Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
As a lover of all things fantasy and magical realism, obviously I had to pick this up. And the hype is so justified!
About the book
Author: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
Publisher: Tiny Reparations Books
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
This burst onto my radar seemingly out of nowhere around the time of its publication, and then it was longlisted for the National Book Award for nonfiction. As a lover of all things fantasy and magical realism, obviously I had to pick it up. And the hype is so justified.
There’s a little something for everyone here — this is cultural criticism combined with memoir, and Villarreal loves not only magic but also music. And of the best essays is on Game of Thrones (considering it through the lenses of border walls and migration), which of course has mass appeal. The chapters on music didn’t hold my attention as well as the others, although that makes sense as I’m not a big music junkie.
But above all, this collection is SO SMART. I loved every single connection Villarreal drew, almost none of which had occurred to me before reading this book. The way she considers pop culture, colonialsm, and consumerism is just plain excellent.
I would like more books like this, where people take pop culture seriously by considering it to be culture (which it is), worthy of criticism. Thank you!
Content and Trigger Warnings
Racism/Xenophobia
Grief
Suicide attempt
Domestic violence
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
This book is an incredible feat of anthropology and human connection. De León’s generous, tender focus on the smugglers he befriended shows us a side of the equation rarely considered and often dismissed.
About the book
Author: Jason De León
Publisher: Viking
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
Soldiers and Kings wasn’t even on my radar until it won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. But that was right around the time I got hungry for nonfiction again, so I borrowed it from the library and decided to see why it had earned the accolade.
Now I know: This book is an incredible feat of anthropology and human connection. In it, De León chronicles the near-decade he spent getting to know a group of Honduran human smugglers, those hired by migrants to help them cross the border (not to be confused with human traffickers, who take people against their will). Unlike with most books about the migrant crisis, which of course focus on the migrants, De León’s generous, tender focus on the smugglers he befriended shows us a side of the equation rarely considered and often dismissed. These people are not (all) rich, cruel crime lords. They are often fleeing situations just as impossible and dangerous as the people who hire them, and they too have dreams and families and desperate hope.
I didn’t think that the execution of this book was perfect; despite being organized into chapters, it felt a bit unstructured, and different people and incidents bled together in my mind. This made it feel a little longer than my attention span wanted it to be. That also could have been a symptom of me doing most of the book on audio (although I did think De León did a great job narrating). But I don’t think that’s enough to take away from the accomplishment of the work De León has done. There were several deserving books nominated for the NBA, and this was certainly one of them — no complaints from me on it earning the medal.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Violence, murder
Drug and alcohol use
Death and grief
Gun violence
Homophobia
Catalina
Overall I liked this book but didn’t love it, although it’s mostly just bad matchmaking between me and this book.
About the book
Author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Publisher: One World
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
Everyone (including me) loved The Undocumented Americans, so I was already curious about this book. Then it landed on the National Book Award longlist, which bumped it all the way to the top of my TBR. Overall I liked but didn’t love it, although it’s mostly just bad matchmaking between me and this book because I just don’t love novels about chaotically messy main characters.
That said, it’s definitely got merits. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio has written one of the sharpest, most vivid characters I’ve read in a long time. She herself is one of Harvard’s first undocumented graduates (like Catalina), and surely she drew from her own experiences, but it never feels like she’s just writing about herself. Catalina could have walked off the page. She’s flawed and zingy and felt so, so true to her age (a college freshman).
I will say that the storytelling style felt a little essayist/reportage, which actually makes sense for Catalina’s first-person POV, but can be a little tough to push through. But for that reason, I thought this book worked really well on audio! It was easy to swallow the book down whole in that format.
If you like coming of age stories, especially with excellent Latina representation and messy main characters, definitely give this book a shot.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Deportation
Suicidal thoughts
Death of a parent
Xenophobia
The Bullet Swallower
What a genre-mashup delight this book was! Part antihero western, part dual-timeline family saga, with a sprinkling of magical realism (including a very mysterious book), The Bullet Swallower has something for everyone.
About the book
Author: Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My Review
What a genre-mashup delight this book was! Part antihero western, part dual-timeline family saga, with a sprinkling of magical realism (including a very mysterious book), The Bullet Swallower has something for everyone.
In 1895, Antonio Sonoro’s train robbery goes wrong, which sets him off on a revenge tour through Texas. Meanwhile, in Mexico City in 1964, his movie-star grandson Jaime finds himself in possession of a mysterious book and with a mysterious visitor. This was inspired by the author’s family history and lore (definitely read the author’s note!), and it made for a pretty unputdownable story. I gobbled it up.
So yes, there is a lot going on here, but it never actually feels that way. Elizabeth Gonzalez James combines elements perfectly and leaves readers thinking deeply about the legacy of a family history, who is responsible for the sins of our fathers, and our generational “curse.”
The audiobook was also very well done! I switched back and forth between print and audio and sometimes listened while I read, and I found the story ultra-consumable in any format. Lee Osorio (who also performed parts of Chain-Gang All-Stars and many other books) was excellent.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Gun violence, murder, death (including family/children)
Body horror
Torture
Animal death
The Undocumented Americans
The Undocumented Americans is a moving, well-written memoir-in-essays that does exactly what I want from nonfiction: it helps open my understanding of the world and other people.
Author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Publisher: One World
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.
Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants--and to find the hidden key to her own.
Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented--and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the nation of singular, effervescent characters often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects.
In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival.
In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.
TL;DR Review
The Undocumented Americans is a moving, well-written memoir-in-essays that does exactly what I want from nonfiction: it helps open my understanding of the world and other people.
For you if: Like memoir and/or seek to learn more about the undocumented immigrant experience
Full Review
I’m late to the party when it comes to The Undocumented Americans; it’s 2.5 years old and was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award for nonfiction (among others). I’ve watched many friends read and love it in that time, and I always knew I’d get there eventually. And now I have: This month we’re reading it for the book club I run at my office.
The Undocumented Americans is a journalistic memoir-in-essays by a young woman who was one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard. The book not only gives us a look at her life and experiences, but also introduces us to communities of undocumented folks all over the country, from Staten Island to Miami to Flint, Michigan.
This book isn’t that long; I listened to the entire audiobook (read by the author) during a single long car ride. But it’s moving, well-written, and often sharp as a knife. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio isn’t afraid to surprise us with her choice of language to make a point, and she wields it with precision. She’s smart and unapologetic. Her care for the people she writes about seeps through every page.
I read nonfiction to broaden my understanding of humanity, to foster a stronger connection to the global community, and to become a more empathetic citizen of this world. This book most certainly helped me do it, and I’m so glad I finally picked it up.
Content and Trigger Warnings
Racism
Suicidal thoughts
Mental illness
Death
Alcoholism
The President and the Frog
The President and the Frog is a quirky, funny, moving, and ultimately hopeful little novel. It won’t be for everyone, but I really liked it.
Author: Carolina De Robertis
Publisher: Knopf
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
From the acclaimed author of Cantoras comes an incandescent novel—political, mystical, timely, and heartening—about the power of memory, and the pursuit of justice.
At his modest home on the edge of town, the former president of an unnamed Latin American country receives a journalist in his famed gardens to discuss his legacy and the dire circumstances that threaten democracy around the globe. Once known as the Poorest President in the World, his reputation is the stuff of myth: a former guerilla who was jailed for inciting revolution before becoming the face of justice, human rights, and selflessness for his nation. Now, as he talks to the journalist, he wonders if he should reveal the strange secret of his imprisonment: while held in brutal solitary confinement, he survived, in part, by discussing revolution, the quest for dignity, and what it means to love a country, with the only creature who ever spoke back—a loud-mouth frog.
As engrossing as it is innovative, vivid, moving, and full of wit and humor, The President and the Frog explores the resilience of the human spirit and what is possible when danger looms. Ferrying us between a grim jail cell and the president's lush gardens, the tale reaches beyond all borders and invites us to reimagine what it means to lead, to dare, and to dream.
TL;DR Review
The President and the Frog is a quirky, funny, moving, and ultimately hopeful little novel. It won’t be for everyone, but I really liked it.
For you if: You like literary fiction, historical fiction, and fables.
Full Review
First, thank you to Knopf for the gifted copy of this book! Like many others, I read and loved Cantoras, and so I jumped at the chance to read Caronlina De Robertis’ next novel. If you’re hoping for a similar story in The President and the Frog, you might be disappointed — the stories are very different — but her gorgeous writing and piercing insight into humanity is absolutely here.
Part historical fiction, part fable, The President and the Frog is about a man whose character is a fictionalized version of José Mujica, the former president of Uruguay. As he welcomes yet another reporter into his home, he finds himself ruminating on a story he’s never, in his years as an open book, told anyone: the visits from a talking, prescient frog during his solitary confinement as a political prisoner. We flash backward and forward in time, between the frog urging him to dig deep to find The One Thing, and the reporter who’s nervous about the global ramifications of climate change and the 2016 US election. What emerges is a story that offers a grounded form of hope and optimism in the face of grim reality.
The middle felt a little slow for me, but that’s because I’m not the kind of person to seek out historical fiction for the sake of the genre, and I know very little about the political history of Uruguay. I imagine that someone with a personal connection to the country or an interest in history in general would feel much differently. Still, I loved the beginning and the end of this book enough to have really liked this book overall. De Robertis has written us a funny, quirky, moving, and memorable tale that reminds us not only what it means to not only fight for the good, but also the struggle and importance of reminding ourselves why.
Finally: De Robertis narrated her own audiobook, which I listened to as I read. I really believe this added a lot to my reading experience — her rendition of the frog, in all his smart-ass wisdom, brought him to life in a way that I can’t imagine could have happened on the page alone.
If you like literary fiction, historical fiction, and fables (what a combo!), pick this one up.
Content Warnings
Confinement
Rape (alluded to)
The Five Wounds
The Five Wounds is simultaneously big-hearted and unflinching, with characters who feel like they could literally step off the page. I really liked it.
Author: Kirstin Valdez Quade
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice.
It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path.
Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to.
The Five Wounds is a miraculous debut novel from a writer whose stories have been hailed as “legitimate masterpieces” (New York Times). Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.
TL;DR Review
The Five Wounds is simultaneously big-hearted and unflinching, with characters who feel like they could literally step off the page. I really liked it.
For you if: You like character-driven novels — and flawed characters.
Full Review
“What no one appreciates is that it takes courage—and considerable dramatic flair—to show up and insist you belong, to invoke genetic claims and demand food and love and housing.”
If not for Roxane Gay’s Audacious book club on Literati, this book may have flown completely under my radar. I’m so glad that wasn’t the case. It’s been a while since I read a book with such vivid, flawed, tenderly written characters.
The novel, which grew out of a short story from Valdez Quade’s collection Night at the Fiestas, has three main characters: Amadeo, an unemployed alcoholic living with his mother and looking for a quick fix for his life; his fierce, strong, pregnant teenage daughter, Angel; and his mother, Yolanda, who’s carrying a very heavy secret. The story kicks off during holy week in New Mexico, when Amadeo is set to play a key role in the ceremonies with his uncle’s religious brotherhood, and Angel unexpectedly turns up on his (Yolanda’s) doorstep.
There are also so many vivid, incredible secondary and tertiary characters in this book, from Angel’s mother to her child’s father and more. I wish I had space to tell you about them all. A fourth POV character is introduced in part two, but I won’t spoil that because I had expected this person to be a much better, less selfish person than they turned out to be. In fact, that’s what makes these characters, and this book, so impressive — how many mistakes Valdez Quade allows her characters to make, how many bad things happen to and are brought about by them, and yet how tenderly they’re written, and how you grow to love them. Even Amadeo, whom I wanted to punch more than once, feels like that one family member you love because they’re family even though they’re also not a very good person.
I also switched back and forth between print and audio for this one, and the audiobook is really well done. The narrator played a big role in helping to bring these characters to life.
Anywho, this one’s for my character-driven literary fiction book fam. Add it to your TBR; give it a read or a listen.
Content Warnings
Alcoholism
Drug use (prescription painkillers, marijuana)
Cancer
Death and grief
Toxic relationship
Homophobia
Of Women and Salt
Author: Gabriela Garcia
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
A daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born
In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.
From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals--personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others--that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America's most tangled, honest, human roots.
TL;DR Review
Of Women and Salt was a gorgeous, unforgettable book, with a feeling somewhere between a novel and short stories. I’m so glad I read it.
For you if: You like character-driven novels by poets.
Full Review
“María Isabel thought it had always been women who wove the future out of the scraps, always the characters, never the authors. She knew a woman could learn to resent this post, but she would instead find a hundred books to read.”
I read Of Women and Salt as part of Roxane Gay’s Audacious book club via Literati, and it was so good, y’all. Seriously. From the very first chapter, I knew I was going to love it. Searing stories, sweeping history, sharp women who reach for you right out of the page. And prose that cuts like a knife. What else could you ask for?
The book is a novel, but it’s written in chapters that bounce around in time and between narrators, so it almost has a connected short story collection type of feeling to it. I don’t want to give too much away, but the characters are stretch back generations, from the family matriarch in Cuba in the 1800s to a young woman (Jeanette) struggling with addiction today.
It’s rich with history and multigenerational legacy, an homage to Latinx women throughout the past few centuries. I particularly loved the first chapter, about Maria Isabel in a cigar factory in the 1800s, and one close to the middle from the POV of Jeanette’s mother (IYKYK). Gabriela Garcia is also a poet, and it absolutely shows. Literary and moving and beautiful and painful all at once.
Plenty of content warnings on this one, but if you are OK with them, it’s so worth it. I may reread this one in the future. I definitely, definitely recommend.
Content Warnings
Drug abuse and addiction
Domestic violence
Sexual assault
Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)
Black Sun is the start of what promises to be an excellent high fantasy series, with expert world-building and fiercely lovable characters. I think the majority of the series’ action is yet to come.
Author: Rebecca Roanhorse
Publisher: Saga Press
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.
A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun
In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.
Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic adventure exploring the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in the most original series debut of the decade.
TL;DR Review
Black Sun is the start of what promises to be an excellent high fantasy series, with expert world-building and fiercely lovable characters. I think the majority of the series’ action is yet to come.
For you if: You enjoy modern-style epic fantasy, and/or you want to read more fantasy by Indigenous authors.
Full Review
“Usually,” Xiala said carefully, “when someone describes a man as harmless, he ends up being a villain.”
I bought Black Sun as soon as it came out, but it took me a couple of months to get to it. I knew I’d love it, I just had to squeeze it in. Friends: I was not disappointed. This is the kind of compulsively readable epic fantasy I love, with a big, gorgeous, political world filled with culture; characters as deep as the ocean; and plenty of adventure with promise for more.
This is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, and it’s an epic fantasy inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas. We have a few main characters: Serapio, whose mother set into motion the process of turning him into the vengeful Crow god; Xiala, a sailor and captain from a magical, persecuted people, who loves to get herself into trouble with drink and women; Naranpa, a young visionary who, despite her lower-class birth was risen to the position of Sun Priest; and Okoa, son of the recently deceased matron of the Carrion Crow clan. As we approach the “Day of Convergence” (a full solar eclipse on the winter solstice), their fates hurtle toward one another with unstoppable force.
Black Sun’s main purpose is definitely to build out this beautiful, intricate world and introduce us to these rich characters in order to tee up the rest of the books. There’s a lot of information to learn, but I found the world-building to be smooth and effective and not overwhelming. It’s also exciting and super adventurous, although I think the majority of the action in this series is yet to come in this series. (Although just a heads up that some of the scenes are a little more bloody than average.)
Another thing I really loved: Several characters in this book have a third gender, one that uses the pronouns xe/xir. This detail was weaved in so naturally, presented without commentary, without making it a thing. I have never read a book with characters that use any pronouns outside of she/her, he/him, or they/them. It was really well done.
This is a book about destiny, and pride, and home, and power, and class, and revolution. I don’t know when the next book is going to be published, but I can’t wait.
Trigger Warnings
Parental abandonment/neglect
Blood and violence
Ordinary Girls
Author: Jaquira Díaz
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Ordinary Girls is a fierce, beautiful, and unflinching memoir from a wildly talented debut author. While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes: as her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was surrounded by the love of her friends; as she longed for a family and home, she found instead a life upended by violence. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz triumphantly maps a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.
With a story reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz delivers a memoir that reads as electrically as a novel
TL;DR Review
Ordinary Girls is an incredible memoir. Jaquira Díaz holds no punches, holds your stare while she turns her life story into an anthem for girls like her.
For you if: You like memoirs at all.
Full Review
“We were girls, but we’d spend the rest of our days together if we could. Until one day we realized that without meaning to, we grew up, grew apart, broke each other’s hearts.”
I’ve had my eye on Ordinary Girls ever since it was published in 2019 to high praise. It wasn’t until I got a copy in my hand-curated Page 1 Books subscription that I finally had the nudge I needed to pick it up. And y’all, those folks over at Page 1 are so good at their jobs — I loved it.
Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico and lived there for a few years until violence pushed her family to Miami Beach. There, she grew up in housing projects with a defeated father and violent brother on one side, and a schizophrenic mother and beloved sister on the other. Violence, poverty, drugs — none of it was strange to her. And throughout all of it were her girls — her friends.
This is the kind of memoir that makes the world bigger, richer, and more human. The kind written by regular people with regular and exceptional, harsh and beautiful, small and big lives. The kind that open a lot of eyes to the experiences that a lot of people live with.
And as anyone who’s read this book will tell you, it’s also just so, so well written. Certain passages stopped my breath. Díaz showed a promise for writing early on, and eventually her desire to be a writer is what helped her claw her way out of one life and into another. But this isn’t a story about someone who worked hard and overcame all odds; it’s about an ordinary girl who had a mix of good timing and luck and just enough stubbornness in her heart to keep pushing forward.
Strong recommend.
Trigger Warnings
Sexual assault and rape
Drug addiction and use, alcoholism
Parental abuse/neglect
Self-harm and attempted suicide
Mental illness/schizophrenia
Violence by family members
Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution
Resistencia is a collection of political- and social-themed poems by Latinx poets, presented in English and Spanish. It’s incredible.
Author: Mark Eisner and Tina Escaja (Editors), Julia Alvarez (Introduction)
Publisher: Tin House
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Cover Description
With a powerful and poignant introduction from Julia Alvarez, Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution is an extraordinary collection, rooted in a strong tradition of protest poetry and voiced by icons of the movement and some of the most exciting writers today. The poets of Resistencia explore feminist, queer, Indigenous, and ecological themes alongside historically prominent protests against imperialism, dictatorships, and economic inequality. Within this momentous collection, poets representing every Latin American country grapple with identity, place, and belonging, resisting easy definitions to render a nuanced and complex portrait of language in rebellion.
Included in English translation alongside their original language, the fifty-four poems in Resistencia are a testament to the art of translation as much as the act of resistance. An all-star team of translators, including former US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera along with young, emerging talent, have made many of the poems available for the first time to an English-speaking audience. Urgent, timely, and absolutely essential, these poems inspire us all to embrace our most fearless selves and unite against all forms of tyranny and oppression.
TL;DR Review
Resistencia is a collection of political- and social-themed poems by Latinx poets, presented in English and Spanish. It’s incredible.
For you if: You like poetry with a purpose.
Full Review
Big thanks to Tin House for granting me an advanced review copy of this poetry collection on NetGalley. I loved it, and I think that I will be purchasing a finished copy when it comes out on September 15 (which is also, btw, the start of National Latinx Heritage Month).
This is an incredibly powerful collection. Allow me to list its merits: An introduction by Julia Alvarez. 54 incredible poems by incredible Latinx poets, “icons of the movement and some of the most exciting writers today.” All translated by equally talented people. The translated versions printed alongside the original Spanish. Comprehensive profiles of the poets and the translators, doing each of them justice.
Yes, you need this book.
If you couldn’t guess from all that, the poems themselves are just so good. They’re beautiful, moving, enraging, heartbreaking — I highlighted so many. There are layers to parse through, re-reads of this collection to be completed in the future. They range in subject matter from feminism, being queer, being Indigenous, the environment, identity, home, family, and so much more. I especially loved “The Earth Is a Satellite of the Moon,” but there are also so many more I could list out here.
Maybe I would list all 54.
Sabrina & Corina: Stories
Sabrina & Corina is a collection of really, really good short stories about Latinas of indigenous ancestry. There wasn’t a single one I didn’t enjoy, and many I truly loved.
Author: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Publisher: One World
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Latinas of Indigenous descent living in the American West take center stage in this haunting debut story collection — a powerful meditation on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands.
Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado — a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite — these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force.
In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.
Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home.
TL;DR Review
Sabrina & Corina is a collection of really, really good short stories about Latinas of indigenous ancestry. There wasn’t a single one I didn’t enjoy, and many I truly loved.
For you if: You like short stories and / or character- and human-driven plots.
Full Review
Sabrina & Corina is one of the best short story collections I’ve read. But don’t take my word for it: It was shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.
Each story is about a woman who is Latina and indigenous. They take place in the American West, many in the present day, but some in different periods of history as well. I think what makes them all so good is that each one has a unique spark — an impression, a lesson, a meaning — that shines through, but they also all feel connected, like I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the women from each story were related to one another.
I ended up listening to the audiobook while I was riding in the car on a road trip, and after every story I’d pull out Evernote to jot down my emotions and takeaways so that I could transfer them to my reading journal later. Also, each story is read by a different narrator, and it was very well done.
I think my favorite stores were the title story “Sabrina & Corina” (just wow), “Sisters” (what an incredible feat of understated tension and suspense), and “Tomi” (my heart!). But really, they all spoke to me in some way, and there isn’t one I didn’t truly enjoy.
Trigger Warnings
Sexual assault
Domestic abuse
Relationship abuse, physical abuse
Pregnancy, abortion