erudite English professor. I recommend this to anyone interested in seeing the range of forms used in contemporary non-fiction essays. 2/5

Memorias from the Beltway / Mauricio Novoa / 2020

This is a hard-hitting poetry collection with lines that will dagger and snipe like a battle rapper. An heir to the styles of John Murillo and Quique Aviles, Mauricio Novoa reps DC Salvis well. With references to Romero and Roque, poems that are raps with an easygoing fluency in rhyme, this book is everything I love about poetry. Here, Novoa writes about his upbringing in the Beltway, rapping about basketball, police violence, poverty, yes, but also touching poems about his father’s tenderness on Novoa’s first day of school or “Muthafuckin’ Trees,” which is a city boy’s ode to nature. I’m especially grateful for this gift and look forward to tracing Novoa’s sure to be exciting literary career. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Salvi lit, Central American lit, Hip-hop, contemporary poetry, rhyme, and men of color. 5/5

A Brief History of Seven Killings / Marlon James / 2014

A Brief History of Seven Killings / Marlon James / 2014

At 706 pages and practically each chapter packed with graphic scenes of political and gang violence, A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James is not for the faint-of-heart. I listened to it an Audible because it looked like an ambitious project that delved into the biography of Bob Marley, the Cold War, and the history of Jamaica, as well as grappled with questions of how to portray violence in the Global South without becoming trauma porn.

Written in multiple perspectives, the narrators rotate to include small-time drug-addled gangsters (sometimes they’re even gay!), big-time drug-addled gangsters, Jamaican maids, a rogue journalist, US intelligence officials, and I’m sure a few others I’m forgetting to mention. The audio book is brilliantly performed. According to Marlon James, he wanted it to be “a novel that would be driven only by voice”, and in this extent, he succeeded magnificently. Piecing together the plot and keeping track of different characters is painfully dizzying and chaotic, as this plethora of voices each bring their own biases, contradictions—as a reader you will be forced to navigate the voices of dozens of flawed narrators. I had a tough time following the exact cause-and-effect of the plot beyond the broad strokes, which made me glob onto the voices of the characters as a reader.

When it comes to poetry especially, I have typically been able to get through a first reading of heavy work rather quickly even if its exhausting. I read most of [insert] boy in one day, for example. The power of violence in poetry is typically that it is lyrical enough to bear and emotionally gripping enough to haunt you: to make your visit more than just a trauma porn visit, to encourage you to seriously meditate over these issues. This is not the work A Brief History of Seven Killings. If ABHOSK avoids being trauma porn, it’s because trauma porn is supposed to be voyeuristically thrilling. The violence of ABHOSK is so overwhelming and ever present, it was sickening to try to get through. There are several attempted and completed sexual assaults and murders narrated. Early on, police investigate a rape allegation by asking all the men in the vicinity to strip and hump the floor. Here I think it would be useful to quote this telling part of an interview with the author, Marlon James:

“VASISHTA: This novel is possibly one of the most violent in Caribbean literature. Did you have a threshold to your violence?

JAMES: I’m a big believer that violence should be violent. That’s the problem with a lot of with a lot of PG-13 violence. Violence has consequences. People bleed and people die, and so it should be violent. You can end up in a sort of pornography of violence, but you have to risk pornography. If your depiction of loss doesn’t make the reader feel loss, then you didn’t depict it right.

VASISHTA: The dialogue is so real. The air is always pregnant with danger. It’s not an easy read by any standard. I’m sure people will put this book down thinking you must have seen some pretty rough things in your life.”

The reason James avoids becoming trauma porn in my opinion is that he has written a book that is nearly unbearable to get through.

If you took a shot for every time the word “pussyhole” shows up, you will be in the hospital with severe alcohol poisoning and several bottles left to drink.

I would not recommend this book to most readers, but if you are interested in Jamaican history, Bob Marley, the Cold War, voice-driven literature, multiple perspectives in literature, or are wrestling with questions about how to ethically portray violence, I would recommend this book. There is an obsession with the “real Jamaica” in this book that would make it ripe for an exploration of national identity.