Of course not. It’s NOIRVEMBER!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once again, two books that paired surprisingly well. I picked them because they both had the word \u201ccity\u201d in the title, and then they both behaved differently than what I expected. Pleasantly, I might add. There\u2019s a lot going on in both books, and although I enjoyed both very much, I kinda want to re-read with the foreknowledge of everything that happens. Not saying that everything didn\u2019t come together, more that I think a re-read would help me see how *Maynard James Keenan voice* the pieces fit. Luckily, these are both extremely re-readable books. Not because they breeze by! They\u2019re both pretty dense, actually. But delightful and intriguing and inviting further exploration. Let\u2019s get into City Of Smoke And Sea<\/em> by Malia M\u00e1rquez and City Without Altar<\/em> by Jasminne Mendez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n City Of Smoke And Sea<\/em> by Malia M\u00e1rquez: <\/strong>perhaps the most perfect book to transition from horror month to Noirvember? Our first-person narrator, Queenie Rivers, is your typical noir protagonist\u2014a semi-clear-eyed fuckup who is disappointed in her life as recovering drug addict who works in seedy industries, but she has a heart of gold. Her egocentric cokehead of an ex is an aspiring TV writer, and she wants to write, too. Her mother has been missing since she was a toddler. Her grandmother\u2019s death kicks off some research into her family\u2019s past. Queenie learns the extent of her Roma grandmother\u2019s experience with Nazi concentration camps (not uncommon) and that her grandmother and all her friends are centuries-old magical beings (less common). There is a schism, a feud between two of the more powerful magical beings, and Queenie, by investigating her grandmother\u2019s death, is pulled directly into the middle of that feud. It\u2019s like The Big Sleep<\/em> or Under The Silver Lake<\/em> crossed with Twilight<\/em> or The Old Guard<\/em>. No vampires or werewolves, I should say. Ancient feuds amongst magical beings, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The novel has mythical elements, and I want to quote Malia’s acknowledgements real quick: “As a person of (complex) Indigenous descent (New Mexico, Colorado, & Mexico), my goal is to offer the Native cultural & mythological elements in this novel as an acknowledgement & recenting of local land-stories, but also an act of borrowing & adapting from cultures not my own…In the spirit of myth making & fictional storytelling traditions that hopefully contain kernels of truth, honoring Native & transplanted peoples who call Los Angeles\/Tovaangar home, past, present, emerging, thank you.” <\/strong>You know yr man the shipwrecked sailor loves some mythology grafted on to a contemporary narrative. I wonder if a little more knowledge on my part would\u2019ve made things come together better for me. It\u2019s unusual for me to say I wish a book was longer, but I genuinely wish I had more time with these fascinating characters. These are centuries-old magical beings who disguise themselves by running a fine dining restaurant on the beach! I wanna kick it with them, no matter how shady they are! More importantly, it feels like characters\u2019 attitudes and motivations shift a little too quickly, the plot sometimes moves because it has to do so. I don\u2019t like levying that criticism after one read, though\u2014it’s completely possible that I was just stressed the fuck out this week<\/em> (see below), and my brain wasn’t all the way working. So I will<\/em> be returning to this. Especially since it is a genuinely good read, and Queenie Rivers rules so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n City Without Altar<\/em> by Jasminne Mendez: <\/strong>a lot going on with this book. Not in a bad way, but in a hard-to-know-where-to-start way. Jasminne is using poetry, prose, and playwriting to tell a story of inherited trauma. The first page is the author’s birth certificate with certain private information blacked out, but also highlighting that the author and her parents are officially<\/em> Dominican, not<\/em> Haitian. “This is legal…All items listed are accurate. And complete,” the prose reads, inviting us to wonder exactly how accurate and complete it is (I’m in Chicago during the ICE invasion, I already know legality is a slippery concept). From there, we get a tracing of how Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered mass slaughter of Haitians along the two countries’ border. We get voices from the past and present interacting. We get x-ray images and prose\/poetic descriptions of the author’s Scleroderma (“Tiny ulcers form and fester on the tips of my fingers. Cuticles blister, burn and erupt, a volcano of pus and blood. The skin, the nail, the bone a slow decay of rotting cells that refuse to heal. There is nothing left to do but amputate.”), which is juxtaposed against being taught how to use a machete to cut a coconut, which comes right after descriptions of machetes being used to massacre Haitians. It’s a meditation on and dramatization of generational trauma and what happens when you cut things\u2014all the ways you can cut many different kinds of things\u2014and it is more than I can properly describe here. The poem is that which resists paraphrase. This book is very much that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? Listen, I gotta confess: it’s a lot of emotions, going out on ICE patrols. As I write this particular paragraph on Tuesday, I still have not seen the fuckers since two weeks ago. Wednesday update: I went out for two hours, walked all over the north side, and then as soon as I got home? Whistles blaring through my windows. Signal chats coming in. ICE kidnapped someone three blocks from my house. Still, some small victories: we can’t know, but there is evidence that one of the patrols I was on prevented an abduction this week. There were also abductions on the north\/northwest side and in the burbs that we couldn’t prevent. Every time I come home\u2014like, both from ICE patrols and just walking my kid home safely from school\u2014an extreme heaviness sets in. I sit on the stairs to take off my shoes, and sometimes I stay there without a thought in my head for like five minutes. I should not be complaining. Reporter for The Triibe<\/em> Dave Byrnes was in court this week hearing testimony about what’s going on in the Broadview concentration camp and it is horrifying. I should not be complaining. Still, emotions are emotions. I’ve been listening to a lot of Meat Wave. Apologies if I’ve posted Meat Wave here recently, I simply don’t have the energy to check. Besides, don’t you want to listen to Meat Wave? Here’s my favorite song of theirs, “Disney.” Live in Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"City](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_6683-1024x768.jpg\")