Reviews Archives - Page 19 of 221

“Do You Hearest?”: A Review of Ova Completa by Susana Thénon, tr. Rebekah Smith

Where are you, Susana Thénon?—which I think might mean: How does Thénon achieve something more than evasion and isolation with all of this wandering around? Does she land somewhere?—“In a room where if I am I’m not or I am who cares”

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No Way to Avoid Things Mattering: A Dream Life by Claire Messud

The placement of a marquee tent at a party or the tension between the caterer and a housekeeper take on outsized importance.

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Sketch book Reviews: Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

An illustrated review of TIME IS A MOTHER by Ocean Vuong.

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On the Mystery of Eating Meat: Springer Mountain by Wyatt Williams

If you eat meat, then you are an animal who kills other animals. Humans are not alone in this, but more than all other creatures of the earth, we have gotten grotesquely good at it.

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Reading Achy Obejas’s BOOMERANG/BUMERÁN as Indelible and Recursive Testimony

A review of BOOMERANG/BUMERÁN, a bilingual poetry collection from Achy Obejas available now from Beacon Press.

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A Breathtaking and Terrifying Expanse: Quan Barry’s When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East

“The distances are staggering. It could take you an hour to drive to a spot on the edge of the horizon, yet that spot feels like it’s just within reach,” Barry writes. “This is what it means to live on the steppe. There are no walls between you and nature. You are nature.”

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When To Believe an Unreliable Narrator: Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts

The aestheticization of violence in literature, like other representations, can be deceiving.

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The Scent of Man: Cameron MacKenzie’s River Weather

That I find these characters sympathetic, that I wish them whole while assuming they will never be: This is the beauty and frustration MacKenzie has so elegantly combined. It is easy to hate these men, but I have loved them.

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“Yes” as Signature and Grounding: Hannah Emerson’s The Kissing of Kissing

In this experience of oneness . . . Emerson invites comparisons to mystic poets. And like them, Emerson breaks from her singular experience to take on some of life’s biggest questions: What does it mean to be human? Why do we exist?

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A Guidebook for Liminal Times: Martin Shaw’s Smoke Hole

These are liminal times. You must have this book at your side.

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To Become A Kind Person Who Also Writes Books: Body Work by Melissa Febos

The ethics of Body Work are not necessarily that we writers and lovers must achieve perfect consistency between our behaviors (shopping at Sephora) and our politics (beauty standards are harmful), or between our desires (to be rewarded, both intangibly and commercially, for our adherence to dominant culture) and our values (to resist that dominance).

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At the Crossing Between Words: Migrant Psalms by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

The actor stares the audience in the eye—shattering the fourth wall, and we’re implored to see better. Holnes challenges us to view our realities as multifaceted and dynamic—there are no neat boxes, no easy definitions.

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