Review on "Concrete Rose" by Angie Thomas

Hardback cover

Angie Thomas’ first novel, The Hate U Give, was nothing short of groundbreaking. After her sophomore novel, On the Come Up, Thomas decided to return to something a little more familiar to readers.

The first thing fans heard about Angie Thomas’ junior novel was that this was a character we already knew in her “Garden Heights” universe, where The Hate U Give and On The Come Up are set.

Fans went into a frenzy.

Through Twitter, followers of the author soon learned the protagonist’s name: Maverick Carter, the father of Starr Carter who was the protagonist of The Hate U Give. Concrete Rose is a prequel set seventeen years before the award-winning The Hate U Give.

Although it’s a prequel, it is not at all necessary to read The Hate U Give before Concrete Rose. It felt so exciting to return to the Carter family, but if Concrete Rose is your first Angie Thomas novel the only thing that you would miss are character cameos like Maverick who was in The Hate U Give as an adult. As a returning reader to Thomas’ novels, it is exciting to see the backstory of Mav, which was briefly alluded to in The Hate U Give. Not much of Mav’s teenage years are discussed in The Hate U Give. From what I recall, what is discussed is that his oldest child, Seven, has a different mother than the rest of his siblings, which is also discussed in Concrete Rose, and The Hate U Give also mentions that Mav was incarcerated sometime between Concrete Rose and The Hate U Give when his children were young.

Going into the novel, I actually couldn’t recall many details of Mav in The Hate U Give besides the two points I detailed, and honestly I didn’t need to recall that is it is part of what the book is about. The Hate U Give in this case serves to give backstory for Mav.

Thomas’ newest novel Concrete Rose follows seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter who is growing up in Garden Heights as the man of the house while his father is incarcerated. Maverick, or Mav, has to juggle school with bringing in money for his family through dealing drugs for the infamous King Lord gang.

However, when he learns he is the father of a baby, his whole life is turned around.

One thing I wanted to note is Mav’s emotions throughout the novel, and how he expresses them. After losing a beloved family member, Dre, to gang violence, Mav is understandably devastated, but struggles to express himself, especially around his family:

“Men ain’t supposed to cry. We supposed to be strong enough to carry our boulders and everybody else’s…Ain’t got no time to grieve” (Thomas, 120-121), and later, he says “I can’t sit around crying about Dre. I gotta be a man” (Thomas, 163).

Manhood, especially Black manhood is a prominent theme in the novel.

Black children or teenagers are often viewed as much older, or at least given the responsibilities of someone much older, and for Mav, he truly has to take the role of an adult and a father, when he should just have to worry about his schooling or prom, but instead he can barely even focus on school.

Although set more than twenty years ago, the struggles of Mav are ones that continue even today.

This seventeen-year-old is dealing with gang violence, having a baby, looking after his grieving family, and trying to financially make ends meet among so many other things, and he feels like he can’t even show his emotions. He has to put on a show of “being a man” but this idea is not often depicted as congruent with crying or showing sadness. By showing this conflict, Thomas subtly points to the unique pressure that Mav is put under as a young Black man.

Cleyvis Natera excellently articulates the pressure of manhood in Mav’s life in a review from Time Magazine:

“Manhood becomes the confining praxis toward resolution: Is he a man? How big of a man? How brave of a man? We come to understand that loss ushers Maverick to redefine himself beyond the confines of gender norms: he must see himself not as doomed to the legacy of his father’s actions, but as a parent and a human being focused on the future.”(Natera, 2021)

With Mav’s father’s incarceration, Mav is working to define his own manhood while also working on surviving. Mav does what he believes is necessary to survive, having to grow up even more than others his age.

What I think is incredibly important is how the pressures Mav is put under leads him to drug dealing. Mav sells drugs with King, an infamous drug dealer in the King Lord gang, to make a little bit more money for his family and his new baby. At no point though is Mav demonized for this decision, which I think is not only a fresh viewpoint on a black teenager dealing drugs, but also a critical viewpoint to look at why the person made the decision to deal drugs, and ultimately how his society let him down, instead of looking at him negatively for it.

Paperback cover

Mav is put under pressure that have existed for other Black men, and Thomas acknowledges the balance she had to achieve while writing between realism and falling into a stereotype that has been associated with Black men in an interview with Time Magazine:  

“How do I fight against that [stereotypes]? And for me, it was again about looking at the person, looking at the why - because that's how you connect people who may not even identify with Maverick. You may not live in a neighborhood where there are gangs, but you can understand wanting to be protected. You may not have a parent who's incarcerated, but you can understand wanting to help your family out financially. These are all human emotions.” (Natera, 2021)

As Thomas states, at the heart of this novel is pure, raw emotion. She fights these potential stereotypes by grounding the characters in dynamic, realistic actions and words that can be related to. Mav has real intense emotions because Mav represents just one real Black man, not a stereotype.

Although Mav believes he can’t cry at first, his boss, Mr. Wyatt, emphasizes the importance of emotions:

“Son, one of the biggest lies ever told is that Black men don’t feel emotions. Guess it’s easier to not see us as human when you think we’re heartless. Fact of the matter is, we feel things. Hurt, pain, sadness, all of it. We got a right to show them feelings as much as anybody else” (Thomas, 164).

Almost halfway through the novel here, Mav cries for the first time, and I felt some sort of weight off my shoulders as he cried. I spent 160 pages watching this character build up a wall to separate a part of himself from the people who love him, and then he becomes brave enough to knock it down and show his grief and anxiety.

Mav is constantly trying to fit into this role of a Black man that society has created, when he finally learns that Black men are the only ones who should be defining the role of a Black man. After pages and pages of feeling out of control, he learns he can define himself and his identity.

Concrete Rose is a beautiful portrait of a Black man growing up in America and learning to define himself, instead of letting the world define him. This is one of those books that I think everyone should read. Although it is marketed as a YA novel, Angie Thomas is also read and loved by adults, and I feel like adolescent and adult readers alike would love and benefit from this book.

Although a young adult novel, I feel that young adults are not the only readers who could benefit from this novel, and this novel could both provide an example of the Black experience to non-Black readers, while also providing a sense of familiarity or understanding for Black readers.

I commend Angie Thomas for consistently coming out with both relevant and yet timeless young adult novels, and I highly recommend you give Concrete Rose a read.

-SS

Works Cited:

Natera, Cleyvis. “Https://Time.com/5928689/Concrete-Rose-Review-Angie-Thomas/.” Time, 12 Jan. 2021, time.com/5928689/concrete-rose-review-angie-thomas/.

Thomas, Angie. Concrete Rose. HarperCollins Publishers, 2021.

Photos from Goodreads.com

Review of "Black Girl Unlimited"

Echo Brown’s debut novel, Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard may have been one of my favorite books of 2020, and I don’t give those titles out to just any book. 

Black Girl Unlimited is described as a magical realism memoir. If this sounds counterintuitive, I promise it works. Echo, the protagonist, is growing up on the East Side of Cleveland with her mother and two brothers. As she navigates through life, she frames her experiences with elements of magic. What I love about this book is that it fights, and succeeds, to stand out as a unique reading experience. 

Instead of chapters, the book is split into nineteen sections, or “Lessons” of wizard training that Echo learns throughout her life, including “Evading the Black Veil”, “Performing Miracles of Unity”, and “Forgiving Yourself”. 

Although this book tackles a lot of heavy topics, including rape, depression, poverty, and drug use, Brown still manages to hold onto the magic throughout the book. 

The character Echo refers to herself and her mother as wizards, thus the lessons of wizard training at the start of each section. Although this is the magical realism element of the memoir, as I read the book I felt as if Echo and her mother truly were wizards. This book isn’t just being silly, but the use of them as wizards feels purposeful and real because this is based on her real life. 

Brown states that these lessons (the chapter titles) were healing work that she has done through her life due to her trauma, so each of these lessons was inspired by, as Brown states, her therapeutic and spiritual work to heal herself. She continues, “I also think some of the lessons are rooted in bigger themes I have aspired to in my real life that readers also may find useful. For example, the last lesson, “you are unlimited, be fearless in your pursuits” is something I remind myself of over and over especially when fears and insecurities rise. My hope is that some of the lessons will be inspirational for readers, reminding them of their own potential and abilities” (We Need Diverse Books, 2020). By putting in these lessons she learned based on her real life, they feel relatable and attainable. 

Although dealing with magic, the book breaks down real life stereotypes. Beautifully said by Karen Valby in the New York Times, “Brown’s greatest gift is evoking intimacy, and as she delicately but firmly snatches the reader’s attention, we are allowed to see this girl of multitudes and her neighborhood of contradictions in full and specific detail. Stereotypes, like the bitter myth of the strong black woman, wither on the page” (Valby, 2020). 

Echo the character is balancing the worlds of stereotypes, school, her home life, and her magic, while also dealing with a “black veil”. 

There is a reoccurring image of “black veils” that Echo sees over all people. She first sees a disembodied veil: 

“At first, I assume it’s a bird, but it doesn’t move like a bird…I see it, the black veil, right outside, hovering in the dark of night. I see clearly now that it is an ominous creature with no face, shaped like a rectangular piece of fabric, that ruffles and moves like a flag in the wind.” (Brown, 77)

Her mother reveals she also has seen the veil in times of intense trauma: “Black and scary-like, hoverin’ right ova me. I started screamin’ at da top of my lungs ‘cause I didn’t know what it was…I would see it e’ry night, until finally, I sank so far down, at da bottom of myself, it finally swooped on down and covered me, my whole head. I felt like I was suffocatin’. I couldn’t breathe.” (Brown, 80)

Author Echo Brown Brown highlights an interesting metaphor of generational trauma. Like the trauma Echo’s mother passes to her, her mother also passes what I would describe as an ability to see the veil, but Echo’s mother emphasizes that the black veil must be evaded. 

Brown worked with tweaking this metaphor throughout the writing process: 

“It felt like the black veil needed to descend somehow and submerge the victim, so it eventually changed the black veil that wraps itself around its victims. This was another instance where it wasn’t enough to just describe depression as it is, which is so challenging in real life. I needed a magical concept to really describe its impact and effect in a way that straightforward reality would miss, which is how the concept of the black veil came about.” (We Need Diverse Books, 2020) 

Ultimately, Brown landed on a way to convey her trauma to the reader in such a concrete and innovative way, and in my opinion, an incredibly effective way as well. 

Only wizards, like Echo and her mother, can see this veil, but they must fight to keep the veil off: 

“Only way you can keep it off is to stay lifted. Got to stay spirited and in da light….Only way I can get mine off now is drankin’ and druggin’, othawise it’s always on me. I done learned how ta live in it mostly, but sometimes, I just cain’t control it, the darkness inside of me.” (Brown, 83) 

This section truly spoke to me. The depression is so powerful it has become a physical object that practically suffocates Echo, and appears to have pushed her mother into a deep addiction, something her mother struggles with throughout the novel. It is so real it turns into a physical black veil, almost described as a menacing creature or spirit, that must be evaded. Brown takes this portion of her life, potential trauma, and creates this metaphor of an object that can finally be understood or have logic applied to when these emotions can feel anything but logical. 

I think this is part of the importance of the magical realism in Brown’s novel. She has these events in life that she could not control and turns them into physical objects that as the author she can control. This book isn’t just Echo overcoming trauma, it’s the author rewriting her own trauma experience, as this is a memoir. Although I do not know to what exact extent the trauma in the novel is based on her own life, in this case the character Echo explores the idea of trauma to show how suffocating it can feel, while also how it is possible to overcome. 

Magical realism is a tool for Brown to portray trauma, and she uses that tool like an expert. In a way, the trauma as a physical object makes it feel possible to overcome. Trauma can feel incredibly abstract and therefore almost intangible to understand or simply deal with. By making her trauma a physical thing, it both shows the reader the overwhelming aspect of trauma, while also showing that it is possible to manage, in this case through “magic”, or her writing. Ultimately, a step of overcoming this appears to be through writing her own memoir. She wields the genre like a wizard controlling magic. 

I also notice Brown challenges the very nature of how books are written. She does this fascinating technique where she ends midsentence, then starts a new paragraph finishing the sentence but with a completely new idea. This sounds complicated but she still makes a full sentence.

Brown is not only turning what we think of memoirs on its head, but she even challenges the structure of how a book is written, as seen above. The character is not the only magic, this book itself is a magical experience made of careful artistry. 

An important aspect of the novel is she is challenging what a memoir is. We as the readers are not privy to knowing what truly did or did not happen because of the fantastical elements, so Brown is now in control of not just her narrative, but she can finally control her trauma at least to some degree. Brown takes her story and is finally able to control it. We are being guided through her story by her. Brown is there to control what is or is not seen of her in her story, something that through her experience she was initially powerless to. 

Although this is her first book, Brown has already made a name for herself in the book community. Brown shows care and expertise in her writing, creating a novel full of love and magic. I cannot wait for her sophomore novel, The Chosen One, set to publish in 2022. 

-SS 

Brown, Echo. Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard. Holt/Ottaviano, 2020.

“Q&A With Echo Brown: BLACK GIRL UNLIMITED.” We Need Diverse Books, 17 Jan. 2020,                diversebooks.org/qa-with-echo-brown-black-girl-unlimited/. 

Valby, Karen. “In Hollywood, Stories About People of Color Are Still Rare. These Y.A. Fantasy                Novels Pick Up the Slack.” The New York Times, 4 Feb. 2020,                                                                  www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/books/review/dark-and-deepest-red-anna-mari-mclemore-black-            girl-unlimited-echo-brown.html. 

Author and cover photo from goodreads.com

Clap When You Land Book Review

Fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, including myself, had been anxiously awaiting her junior novel, and second novel in verse, Clap When You Land. Following the May 2020 release, Clap When You Land received high praise including winning the yearly Goodreads 2020 Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction, and the 2020 Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Award for Fiction and Poetry.

As a huge fan of Acevedo’s first two novels, The Poet X and With the Fire on High, I had incredibly high hopes, and somehow, Acevedo went beyond my highest expectations for her most recent novel.

Clap When You Land follows half-sisters, Camino Rios in the Dominican Republic, and Yahaira (Yaya) Rios in New York, connecting over the recent death of their father, who died in the American Airlines flight 587 crash.

AA587 is not of Acevedo’s invention; it was a flight going from New York to the Dominican Republic in 2001. The accidental crash, taking place only two months and one day after the September 11 attacks appears to have been somewhat ignored or overlooked by the media, but nonetheless brought devastation to the New York-Dominican community. It is the third deadliest aviation accident in US history following the 9/11 attacks (Aviation Safety). There were 260 fatalities and zero survivors in this awful New York City crash, and yet, I had never heard of it before. 68 of the passengers killed were from the Dominican Republic. About 90% of the passengers were of Dominican descent (The Guardian).

Acevedo herself was greatly affected by the flight. “I was 13 years old when that plane crashed. It rocked my community. I mean, everyone knew someone who was on that flight.” (NPR)

Providing this information is not just to give historical background, but to emphasize the real pain associated with the topic of this novel, and the pain Acevedo is working to convey. Although Camino and Yahaira are not real people, I know there is a Camino or a Yahaira or another child who lost a loved one in this crash, and can probably relate to one or both of these characters.

I have to hope that people impacted by this crash find some sort of healing in this book, but I also hope that readers like me who were not impacted by it can find solace in the universality of grief, while also empathizing for those like the sisters even if the reader may not have experienced something similar. I think reading about experiences we may not be able to fully relate to is an important exercise in listening to the situations of others with kindness and openness. No one will ever have the exact same emotions or experiences, but through reading we can learn about the emotions and experiences of others to not only broaden our mind but hopefully practice an ability to listen to and accept others of differing experiences.

I didn’t originally know this was based on a true event. Having Acevedo contextualize it by showing this was a real plane crash with real people brought out more empathy from me than I would have thought. I empathize even with fictional situations, but knowing this book stemmed from real pain and trauma serves as a reminder that this pain happens both in fiction and in real life.

By the way, when I say these sisters are connecting over this death, I mean they had no idea the other sister existed for sixteen years. Both never knew their beloved father had a secret family in a different country 1,534 miles away.

I was worried going into this book there would be some sort of lasting taboo of having a half-sister or of not sharing a parent. I am by definition a half-sister, although I never think in that term. I have learned through growing up, and what is presented by Acevedo as well is, the importance of who loved you and raised you, or who comes to love and accept you, not necessarily who created you. Family isn't always the same parents or the same genes, it's love, and these sisters love one another. Although there was shock between the two characters, they grew and adapted to a new and possibly scary situation. Legally, Camino and Yahaira are half-sisters. But just like my sister and I, they are not half-family, they are family.

Elizabeth Acevedo

Full of grief and love, Acevedo does not caution from showing the pain that the two families are feeling, and yet, these true emotions being evoked, even including pain, seem to create comfort. By showing these two families, it is emphasized that everyone may have different experiences, but grief is universal, although it may feel isolating at times.  

In a book dealing with such heavy topics, I was impressed by is the careful balance of detail and space to imagine when reading the poems. There are no titles for the poems, but I was drawn to the detail on a specific poem from Camino’s perspective.

“I keep rocking next to her. Sometimes words

need time to form; the minutes like slabs

building a ramp out the mouth.” (Acevedo, 192)

I continued to mentally repeat the phrase “minutes like slabs/building a ramp out the mouth”, a line beautifully bringing the physical (ramps) with the more abstract idea of forming words or time passing, to create an image of a ramp being built. For me, I was drawn to the imagery created in such a short phrase, and the impact of these words.  

For those who have read Acevedo’s first novel, The Poet X¸ the prose-like sparsity of the poems is a style readers have seen before. However, the sparsity is not at all a downside to Acevedo’s work, because it brings emphasis to what is being said. Acevedo evokes so much emotion with every word, with space on the page almost like Acevedo, or the reader, taking a breath between these difficult topics.

I also found the lack of titles interesting. Although I do not believe titles make a full work less cohesive, but the lack of titles made it feel like one 400+ page poem to me. Although reminding me of a very long poem, I did not at all feel a drag of 400 pages. Instead, I sped through it and could not put the book down. By only indicating the speaker (Camino, Yahaira, or both) of the poem, I felt as if I were being sat down and told a story by Camino and Yahaira about their journey together. No titles to separate the poems remind me of someone telling their life story, which does not often have a title.

Throughout the novel, the sisters learn that their late father was far more flawed than the two had thought. Acevedo shows girls growing up from idolizing their father to being upset and confused by his choices to forgiving and still loving him. I think the arc the sisters have of learning not to idolize their father, while continuing to love and mourn him, is an incredibly realistic yet complex view of growing older and losing a loved one. The balance and struggle of accepting faults while mourning someone is something I can relate to, and I appreciated seeing this represented. These characters acknowledge the faults of their father while learning to accept their own grief among other mixed emotions, and I think this is incredibly important.

With aching emotions Acevedo creates a beautiful portrait of grief and love. I was yet again impressed by her and I continue to look forward to her future writing.

-SS

Works cited: “ASN Aircraft Accident Airbus A30.” Aviation Safety Network, Flight Safety Foundation, 20 Apr. 2014, web.archive.org/web/20140420004450/aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20011112-0.

Acevedo, Elizabeth. Clap When You Land. Quill Tree Books, 2020.

Garcia-Navarro, Lulu. “Tragedy Reveals 2 Secret Families In 'Clap When You Land'.” NPR, 10 May 2020.

Catherine House Book Review

 “Trust us, you belong here.”

Would you go three years with no music, no television, no family, for the promise of a lifetime of success?

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas is a young adult dark academia novel with a sprinkle of science fiction about Catherine House, a secretive boarding school. I don’t mean secretive as in it just has the odd secret society or two.

In Catherine House students go to this school in the woods-or as the faculty call it, “a community of minds” (Thomas, 8), exchanging any and all contact with the outside world for the promise of emerging as the best of the best; alumni have gone on to become supreme court justices, prize-winning authors, and presidents to name a few of their accomplishments. Thomas herself describes the school as a “cult-like college” (Debutiful).

Students are desperate at times to belong to this bizarre community (cult?), at the risk of throwing away their own individualism, or even their own lives.

I absolutely loved not only the dark academia element (which I am a sucker for) but the slow-burn gothic elements which pulled me in from the very beginning.

Dark academia is an element, aesthetic, or genre that I have found often in writing or film. The Secret History by Donna Tartt is sometimes seen as what made dark academia popular as a literary genre, but I am sure she was not the first to write in the genre. Dark academia, from my understanding, is a focus on topics like higher education, writing, the arts, or classic literature to name a few things. For me, dark academia conjures my childhood dream: Sitting in an old gothic-style library with dark shadows and obscure books to discover. 

What I love about it the genre is not only the fact that it often focuses on literature, but it raises above everything a passion for self-discovery and learning, something I have had since I learned to read. For me, reading dark academia literature makes me feel at home. These characters live and breathe their passion, usually an intense passion for learning, which is all I have felt for years. I have noticed many of the books have references or influences of both classic and gothic literature or art. But what about “dark”? There is also an underlying focus on longing, existentialism, pondering mysteries, and even death. Sometimes the genre plays into the idea of getting too immersed in your passion, almost to a fault. It’s a genre I’m still learning about and trying to wrap my head around defining it, but it is truly fascinating to me.

Catherine House captures this almost obsessive pursuit for knowledge perfectly, while also exposing the flaws in this pursuit.  

With it being described as a gothic-inspired book, atmosphere is crucial, and the setting was carefully constructed. Thomas worked hard to achieve this: “I wanted this school—and the story—to feel strange, sideways, almost palpably dreadful.” (Write or Die Tribe) Catherine House, the building, is a character that I just want to understand the intricacies of. The unknown secrets surrounding the school, the students disappearing, and the complete insularity from the world is incredibly unsettling. These characters cannot leave for three years, and as I read, a little voice in the back of my mind whispered, “why can’t they?”

To add to the unease, anyone who strays from expectations is threatened with being sent to the “Catherine House Restoration Center” “to readjust your relationship to Catherine and your environment” (Thomas, 11). From the beginning, the characters are told if they do not comply to this strict school, they are sent to what to me sounds incredibly ominous (but note, it’s still in Catherine House. Even in defying the school, they are not allowed to leave).

Although atmosphere is crucial to the book, we can’t forget about the characters. While Thomas’ novel has been the discussion of many interviews, like any novel it does not go without critique. As a fan of this book, I was very intrigued by a common issue people had with the novel: Ines, the protagonist.

“I think [one of] the three biggest things that didn’t work for me in this story [was] Ines.” (The Bookish Chick)

“[Ines] doesn’t need Catherine House, she needs some help. Actual help.” (Goodreads)

“Ines is a terrible character.” (Goodreads)

“I don't understand what Thomas intended by creating such a frustrating character.” (Goodreads)

I am very interested in the discussion, especially the criticism, of Ines.

Ines went through trauma before the novel starts, and I greatly appreciated the representation of Ines’ struggle with trauma and arguably symptoms of depression. Ines is never diagnosed with a mental illness, and I have no desire to diagnose her. However, at a time in my life I was someone who struggled to get out of bed, to care about school, or even about my own health, and I saw myself in Ines.

Reading this book, I saw this girl who had huge dreams of success while wearing the proverbial weighted vest of all the pressure around her. I saw myself, junior year of college, completely floundering to honestly care about life in the rush of intense classes and preparing to apply to graduate school. I saw Ines, and for once I thought to myself, “It’s not just me”. She may be unlikeable to some, but I think characters like her are important, in this case those who desire success while also struggling with motivation.

Characters don’t need to be likeable to make the novel good or enjoyable. They can offer so much more than likeability. We read to see differences as well as similarities, and these may be different morals or values or simply an abrasive personality. In my eyes, Ines offers insight into struggling to succeed. She is an academic that is imperfect, something I struggle to allow for myself. Ines is a young adult without an outlined path or one clear determination, and I think that’s realistic for a lot of people. Also, people don’t need to be likeable. Ines isn’t putting pretenses for other characters nor readers. In a world with many women being told to smile, Ines turns and walks away, and I admire that.

For me, I think the part that she is an unlikeable woman especially plays into some of the comments I saw.

I have to wonder how these critiques would change if Ines were a man. I have noticed common critiques of women characters as “unlikeable”, which I don’t see as much for men characters, who although have similar characteristics to these “unlikeable” women, are more often described as “moody” and mysterious”.

No matter the gender though, give me an unlikeable person who does not become stereotypically “likeable” over their arc. I find those characters interesting, because being unlikeable means these characters are not changing for someone or for expectations, but also, we simply don’t see those characters often.                                                                                                                                           

Author Elisabeth Thomas

Elisabeth Thomas writes some great characters, and I think she brings these characters into inventive situations to bring out the truest form of themselves, whether that form be likeable or not. In these terrifying scenarios, Ines and her friends drop all pretenses and are their raw, true selves, which I found refreshing.

NPR lists Catherine House as one of the best books of 2020, and if this review caught your eye, I would definitely recommend giving it a read. I highly recommend Thomas’ book to fans of books like The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, or other dark academia novels.

In an interview with Debutiful, Thomas states she is currently working on her sophomore novel. Catherine House is Thomas’ debut novel.

-SS

Sources: https://debutiful.net/2020/05/12/elisabeth-thomas-interview-catherine-house/

https://www.writeordietribe.com/author-interviews/interview-with-elisabeth-thomas

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51934838-catherine-house?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=hAeP032lBc&rank=2

https://thebookishchick.com/2020/08/25/review-catherine-house/

https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#view=covers&year=2020

Book and author photographs from Goodreads.com

"The Moon Within" Book Review

 

The Moon Within by debut author Aida Salazar is a beautiful middle grade novel in verse which explores growing older and self-discovery.

The protagonist, Celi Rivera, has questions about growing older: about her changing body, about her first attraction to a boy, and her best friend Mar’s exploration of what it means to be genderfluid.

It is incredibly important to Celi’s mother that Celi will have a moon ceremony, a ceremony marking her transition from girl to woman, as Celi explains in one of the first poems, “Moon Ceremony”. Celi initially refuses not only the ceremony, but the prospect of growing older:

“I dread the ceremony where she will gather

all six of my aunts

some of my dance teachers

a constellation of grown-up women

to talk to me

about what it means to bleed monthly…

Embarrassment will eat me up whole!” (9-10)

Celi expressed a fear that may be relatable to both readers who have gone through a moon ceremony, and those who have dealt with their first menstruation as well. Although she is embarrassed, her Mima explains,

“Our ancestors honored

our flowering in this way.

It is a ritual taken away from us

during so many conquests.” (10, italics in original)

Salazar here not only shares an important part of her heritage with the reader, but she is alluding to the need to take back this ceremony from the times whiteness has attempted to snuff out the rich heritage that Mima is passing along. This snuffing is from the shame that is associated with menstrual cycles, while Celi’s culture celebrates it. Through the reader being privy to Celi’s thoughts, the emphasis on her ceremony brings up interesting points of discussions on preserving culture and taking back a sense of ownership when puberty may make someone feel out of control of their body. Like the ritual being taken away by colonizers, Celi tries to take back control of her body and her moon ceremony.

Although Celi struggles with the idea of growing older, poem by poem she comes to explore what it is to be changing. We follow Celi as she grows to accept her changing body through dance, comradery, and self-love. Dance is one of the spaces that allows Celi to feel comfortable in her body and her femininity, as explored in the poem “Puerto Rican Drum Dance”.

She began dancing as a very young girl:

“I held the tips of my little dress

and pretended I was catching

butterflies in the air.

That is what the music told me to do.” (89) 

Celi for once does not have questions when she dances, she simply knows how to dance, how to answer the rhythm of the music.

The verse of this poem sways like a dancer and Salazar expertly breaks lines to create space within the poem, like a dancer awaiting their next move. Salazar’s poetry is full of vivid imagery which made me feel as if I were falling into the middle of Celi’s world.

Celi is not the only young character going through change, but her best friend, Marco (previously known as Magda), begins to explore his gender fluidity and finds his own self best expressed through his short hair and pants instead of the long dresses Celi loves to wear.

The Moon Within is an honest portrayal of some of the feelings of growing up and having a changing body and mind. Salazar’s verse is an excellent novel exploring the themes of changing and growing older.

Kirkus Reviews calls The Moon Within “a worthy successor to Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret”, and US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera says the book is “revolutionary and culturally ecstatic”.

This book was not published until I was in my twenties, but I wish I had this book when I was Celi’s age, and I hope that readers going through a similar experience as Celi or Mar will find this book. In beautiful prose, Salazar works to destigmatize gender fluidity and menstrual cycles. I can imagine readers experiencing either of these topics will find solace not only in feeling less alone, but seeing Salazar turn these experiences into beautiful poems.

Salazar has more books planned for publication, including Jovita Wore Pants, her first picture book about the revolutionary Jovita Valdovinos. She also recently published her sophomore novel The Land of the Cranes, a novel in verse about a young girl being held in a family detention center for migrants and refugees.

-SS

 

Sources:

http://www.aidasalazar.com/about.html

Book Review of "A Song Below Water"

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow is a fantastic book about prejudice, friendship, and magic. Written in powerful prose with dynamic main characters, Morrow balances magic with real-life events in her novel to create an impactful and resounding story.

Morrow’s first young adult novel follows Tavia and Effie, best friends who are more like sisters. In this world, all sirens are Black women, including the siren Tavia. Although not related, Effie and Tavia refer to one another as sisters, and have such a powerful, and perhaps magical, love for one another. Morrow carries the important theme of sisterhood throughout the story, and shows the true, honest, and loving friendship these two young women have. The two are not only some of the few black people in Portland, Oregon, but Tavia is one of the only magical folk in the city. Tavia is a siren who mostly converses through ASL, except around Effie. Magic weaves through her story, sometimes taking the stage and other times swirling through the background. I would personally call this a light fantasy novel, while others have shelved it as magical realism or urban fantasy (according to Goodreads).

Morrow perfectly describes her book on twitter as embodying “Black girl magic” and excellently focuses on the idea of voice as magic and resistance in her novel.

Although a beautiful and magical book, the more you read, the more chilling the book gets.

At the start of the book, a Black woman named Rhoda Taylor was murdered by her boyfriend. However, she only appeared on the news “because social media had been circulating it and demanding to know why no one seemed to be saying her name” (12). Soon, Tavia learns “the defense is saying the deceased was a siren. Which means she wasn’t a victim after all” (13). Sirens have a voice full of so much power that it can control others. Sirens are powerful, and therefore they are feared. Humans blame Taylor for her own murder.

Art of protagonists by Twitter user @layahimalaya

This hate of sirens was not started by Rhoda Taylor’s murder. The hate is traced back to at least the 1960s “Siren Trials”, when sirens were publicly outed and murdered. The murderers were never brought to justice (27), and this trial seems to be well-remembered and is a cause for fear in the town among humans.

Following Rhoda Taylor’s murder trial, Tavia begins to fear for her own life, as all sirens are seen as dangerous, as murderers. Those found out to be sirens are forced to wear an electronic collar to control their magical voice.

Although these sirens are of course not all murderers, Tavia says “none of us are immune to the public distrust of sirens” (29). Tavia is emphasizing that this distrust pervades society, and perhaps Tavia, a siren herself, has been inundated and therefore mislead by these implicit biases.

The real-world parallel of Morrow’s novel is undeniable. On her Twitter account, she says “I wanted this book to be a reflection on a recent past, not a statement on the brutal present, but I pray it finds the black girls who need it”. Morrow’s book came out not only during the current prominent civil rights movement in America, but being published June 2, 2020, Morrow’s book was published only three months after the murder of Breonna Taylor, to name just one of the many, many Black people who have been unjustly killed at the hands of the American police.

Not only is the parallel to the real world undeniable, the publication of A Song Below Water was perfectly timed, in my opinion. In an interview with Den of Geek, Morrow speaks further on the timely nature of the novel: “In conversation with my sister, I said, ‘My voice is power,’ an assertive, knowing statement and I meant it literally; I was talking about why the world gets so frothingly, viciously, violently enraged at the audacity of Black women daring to have opinions online…I was referring to the ridiculous gaslighting that comes with it where much of the abuse heaped on the Black woman in question is around the supposed fact that she’s a nobody and she means nothing, and no one cares what she thinks—despite that everyone is dogpiling her to tell her so”. 

Author Bethany C. Morrow

Morrow has found a way to elevate her voice in a time when voices like hers are the most important to listen to with regards to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Morrow’s book has not gone unnoticed. Following A Song Below Water’s publication, Morrow was listed on USA Today’s 100 Black novelists and fiction writers you should read, and is highly rated on the popular website, Goodreads.

This is a beautiful, timely book that should be read by anyone. With excellent writing skill, Morrow balances real-life issues with captivating magical elements. All I want is to sing my praises for A Song Below Water, and I hope this review can be seen especially by who Morrow refers to as “the black girls who need it”.

Morrow has announced a sequel to her novel, A Chorus Rises, will be released in 2021, which I am surely looking forward to.

-SS

Citations: https://twitter.com/BCMorrow/status/1267832662196137986

https://www.denofgeek.com/books/a-song-below-water-bethany-c-morrow-interview/

Art: https://twitter.com/layahimalaya/ 

Photo: https://twitter.com/BCMorrow/photo

A Grad Student's Experience Writing a Limerick

Senior year of college, we had to write sonnets for my poetry class. I read my sonnet and professor asked, “you don’t get meter, do you?”

I was a little embarrassed, but he was kind of right. I was told it’s just instinctual, it’s how you speak, some of it is the exact rhythm of a beating heart. Nonetheless, all the “da da da da da das” of people sounding out the rhythm just blurred together for me.  

Fast forward two years, I had to write a poem in meter for my graduate school class this semester, and my stomach dropped. I had to write a limerick, specifically. The class is called “Edward Gorey and Nonsense”, so, appropriately, the way to write a limerick makes less sense to me than pure nonsense poetry on the sense to nonsense scale.

While Dr. Thomas kept throwing out limericks through Twitter like he was spitting out sunflower seeds, I was still stuck on starting the first line.

Why is the hardest part of this class about nonsense the one poem with strict rules and guidelines to follow?

First, what’s a limerick?

A limerick is an often humorous, short poem popularized by Edward Lear. It is made up of five lines with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA. The third and fourth lines are often shorter than the other three. Limericks are typically in anapestic meter, meaning it has two unstressed syllables for every stressed syllable.  

You may have heard of the phrase, “There once was as man from Nantucket”. This is the opening line of many limericks (and jokes) and is in anapestic meter.

The earliest published version of this popularized poem appeared in 1902 in the Princeton Tiger written by Prof. Dayton Voorhees: (Life)

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

But his daughter, named Nan,

Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

I was quite delighted by this poem with the playing of rhymes and the song-like nature of the poem.

I quite enjoyed the rhymes especially, as I am sure is the reason many people are drawn to limericks.

After lots of reading and watching videos, I hoped I was ready. I was able to come up with two limericks for the assignment. Here’s one:

There was once a girl hailed from Ann Arbor

Who searched high and low for just one harbor

She found the lakes and rivers a plenty.

Boats and bones and skulls fill up the jetty

As she throws one more, this time a barber?

So I perhaps obviously styled this after the traditional limerick of “there once was a man from…” I have heard “a man from Peru/Nantucket” poem/joke many times when I was growing up, even in cartoons (I distinctly remember it from a Spongebob episode).

I tried to put this poem in anapestic pentameter, and to what I understand, I think I succeeded, but it sounds a little off.

I’m doing my best to try to understand meter, but I am still not quite there yet.

Roethke’s Some Remarks on Rhythm commented on many limericks having “the rhythms of children” (Roethke, 65), so I tried to make the poem sound musical and playful, not just in the rhyming, but hopefully in a little bit of the rhythm.

Since the class focuses partially on Edward Gorey, I flipped through some of his works to get inspired. I love the dark nature of his works and really wanted to capture that and the atmosphere of many contemporaries who draw inspiration from him.

I was inspired by the River Styx from Greek mythology. I also was inspired by the idea from Asimov and Ciardi’s Limericks – Too Gross: or Two Dozen Dirty Dozen Stanzas of contrasting a rhythmic limerick to create darker or raunchier ideas behind the poetry. The girl in the poem is going on a search for a harbor, which seems all nice and fun, perhaps evoking a young girl having fun in the summer, and then you learn she is getting rid of a body. To me that seems a little bit Gorey (or gory-yes bad joke), and creepy as it sounds I kind of like the storyline. I also did ten syllables per line (pentameter) of possibly anapests.

Here’s the second limerick I wrote:

Let’s go to Kalamazoo, to visit

The world’s largest shoe. A child once quipped

It looks better from much farther away.

It smells like some poo, she said in quite disdain.

And all they can say is “oh no, oh shit”.

I’m going to be honest. I have no idea what meter this is in, if it is even in any meter. I don’t think it is, the first line definitely is not. I again was struggling with meter, but I was playing a lot with sounds and rhyming externally as well as internally. This poem is obviously quite a bit goofier than the other poem which makes it fun to me. I played with enjambment quite a bit in this poem and just with “storyline” I guess in general. I also wanted it to be a bit more nonsensical even though I didn’t quite achieve that to the point which I hoped.

I felt like for this one I was really channeling my inner goofiness and laughing at poop jokes and with a touch of a nonsensical storyline to follow.

I noticed a big part of my struggle in both of these poems was starting, and trying to get over an anxiety I have of it being “right” or good or “perfect” or not “stupid”.

Am I now suddenly skilled at limericks? Not really. But honestly, the hardest part of writing these was starting. I obsessively worried about being in meter, if it sounded stupid, if my lines were too short or too long, and I was just self-conscious.

I can be a very self-conscious writer. I question myself; I agonize over sentences or words until it all just sends me in a spiral.

Through it all though, the biggest barrier to writing a limerick was myself. It got easier when I simply just wrote a limerick and tried my best. I didn’t think about others reading it, or it being posted on our class blog until I posted my submission for class.

We can sit and stare at blank pages for hours, but when it all comes down to it, it’s all just words and what we make of them. I hope to return to limericks in the future in the hopes of getting to understand the genre more.

-SS

Citations:

Asimov, Isaac, and John Ciardi. Limericks: Too Gross. W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.

Isham, Mrs. William B. Life, 1903, books.google.com/books?id=p80aAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA274#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Roethke, Theodore. “Some Remarks on Rhythm.” Poetry, vol. 97, no. 1, 1960, pp. 63–74. 

Review of “We Are Water Protectors” by Carole Lindstrom

“We Are Water Protectors” written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade is a new picture book you need to look out for.

“We Are Water Protectors” is a book full of vibrant, eye catching images and powerful prose to match.

The author, Carole Lindstrom writes the books from passion and experience. She identifies as Anishinaabe (also known as Nishnaabe or Anishinabe)/Metis and is tribally enrolled with the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe (Carolelindstrom.com). Lindstrom also published the children’s book “Girls Dance, Boys Fiddle” in 2013.

This book has not gone unnoticed by book bloggers. A popular blog, Book Riot, lists the book under “Ten Picture Books for the Budding Environmentalists”, and Lindstrom’s book is also featured on CBC, The New York Times, and Publisher’s Weekly.

The phrase “We are water protectors” may sound familiar. “We are water protectors” says Don Sampson to tribes opposed to the movement protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Sampson is both the head of the climate change program from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI), and a traditional chief of the Walla Walla Tribe of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (Seattle Times). Sampson and his family fought with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe during the Standing Rock protest against the pipeline.

                                    

Photo from Dakota Access Pipeline protests in October of 2016

However, Lynda V. Mapes’ article continues “The fight isn’t only about one pipeline, but the larger battle for clean energy in a world in grave jeopardy because of emissions from fossil fuels that are heating the planet.” Sampson concludes “How can anyone look into the eyes of grandchildren and say, we did nothing.” Although popularized protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline have passed, the fight to protect water and the legacy of the protests continue.

Lindstrom takes this popular quote, “we are water protectors”, to invite readers into an important project and movement taking place in the United States. 

It is important to also remember these pipes is a twofold threat of the environment and the culture of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s homeland. “An oil spill would permanently contaminate the reservation’s water supply and that construction of the pipeline would destroy sacred sites where many of their ancestors are buried” (Medina, 2016).

Given the background of the book, Lindstrom has a big shoe to fill, and she truly succeeds with her touching and beautiful work.

“We Are Water Protectors” is narrated by a young, unnamed girl. At the beginning of the book, she is told “Water is the first medicine” by Nokemis, who appears to be a grandmother or an older maternal figure.

Right off the bat Lindstrom emphasizes the importance of water, while Goade highlights its beauty and power through the illustration. Lindstrom continues, “We come from water. It nourished us inside our mother’s body. As it nourishes us here on Mother Earth. Water is sacred.” These short sentences remind me of water washing on and off of the beach, ebbing and flowing through the book.

She continues, “The river’s rhythm runs through my veins. Runs through my people’s veins.” Again, the importance of water is established. The protagonist states the river runs through her people’s veins, connecting them altogether in a water system as unique and complex as the individuals within her community. In the illustration her dark hair flows across the page into a blue-green body of water, complete with fish, bright coral lily flowers, and lily pads.

This photo not only emphasizes how the river “runs through [her] veins”, but the river is part of her identity and her people’s identity. She finds love and joy in the water, but also a need to protect what is being taken from them.

The narrator continues, “my people talk of a black snake that will destroy the land. Spoil the water. Poison plants and animals. Wreck everything in its path…Its venom burns the land, courses through the water, making it unfit to drink.”

Here the water and land are threatened, as is perhaps the characters’ identity as water protectors. As opposed to the previously calming blues and greens, the snake is on this bright orange background, almost reminiscent of the sky during fires that California has come to know. This orange cloud seems to suffocate or suppress the flowers on the bottom left which bend over the pipe, as if weeping its petals away. The portrayal of the pipe as a snake emphasizes the real danger that these pipes being built have on the plants and animals, as well as the people. The snakes [or pipes] not only poison the living, but the water itself is unfit to drink. Water, a necessity for organisms to live, is being taken by this snake pipe.

However, the protagonist does not lose hope. She says “TAKE COURAGE! I must keep the black snake away from my village’s water. I must rally my people together.”

The protagonist calls the reader to action in her our actions. She is saying take courage to herself, her village, and everyone reading this. In the face of black snakes and threatened land, she tells herself to have courage in order to save her village.

“We Are Water Protectors” is a powerful, resonating, and timely book that I think readers of all ages should pick up.

-SS

References:

Carole Lindstrom - author of children's literature. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.carolelindstrom.com/

Mapes, L. V. (2020, August 6). What’s next for the Dakota Access Pipeline? Recent court rulings cast doubt on future. The Seattle Times. Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/whats-next-for-the-dakota-access-pipeline-recent-court-rulings-cast-doubt-on-future/

Medina, D. A. (2016, November 4). Dakota Access Pipeline: What's Behind the Protests? NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dakota-pipeline-protests/dakota-access-pipeline-what-s-behind-protests-n676801