Still thinking about metaphor. Maybe I\u2019m always thinking about metaphor. Anyway, much as I love and am currently watching What We Do In The Shadows<\/em>, much as I once loved and should probably re-read the Anne Rice vampire novels, much as Mallory and I watch Francis Ford Coppola Presents Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em> religiously every year in October\u2014I do think vampires are most effective when they are not aristocratic fuck-up main characters, but tertiary to real people with real difficulties. Sorta like all of us, reading this blog, are real people, suffering under the neck-fit bootheel of Wall Street\/Silicon Valley\/D.C. vampires. <\/p> What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week: <\/strong><\/p> But first, this is a literary blog. The books are the fun part! We got some good ones this week, too. Both pretty scary, but only one you\u2019d shelve under horror. Both not necessarily about but very much a product of the deeply inequitable and racist activities on this continent. Seriously, I\u2019m more and more glad that I did that Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz\/<\/a>Four Hundred Souls<\/a><\/em>\/Howard Zinn project in January<\/a>, because it has really given me an intellectual foundation to my understanding of the world, and added depth to my experience of reading. Reading about addiction and vampires. I\u2019m talking, of course, about When My Brother Was An Aztec<\/em> by Natalie Diaz and Vampires of El Norte<\/em> by Isabel Ca\u00f1as. <\/p> When My Brother Was An Aztec<\/strong><\/em> by Natalie Diaz: <\/strong>how do you write about addiction that is not your own? When someone you live with is captured by the demons, when the problem isn\u2019t you but the problem is a family\u2019s to deal with? It\u2019s an even more harrowing read, watching everyone else\u2019s<\/em> powerlessness and despair. <\/p> To talk only of Diaz\u2019s brother\u2019s addiction would be reductive, though, and a disservice to these breathtaking poems. There\u2019s a real density here, meaning and metaphor packed in each line like flour pressed into a measuring cup. The poems are lengthy and musical without being overwrought. This book reminded me a little of Jaswinder Bolina, another Copper Canyon author I picked up at AWP<\/a>. Spoiler for next week: I\u2019m reading Diaz\u2019s Postcolonial Love Poem<\/em> and super stoked. <\/p> Vampires of El Norte<\/strong><\/em> by Isabel Ca\u00f1as: <\/strong>come on now, you know I loved this book. I used to think I didn\u2019t like historical fiction, but maybe that was born out of growing up in Tennessee and thinking \u201chistorical fiction\u201d meant \u201cbooks with the Confederate flag on the cover.\u201d Plus, this novel is more of a gothic romance with leftist politics and vampires. Nightmarishly gross nosferatu, too, with holes where their eyes should be and too many teeth and a proclivity for moving around on all fours. One even eats a Texas Ranger\u2014some of the most despicable people to ever walk the earth. That\u2019s<\/em> how you get yr friendly neighborhood shipwrecked sailor to yell HELL YEAH while reading. <\/p> Be not mistaken, though, homies\u2014los vampiros are background. This is a gothic romance, and our two narrators, Nena and N\u00e9stor, have a major class divide to contend with. N\u00e9stor is born a peon and grows up to be a free vaquero, but Nena is a daughter of la casa mayor and expected to marry someone of similar status. If, like, my parents are reading and thinking \u201cthis sounds like a book you\u2019ve turned your nose up at before,\u201d then this is a good time to highlight what a brilliant sentence-maker Isabel Ca\u00f1as is. Each paragraph absolutely sings<\/em>, and the historical\/environmental details breathe easily into the narrative. I was reminded a little of Swamplandia!<\/em> by Karen Russell, the way lush details about the desert heat and various fauna of the chaparral and rancho perfume the text. A little of The Devourers<\/a><\/em> too, though maybe nothing will ever be as lush as that book<\/a>. Still, you could teach these two side-by-side, and if Universal ever wants to get serious about a decent monster movieverse, they should option Vampires of El Norte<\/em> and The Devourers<\/em> and give us vampires and werewolves with some actual teeth. <\/p> Also\u2014Ca\u00f1as includes an afterword about the writing process, which 1) rules, I love seeing writers talk about their process after<\/em> I\u2019ve finished the book, and 2) did you know that Mexican polymath Juan Nepomuceno \u201cCheno\u201d Cortina<\/a> was referring to USian invaders from the north as \u201cvampires\u201d in 1859? Decades before Dracula<\/em>, decades before Carmilla<\/em>, decades before Marx and Engels referring to capitalists as vampires? Vaquero tall tales and folklore abound in this novel, a sense of the non-empirical pervades. Ca\u00f1as says she worried initially that the supernatural felt shoehorned in. There\u2019s definitely a way this book could<\/em> have been ham-fisted, in less caring hands. Isabel, I assure you, it does not feel that way in the final publication.<\/p> LINKS!<\/strong><\/p> Something to listen to while you browse? I\u2019ve linked LA LOM recently, but they came out with a new video as I was writing this, so here\u2019s \u201cC\u00f3mo Te Voy A Olvidar:\u201d<\/p>![\"two](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/5c90a0f2-d167-449f-a6c3-b444c0b802f3.heic\")
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