The
air is crisp. Leaves are changing, and October is almost over. Halloween
approaches: the best day of the month for spooky season lovers. If you’re
looking for a scary read to cap off your night of jack-o’-lanterns, candy, and
costumes, check out Robert Jackson Bennett’s novella, Vigilance.
Bennett is better known for his superb work in fantasy (The Divine Cities trilogy, Foundryside), but with Vigilance (Tor, 2019), he ventures into dystopian science fiction. In the year 2030, the United States is in a state of almost total economic collapse. Most of the younger generations have fled as refugees to other safer, more stable countries. Global warming has induced massive flooding. A refusal to transition to sustainable energy has left Texas a burning oil field.…
For
me, non-fiction has to meet a lot of requirements in order to be classified as
a good read. I’m a curious person. Even a nosy one. I want to eavesdrop on the
writer’s experiences and secret thoughts. I want to know what happened to them.
I want to understand how they felt. And, most of all, I hope to discover
profundity, some kind of wisdom about what it means to be alive. It’s a tall
order, but I’ve found a book that fills it.
Relief
by Execution: A Visit to Maunthausen by Gint Aras (Finding the Moon in Sugar,
The Fugue) is one of the best
non-fiction books I’ve read in a long time. Lyrical and gripping while sparkling with wisdom, Aras leads his reader
through darkness and despair to epiphany as he ruminates on his experiences of
abuse, racism, ethnic identity, and the long-term effects of generational
trauma.…
I’ve been noticing a trend in
movies: the inciting incident of the story is usually the murder of a female
character. The more I thought about how many stories depend on a dead woman,
the more disturbed I became. This story-starting device shows up over and over
in pop culture, in films as diverse as Bambi,The Fugitive, Jaws,The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo, and in every detective, police procedural, and true crime series,
from Sherlock to Criminal Minds to 48 Hours.
Cathy Ulrich has also noticed this trend, and she wrote a book about it. Ghosts of You is a collection of thirty-one flash pieces from her Murdered Ladies Series.…
Jessy Randall’s 2018 poetry release How to Tell If You Are Human contains 29
black-and-white, grayscale, or full-color diagram poems, encompassing a
dizzying range of personal experiences. By calmly exploring and analyzing mental
illness, isolation, and multiple facets of human relationships, Randall’s
speaker helps to raise our understanding of the bewildering set of interactions
a person must navigate on a daily basis to function in American society.
Commendably, she accomplishes these observations, all the while touching upon
the spirit of the iconic 1990s Nirvana album Nevermind. In a brief 78 pages of verse, observations, and
illustrations, the reader is left with a humming sense of his own disconnected
state, coupled with the realization that this unique predicament is universal
and, in fact, entirely disconcerting.…
It was the esteemed poet and essayist Adrienne Rich who once said, “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.” We owe so much of our collective progress to individuals who offer us the truth, and in so doing, render their small corner of the world more genuine, authentic, and real. In her debut collection, Mother Tongue Apologize, Preeti Vangani wrangles the inner power to confront the loss of her mother, examine the construct of idealized femininity, and lift the veil that once hid centuries of unconscionable violence against women. In her words, she resides in truth and makes it possible for the world around her to follow suit.
Vangani’s
writing is not only transparent but also relatable.…
Women tend to apologize. I, a woman, toss apologies here
& there, as if playing ring toss to win the world. I do not aim at a
singular target. I pick up ducks whose colored dots mean something—a different
reason for guilt. & guilt-trips, though they are inherently trips, burrow me,
the traveler, in inner-city first-floor hotel rooms, where the view is dark &
damp; frankly there is no view at all. Women, my apologies. I am #sorrynotsorry
for the #sorrynotsorry movement, which did not win the war on apology, but did
equip the troops with a bossier attitude. People who interact with me, including
women, take my apologies for granted; another shipment lies in wait.
The apology
epidemic extends to women writers, specifically those writing nonfiction.…
Drawing inspiration from her dreamscapes, Southern roots, and the innovative rhythms and structures of Americana music, Lauren Moseley has crafted a sensual and provocative collection of poems that invites us to reevaluate the connection between our inner and outer worlds. Her debut, Big Windows, which Carnegie Mellon University Press released in February of 2018, has surfaced at a time when humanity is confronting an onslaught of social unrest, political upheaval, and aesthetic bankruptcy that often distracts us from the ecstasy we might otherwise find by tuning into our immediate environment. Each poem in this collection is a progression through the stages of disillusionment, humility, wonder, and ultimately, enlightenment.
Moseley’s writing challenges readers to reinstate the practice of observing what the French writer, George Perec, refers to as, the infraordinary—the seemingly trivial and yet intrinsically beautiful objects and events of the everyday.…
