Reviews

Kendra DeColo declares inspiring acts of femininity, motherhood, and sexuality while making it a point to showcase how these things become complicated within the archetypal standards of womanhood and misogyny in America.

The constant change of poetic form, voice, and content drives Dreaming of You forward through the dark world created by Melissa Lozada-Oliva.

Following last year’s critically acclaimed Telephone, Percival Everett’s The Trees weaves tropes of pulp-cop noir with trademark acuity and genre-bending inventiveness to deliver a swift, startlingly expansive take on the legacy of lynching in the American South.

Prado perfectly encapsulates the insecurities of growing up and the never-ending search for identity in a society that tries to define and confine us at every chance it gets.

As an educator, Smith believes that a true reckoning with America’s legacy of slavery would shift the ground we stand on. “How different might our country look,” he wonders, “if all of us fully understood what has happened here?” At various turns, questions of access underlie his journey. Not everyone can travel to these sites of memory, and Smith’s book serves to extend their reach. 

The “waiting” suggests that the speaker has been pursuing a pathway out of the nightmare. Though the Asian market is an illuminating environment, the shiny products are creatures that want to maintain her in a continuous painful cycle. 

While Broome’s lived experiences are uniquely his, Punch Me Up to the Gods is a compelling and consequential read for anyone who has ever felt deeply different and alone.

In her debut novel, You Will Never Be Normal, memoirist, poet, and retired pediatric ICU nurse Catherine Klatzker comes to terms with her split-off “Parts”—her selves that hold dissociated and unprocessed memories.