I will read anything this recent UI Writer's Workshop grad writes - funny and skewering at the same moment. Skewering enough to get terrifically uncomI will read anything this recent UI Writer's Workshop grad writes - funny and skewering at the same moment. Skewering enough to get terrifically uncomfy at times, and right on enough to make you like it.
I always love it when I happen upon local connections in books, as also happens here, with one character's backstory set at the University....more
This memoir is written by a former UI Nonfiction Writers Program graduate who was born to a Quechan/Laguna father who grew up on the Yuma Reservation This memoir is written by a former UI Nonfiction Writers Program graduate who was born to a Quechan/Laguna father who grew up on the Yuma Reservation in California, and a Hispanic Catholic mother who exalted assimilation above any Indigenous wisdom. Taffa finds beautiful ways of telling her own story while also sharing both the story of her father's tribe and also the Native American history that shapes much of her experience. Below is my review in quotes.
In the beginning of the book (page 7), the author tells us, “This story is as common as dirt. Thousands of Native Americans in California, Arizona, and New Mexico could tell it. Anyone with a grandpa who was haunted by Indian boarding school, who stung his family like a dust devil when he drank. Anyone with a grandma who washed laundry until her fingernails cracked and bled, who went without eating when there weren’t enough groceries because she wanted her ten kids to have a few extra bites. Anyone with a mother who kept secrets so her kids wouldn’t find out about their father’s jailbird past. Anyone with a father who chose the violence of industrial labor over the violence of reservation life because he wanted his kids to get through private school and make better lives for themselves. So many people could tell this story, it is shocking how rarely it has been told."
"So why divulge my story? Because I want Native kids to feel more connected and less lonely. Because I hate the portrayal of my people as dependents unable to better their own circumstances and tell their own stories. Because I need to understand what aspects of my personality were seeded in that New Mexican town all those years ago.
My inheritance stretches back to the so-called Anasazi, over a thousand years in the cacti, sage, and sandstone lands, in the desert canyons, adobe homes, and turquoise stone Southwest. America runs like a river through my veins, yet throughout my childhood, Native representation gathered dust in museums. On television, in books, I saw costumes and mascots-never a portrayal of a mixed tribe Native girl listening to music on her Walkman. Without a contemporary likeness of myself in the media, there was no confirmation that anything I experienced in my childhood was real."
"I was raised to believe in the reciprocity of the land, and I know that, if I went back now, I would see that our favorite camping spot near Purgatory has aged just as much as me. During my childhood in the 1980s, my family and I were fishing on the shores of change. The Animas was the last free-flowing water in Colorado before it was dammed at the start of the twenty-first century; a bald eagle refuge not yet injured by the wastewater that bled from the Gold King Mine in 2015. Dad said the river's full name was the Río de las Ánimas Perdidas, or the River of Lost Souls. He said if we got up early, we might get lucky and see them: the spirits of our ancestors floating downstream in the early morning fog.
I remember waking up and calling Dad to bring me my basketball shoes while I was still in my sleeping bag. Warm from their place near the fire, the shoes canvas made my toes cozy. I ran down to the water, where the grass was stiff with frost, and there was the smell of smoky pine in every breath. I squatted to wash my face, squinting at the outline of what I imagined to be the spirits of our ancestors on the other shore. If only I knew their names, I thought, maybe I could help them get home.
Today, they are the ones bringing me home. Reflecting on my visit to the Animas River when I was twelve, I hold my ancestors close to my heart, knowing I too will be an ancestor someday, adding to the chain of lives that came before.
With death as my guide, I remember what's important, and listen for the river even now. "Do not participate in the erasure of your own people," the voices murmur. "Do not be a silent witness as we fade."
“My Laguna grandmother, Esther, is the one who taught me that a deep intimacy with a homeland requires three things: sensory experiences of particular geographies, a storied history of the trails, and a deep caring about them.�...more
This is a beautiful book - full of poetry-like prose and such vulnerable truth telling about chronic pain that it made me both cry and laugh aloud in This is a beautiful book - full of poetry-like prose and such vulnerable truth telling about chronic pain that it made me both cry and laugh aloud in comradery. This is a review in quotes that I loved from the book by a local author. GORGEOUS.
1. There is something I should say about holding pain for this many years: it changes you, and by change what I really mean is that it transforms.
This part of the story isn't easy to tell, but it's important that you know it.
I suppose you could say that life is change.
We wake in the morning where our changing bodies participate in a changing world. We change our minds, our politics, our homes, our work, our clothes, our hair, our hearts.
Fair enough.
But that is not the change I am talking about. Did you notice how I said holding pain, not having pain, not being in pain, not suffering from pain? Holding.
2. On account of this unpredictable and volatile state of being, I continue to find the company of books easier to consume than the company of people. Books require less� energy, posturing, avoidance while still providing what I need challenge, insight, access to realities beyond my reach. I gladly take the small solace they offer. With only so much to give, this approach is an efficient use of both limited time and empathy. What's interesting is that you wouldn't know any of this if we met on the street. I present beautifully. I am an excellent conversationalist. A hugger and reflexive conversational arm-toucher. I laugh, genuinely, am curious, kind, and extroverted.
Unless I admit you into my most true self, you will be none the wiser about the toll pain� and its bruised aftermath-takes in my life.
This omission is my choice. It's a refusal that, in the end, protects us both.
3. It's a difficult task to reduce the severe into the specific. What I am trying to say is that the pain scale is inadequate. Even complaints registered at 10 fail to communicate the complexity of the experience. Numbers are far too linear to express pain's range. That's because pain bleeds. I can suffer hurt. I can tolerate severity. I can mitigate the distraction.
It is the persistence of pain that proves problematic. The pain scale measures only the intensity of pain, not the duration. This may be its greatest flaw. I struggle with the realization that pain-specifically the residual, overarching effect of pain—is likely endless. A measure of pain, I believe, requires at least two dimensions. The suffering of hell is terrifying not because of any specific torture, but because it is eternal.
4. I believe the writers come closer to the truth. In a concept called negative capability, the poet John Keats characterized the ability to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when that same pursuit leads to confusion and uncertainty. In other words, negative capability is the ability to hold in tandem multiple, often opposing, views. But, and this is key, the goal is not simply to hold these views as a measure of strength but to use them as the basis for creation. To make something beautiful out of the paradox.
Something destructive. Something holy. To make art out of what arises from the negative space. The purpose is to let the tension of the two opposing views inform, rearrange, or focus what otherwise feels worthless.
I am reminded of the words I read years ago when I first began exploring pain as a subject. Whatever pain achieves, it achieves in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language.
5. Occasionally the medicine works. It does its job properly. It quiets the nag, interrupting the pain signals so that I am afforded the luxury, for a few hours at least, of being only somewhat reminded of my brokenness.
The problem with having medication that works is that I know about addiction. I've seen lives commanded by substances disintegrate. There's nothing special about me. I am just as prone as anyone. Aside from my own will, I possess nothing that would protect me from the slide into addiction.
This is why I find myself forgoing my prescription and instead sitting in the tub filled with eucalyptus Epsom and a scoop of
CBD bath salts. This is why I drape a wet washcloth over my face, inhaling deep. It's still morning. Already the pain has knotted and frayed beyond what feels manageable.
Already I am less. Already I have been forced to abandon my plans for the day.
It is difficult to be steeped in pain while also remembering how well medication works. But the medication I took yesterday, the one that effectively shaved off the sharpest edges of pain, isn't designed for long-term use. My pain is long-term. My pain has no end. If I let it, the medication could have no end, either. If I let it, it could quiet the pain forever.
So which is it? Unraveling by pain? Or unraveling by opioids?
Whoa. I have a lot of swirling thoughts about this. It hit pretty close to my geographic heart - centered on a very queer gender-bending (in the MOST Whoa. I have a lot of swirling thoughts about this. It hit pretty close to my geographic heart - centered on a very queer gender-bending (in the MOST literal way) character that lives in Iowa City in the 90's - a sub culture I also grew up in to some degree. The 620 is in there, Prairie Lights is in there, Linn Street Cafe is in there. SO MUCH of Iowa City in the 90s is in there. And then the character goes to Michfest and falls in love? I think? This was a fascinating read that captured so much of my baby dyke life but in a terrifically, as someone else put it, "sexy, crazy, confusing, bizarre, funny, and one of the most utterly creative" stories possible. Thanks to the kiddo for recommending this one! He knew I would love the parts that were shared history, but my appreciation was much, much bigger. 3.5 or 4, but rounding up because the parts that were meh are overshadowed by the parts that are WHOA. ...more
What a delight to find this book by Kate Carroll de Gutes. While I wait for her book Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, which won the 2016What a delight to find this book by Kate Carroll de Gutes. While I wait for her book Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, which won the 2016 Oregon Book Award for creative nonfiction and the Lambda Literary Award for memoir, I saw that this was available immediately via Hoopla and I devoured it in one night - a memoir that is so resonant in its attempt to relate honestly via a month-long Facebook challenge, turned book of essays, about grief, panic, and figuring out how to be human and make your way through this world, fantastic bowtie and all.
From a review on Two Sylvia's Press, "In 2012, Kate Carroll de Gutes found herself at a rest stop “ruined with anxiety. And when I say ruined, I mean in a car, in hundred-degree weather, with all the windows rolled up, sobbing and crouched in the passenger’s seat rocking and waiting for the Ativan to take effect. I posted on Facebook, ‘Hello, Redding. Dear gods yer hot.� A funny post that let my family and friends know where I was, but not how I was.� " Thank goodness that prompted Kate to share so much more about how she *really* was....more
Do yourself a favor and read this book of short stories. The author was a student at UI's Writing Program when she was killed in an auto accident at 2Do yourself a favor and read this book of short stories. The author was a student at UI's Writing Program when she was killed in an auto accident at 22 years old back in 1966. Tayari Jones (who wrote America Marriage, another MUST read, and another UI Writing Program author) does the intro and gives insightful context to how the stories came to be published as a book now. As unfortunately relevant as ever, they are a collection of the books that peel back racism in the American South in the 1960's to expose the deeply personal and familial effects. IMAGINE what other writing we may have gotten to experience if Diane Oliver had lived. Grateful for the publishing of this collection now. ...more
There is a lot to be said here but I will leave that to the NYTimes and others who will do it far better than I could. From the NYTimes book review byThere is a lot to be said here but I will leave that to the NYTimes and others who will do it far better than I could. From the NYTimes book review by Jean Hanff Korelitz , "Admirers of Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut, “Olga Dies Dreaming,� will be pleased to encounter in Gonzalez’s follow-up novel, “Anita de Monte Laughs Last,� not one but two protagonists who echo the titular Olga’s best qualities. Like Olga, they are Latina women of vision and will, who emphatically refuse to be put in a corner. But where Olga inhabited the world of wedding planning, Gonzalez’s new heroes occupy overlapping arenas of the art world.
First is Anita de Monte, a Cuban-born artist emerging in New York City’s art scene in the 1980s. Anita hews so closely in both her biography and her work to the real-life conceptual artist (and the novel’s dedicatee) Ana Mendieta that there is virtually no space between them. Like Mendieta’s, Anita’s promising career is violently truncated by an early death � she somehow plummets out of a window one night in 1985 after scuffling with her famous sculptor husband. That widely revered artist, Jack Martin, is then accused of and acquitted of murder, just as Mendieta’s husband, the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre, was."
There is lots of controversy over whether the author was wrong for not consulting Ana Mendieta's family, which I will not wade into, but instead say that this novelized form of that story felt entirely satisfying to me in terms of what Jack (Carl Andre) endures post-Anita's (Ana) murder. I really appreciated hearing what the author shared about her process and the novel here, , and I am so grateful for the works that I hope will continue to pour out of Xochitl Gonzalez's pen and computer....more
4.5 and rounding up to 5 and so very confused by the one-star reviews and the folks saying that there is somehow a deficit in his storytelling and wri4.5 and rounding up to 5 and so very confused by the one-star reviews and the folks saying that there is somehow a deficit in his storytelling and writing skills. Did we even read the same book?! This was fantastic from start to finish. There is so much in this lovely book, and I have been reading all of the interviews with the author DK Nnuro that I can find to soak in it all a bit longer and to have more of a sense of his motivations. In the interview with Shondaland, this really leapt out:
"SN: Going along with this idea of reckoning with the idea of America, what do physical and spiritual ideas of home mean for these characters and for you as a writer?
DKN: I’ll speak on it personally. I do identify with all three [labels of] Black, Ghanaian, and African American. And I think it’s because of my novel. Having spent time with these characters made me so aware of how much I identify with each of them. I very much identify with Jacob’s Ghanaian desires and with his Ghanaian heartbreaks. I very much identify with Belinda’s Ghanaian American desires and her Ghanaian American heartbreaks. And the same is true for Wilder as well. I was born and raised in Ghana. I moved to the U.S. two days before my 11th birthday. Then I went to boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts. I was confronted with all kinds of wealth, including Black wealth. I didn’t even know it was a thing, I have to be honest. Even Black people who come from old money. I was young, but I was also a recent transplant, and I did find myself asking, “So, what is this thing about racism I’ve been hearing so much about if there’s so much Black wealth?� I didn’t understand that it’s about culture, and I didn’t understand that there could have been so much more Black wealth. I obviously didn’t know about the Tulsa race riots. I very much was aware of it, but I wasn’t aware of what it was in response to. Black Wall Street was destroyed. There could have been so much Black wealth."
I think that is part of the brilliance of this debut novel, is that we get to hear these three very different perspectives of what America is, and what Ghana is, and how there is a separate third perspective when you have lived in and loved both.
And then there is the Little Village review because YES, this amazing author is not only a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop right here in town, but also still lives and works here - teaching writing at the University and working at the new Stanley Museum of Art, which makes so much sense, as the author of the LV review shares, "The novel is anchored by Nnuro’s keen visual sensibilities. It should come as no surprise to any reader that he currently serves as curator of special projects at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art. Every angle into this story is a visual one, from the flowers in the Nti family’s garden to the lushness of kente fabric to the darkness of a road in a blackout.
What Napoleon Could Not Do is a deeply engaging examination of what it means to emigrate, what defines home for an immigrant and what defines family for people who have not seen each other in decades. Nnuro spins moments into landscapes and memories into tapestries, inviting the reader into the hearts of a family that struggles to understand the differences between the world they hoped for and the world that is."
This book about growing up Mexican in West Liberty, IA was written by a b-boy/break dancer (though that term is shunned by the folks who compete), wriThis book about growing up Mexican in West Liberty, IA was written by a b-boy/break dancer (though that term is shunned by the folks who compete), writer, engagement coordinator at our local arts center whose choice to share their growing up life is enriching all of us. Chuy Renteria's book was high on my to-read list and I am so glad that the library had a copy! The book is his own childhood stories and those of his primarily Mexican and Laotian friends in this small Hispanic-majority Iowa town. His writing is straight from the heart and at times that made it hard to follow because the chronology was all over the place, but the occasional confusion was well worth the story he shared. In the final pages of the book, he shares that, "The whole process of telling these stories has been an unburdening, . I want to tell the truth of our childhood. It was like walking a tightrope. Lots of bad things happened to us. We did lots of bad things to other people. Shit, we did lots of bad things to ourselves. There are two questions I ruminate on in my passing age. One is whether I had a "good" childhood. Which is such a complicated question for anyone, but for us growing up in West Lib(erty), it's all compounded. We had a unique, celebratory, maddening, surreal, horrific childhood- often all at once."...more
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