Reading this fantastic debut collection by Jenny Xie, I feel renewed in every sense of the word both on and off the page, which might be the highest form of praise I can think to offer considering change, however slight, is among poetry’s tallest orders. I can’t help but feel I’m engaging with the words of a Real Poet, someone in my lifetime who has somehow found and honed a voice both utterly distinct from and buoyed by the voices of Poets past. Here, Xie demonstrates she is a poet with a thesis, having written convincingly of the Self without a core, and for that she is also a poet who writes precisely what she means to....more
"Sci-Fi" / "It & Co." / "Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?" / "Savior Machine" / "The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" / "Everything That Ever"Sci-Fi" / "It & Co." / "Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?" / "Savior Machine" / "The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" / "Everything That Ever Was" / "The Good Life" / "Sacrament" / "When Your Small Form Tumbled Into Me" / "Us & Co."...more
Reading Their Eyes Were Watching God is a privilege and an honor. If you're like me and you were never required to read this book in school, do yourseReading Their Eyes Were Watching God is a privilege and an honor. If you're like me and you were never required to read this book in school, do yourself a favor and put it high on your to-do list. When you turn to the last page, you'll wish you had read it sooner.
Anthropologist and author Zora Neale Hurston breathes life into the remarkable Janie Crawford, our lead character. Set in Florida during the early 20th century when Jim Crow laws cruelly saturated the Southern way of life, we watch Janie's budding, naive consciousness blossom into a fiercely independent force by the end of the novel. Over the course of this personal transformation, Janie holds social positions including the highest ranking woman in an all-Black community and a bean harvester in the wilds of the Everglades. All the while, Hurston steadily weaves themes of class, power, race, love, gender roles, nature, and spirituality into a challenging portrayal of hard-won selfhood and resilient Black womanhood.
The way Hurston chooses to tell Janie's story is riveting and evinces her rich contribution to literary modernism. While plot points steer the narrative through a wide range of domestic and cinematic intrigue, so does the duality between what literary critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls a "literate" voice and an expressive, idiomatic Black voice via his insightful afterward to this edition. The hypnotic back-and-forth of these voices gives way to a unique consciousness Janie courageously uses to fully express herself in a society marred by racial fragmentation. It is this achievement that marks this book among the most influential in both African-American and feminist literature.
The universal wisdom Hurston imparts in these pages is uncanny and essential. As such, it certainly warrants multiple readings. Hurston's artistry inspired the works of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Edwidge Danticat, and Jesmyn Ward—among many others—and us readers are all the better for it. I'll definitely be revisiting Their Eyes Were Watching God every few years so that my mind can bloom alongside Janie's again and again....more
The reading experience transferred from the pages of A Little Life is unforgettable, for better or worse. If you're a willing participant ("willing" bThe reading experience transferred from the pages of A Little Life is unforgettable, for better or worse. If you're a willing participant ("willing" being the operative word here), it will sear itself into the deepest chambers of your inner life and linger there for many weeks, months, years after. This quality alone is a testament to Hanya Yanagihara's staggering talent.
A Little Life takes place in New York City and follows the lives of four friends as they navigate careers, beliefs, successes, failures, and the complexities of their shared friendship. JB, Malcom, Willem, and Jude are in their twenties at the start of the novel, and as they age together through the decades the story almost exclusively fixes its gaze on Jude and studies how his mysterious past continues to shape his present. Funnily enough, I enjoyed the sections which discussed each main character's area of professional expertise more than any discourse regarding their beautifully drawn individual personalities. The elaborate passages exploring what it means to stoke or lack ambition and a promising career are enriched by exquisitely crafted extended metaphor which effectively reveal more universal truths than most of the dialogue or exposition throughout. Meditations on mathematics, law, architecture, and the fine arts only enhance Jude's narrative as agony proves to be a mainstay in his harrowing existence.
I think it's important to warn readers beforehand that each event unfolding Jude's narrative is arguably worse than the last, making for a deeply layered story rife with traumas that compound in explicit detail. The lugubrious effect achieved by this story structure certainly isn't for everyone; many readers find it egregious to the degree of needless, pointless sadism. While there's no doubt that this is an emotionally demanding read, I'm in the camp that feels Yanagihara was hyper aware of the influence her authorial choices would have on the book's reading experience. To me, she bravely colored outside the lines of realism to create something truly unique, adding something different and meaningful to our contemporary literary conversation. I would most certainly recommend this novel to anyone emotionally prepared or daring enough to process an obtuse chronicle of pain and suffering. Why? Because art is important, and in my opinion A Little Life is a work of art....more
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