“How can a century or a heart turn / if nobody asks, Where have all / the Natives gone?” – Natalie Diaz, “Manhattan Is a Lenape Word”
Listen, we’re nothing without community. Brendan and I were just asking ourselves if we placed more importance on friendships than imagined normal people do, because we’re lucky enough to have been best friends since we were eight years old. Ultimately, I figure we place the right amount of importance on friendships: a whole lot. I don’t know or much care to think about what I’d do in an apocalypse, but my first call would be to my nearby friends. We’re probably not surviving, honestly, but we have each other.
What I’ve Been Reading Lately:
Two books that I bought knowing it’d be a minute before I could get to them, but I was counting down the days until they came up on the schedule. Was I disappointed, despite months-long hype? No. No I was not. There’s a lot to get to, because we’re of course talking about Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz and Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva.
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz: again, the density of these poems. I was reminded of what José Olivarez said in his The Line Break appearance about treating subjects “with rigor.” Everything in the title—the concepts of “postcolonial” “love” and “poem”—are all treated with such rigor here. Maybe unsurpring from. aguy who grew up on a river, but I was incredibly moved by all of the poems about rivers, particularly “The First Water Is the Body,” about the Mojave tenet that “I carry a river. It is who I am: ‘Aha Makav. This is not a metaphor // …The river runs through the middle of my body.”
Also, “Only water can change water, can heal itself. Not even God / made water. Not on any of the seven days. It was already here. / Or maybe God is water, because I am water, and you are water.” from the poem “exhibits from The American Water Museum” could’ve been the epigraph, if it fit. I wanted to put that stanza here in its entirety—if that tells you whether you should pick up this book or not.
And of course, you will be unsurprised that Guy Whose Poetry Podcast Ends With Basketball Discussion was absolutely thrilled with all the basketball poems. In poems like “Run ‘N Gun,” and “Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good At Basketball,” there’s all kinds of flipping and twisting of meaning—Native players “becoming weather” when they “blew by [their opponents], we rained buckets, we lit up the gym…,” “shoot” turning to also evoke to Hotchkiss guns of Wounded Knee, which itself gets flipped in “Top Ten Reasons…,” about Indigenous basketball players whomping a visiting white team, who “falls on their wounded knees with torn ACLs.” It’s great. Basketball in poetry!
Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva: my two favorite writers are Aimee Bender and Gabriel García Márquez. That’s been the case since around 2010, and I don’t see it ever changing. Gabo, being internationally famous, has his imitators. Bender, on the other hand, feels unique. People compare her to Kelly Link, maybe, some others—that’s fair, but there’s something ineffable about what Aimee’s prose does to me. It’s like my favorite band, Chon—sure, you can name a bunch of bands that use similar techniques or sound similar, but they remain somehow on a different plane. As such, it’s maybe the highest compliment I can give a writer, saying that they remind me of Aimee Bender. There’s a particular combination of effortlessly tasteful music in the prose, characters tightroping their way between sanity/insanity, casual magic, and a wide-eyed embrace of the weirdness of life that would lead me to say that. It takes a lot. It’s kinda like looking for another band that sounds like Chon: probably a fruitless search, go listen to Homey again. Except: Melissa Lozada-Oliva reminds me of Aimee Bender.
So let’s talk about the book, huh? It’s bonkers. You’re dropped into a second-person narration of what Candelaria, the grandmother of the three main characters, is doing. The first section ends with her stabbing her boyfriend in the gut and tossing flowers at his corpse as she leaves her apartment for the Old Country Buffett. Then we’re off to the main narrative, third-person and switching between Bianca, Paola/Zoe, and Candy. It zooms back a year and shows us how this fragmented family of women regroups after ages of various scatterings. These are fascinating but frequently unlikable characters. I enjoy unlikable characters, but that’s maybe important to some people. As you’re reading, you might think, “wow, Bianaca, Zoe, and Candy are all so cold, they need to make some friends.” But how should they be? Bad things cannot stop happening to these women. Going back to the time Candelaria’s mother sold her to a man, it’s been pretty bleak for these three generations. The ending sort of gets to a “family’s all we got, we gotta take care of other” without being saccharine about it, without losing its hardened edge—in fact, it’s pretty reductive to say that’s the only place the book is going. All that said, if likable characters and world-building is, like, super important to you? 1) grow up and 2) sorry if that was harsh, but—try this book out, and sit with it if it’s uncomfortable.
If I were the kind of pithy book critic that the New York rags employ, I’d call this novel both postcolonial and post-NVIXM. There’s all kinds of unreal stuff in this novel—cannibalism, the undead knocking up the living, people going back for a second SPIN class—but when considered through the lens of “women are constantly under assault in 21st century US culture,” then add the difficulties of being non-white and the child of immigrants with generational trauma? This nightmarescape feels a little like a Thursday. As I’ve said before, I’m growing weary of apocalypses and dystopia, and I was a little wish-something-else-was-happening in the world-collapsing scenes, BUT. There’s no bombardment of world-building, there’s no silly terms to learn (even with the cult!), and there’s no heavy-handed metaphors. Bad things just happen to these women, and they figure it out. Sort of? I would advise against trying to make the apocalypse add up in your head, against trying to graft this book into preconceived ideas of zombie apocalypse stories, and simply hang out with Bianca, Zoe, and Candy.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? How bout some Chon, since I mentioned them earlier?
My dear friend Chloe N. Clark with a special feature novel excerpt in Cincinnati Review. The only other writer to really remind me of Aimee Bender. Obviously, I’m totally stoked for Chloe’s novel, whenever it comes. Read her story and poetry collections now, so you can be cool and say you knew her before she hits the bestseller lists and this novel gets optioned by the people who made The Martian.
Three great micros from the excellent Chelsea Stickle in Identity Theory. Personally, I like when short stories are nearly indistiguishable from poems, and I eat the whole sugar snap pea.
Oh what’s that? You want another piece of flash fiction that’s indistinguishable from poetry? Well here’s an absolutely kickass example: “Nymph of Appalachia” by Laura Grant in New Flash Fiction Review.
Please listen to this episode of The Daily Zeitgeist featuring Olayemi Olurin on copaganda. It’s worth it to remember that police don’t solve crimes (Olayemi’s story about finding missing children is bonkers). It’s worth it to remember what selection bias and manufactured consent is. It’s also worth it never watch television news in any form ever again. If that frees up an hour of your day, TDZ is a well-researched, leftist, and funny way to get. thenews.
It’s been a while since we’ve done some Creaturefector. They’re always great, you should subscribe to Defector, but y’know, gotta have variety in the ol’ Friday Links. As a Person Who Enjoys Zoos/Aquariums, tho, I would be remiss if I didn’t interrogate what they’re for every now and again. Here’s Sabrina Imbler, in the wake of Flaco the owl’s death, on what we owe zoo animals. A pull quote: “In a perfect world, wildlife could, as their name suggests, live in the wild. But, as Barry wrote, what wild? We’ve taken over the planet and razed their habitats for agriculture. Until now I had never written about Flaco, his escape or life on the lam, because the science journalist in me knew the ideal, and arguably most ethical, outcome in the eyes of many researchers was Flaco’s safe return to captivity. I suspected rooting for his freedom would be like rooting for his untimely death. But when I thought about his exhibit, the prospect of placing that owl back into that cage when he had seen and experienced so much of the world, when he had flown, did not feel so ethical after all.”
BONUS SIXTH LINK because it involves the coolest Chicago Bull since Joakim Noah: Jamal Collier on ESPN.com about DeMar DeRozan’s continuing efforts to get athletes talking about and in touch with their mental health.
What’re you still doing here? I have told you repeatedly that skateboarders are some of the best sources for information on municipal history, and in this rhetorical conceit, you did not believe me. Here’s Thrasher with a sick video on the Five Points in Manhattan (ignore Ted Barrow saying a police station and courthouse gets rid of crime, he’s talking about 19th century-ass thinking. 21st century-ass thinking, too, which sucks—just ignore that part of this otherwise sick video).
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Don’t let any your idiot customers tell you skateboarding is a crime.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris