Unsettling, important, and unforgettable poetry.
A collection of poems explores feminism, racism, and social justice.
Juanita, an elder stateswoman of human rights in America, was editor-in-chief of the Black Panthers’ newspaper in the late 1960s. Her experiences in Oakland, California, are chronicled in her much lauded, semiautobiographical novel, Virgin Soul (2013). A renowned novelist, poet, and playwright, she showcases her deft use of numerous styles of poetry and modified prose in her new book. Many of the pieces are set against the backdrop of rough-and-tumble Oakland while invoking the legacies and lessons of black poets like Dudley Randall and Langston Hughes. Permeated with themes of sexual and racial inequality, this collection of 50-plus pieces fittingly begins with a credo against toxic masculinity, conjuring the Greek figure of Lysistrata. Similarly sexually charged imagery is often featured throughout the volume. These subtle and not-so-subtle erotic performances juxtapose the viciously practical with the beautiful. A classically structured sonnet dissects how “brothers get ferocious when they fuck” while another poem includes the lines “softly pull nipples to hard ripple cord come / after checking for lumps.” This isn’t the only way the work subverts readers’ expectations; the collection often injects bodily disgust or mental discomfort into the pieces to catch the audience off guard. A return home to the staleness of a father-run household is punctuated by a screaming enema. A humorous prose piece about the use of the n-word is made all the more unsettling by the fact that it’s predicated on the death of a Latino man who should not have been uttering the slur in the first place. Keeping readers on edge like this is an effective tactic to drive home the importance of the subjects addressed. One poem considers men needing women to be their props a systemic issue. In another piece, the ethereal imagery of downtrodden egg- and worm-eaters’ rising up to reach a dispassionate white angel remains striking in its symbolism.
With the exception of a heart-stirring eulogy for a lost friend, the book often feels the most personal in works that focus on religion. A piece dedicated to the author’s shakubuku mother, the woman who introduced her to Buddhist nam-myoho-renge-kyo chanting, is a portrait of words that skillfully brings the person to life: “She looked like my real mother / thirty years back: their large lips ochre-beautiful petals blossoming beneath their loopy lidded eyes / ...her womanscent, / pussy-sharp in pungent spirals.” This same passion can be as heartbreaking as it is wondrous, as in a piece about an ailing father, willing to chant with Juanita at home, who refuses to enter a San Pablo, California, temple as he nears the end. On the subject of Christianity, the volume is considerably more critical, calling out Roman Catholic hypocrisy and seeing Jesus in the legions of white homeless, begging and defecating in the streets. Modern and historical hallmarks of social justice are present throughout, from Donald Trump’s rise and Harvey Weinstein’s crimes to the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, Sarah Palin’s “babymommadrama,” and the Gulf War. The author champions the causes of Hurricane Katrina survivors and examines police victims and tragedies like the fatal shooting of Atatiana Jefferson in Texas.
Unsettling, important, and unforgettable poetry.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 116
Publisher: EquiDistance Press
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A masterpiece.
Two young Indian writers discover their conjoined destinies by leaving home, coming back, connecting, disconnecting, and swimming in the ocean at Goa.
Sonia’s grandfather, the lawyer, and his friend, the Colonel, are connected by a weekly chess game and a local tradition of families sharing food, “paraded through the neighborhood in tiffin carriers, in thermos flasks, upon plates covered in napkins tied in rabbit ears.” Shortly after Desai’s magnificent third novel opens, the two families are also connected by a marriage proposal. Upon hearing that Sonia is feeling lonely at college in Vermont—loneliness? Is there anything more un-Indian?—and unaware that she is romantically involved with a famous, much older painter, her elders deliver a hilariously lukewarm letter proposing that she be introduced to Sonny, the Colonel’s grandson. Sonny is living in New York working as a copy editor at The Associated Press, and he, too, has a partner no one knows about. Sonny’s family feels they are being asked to give up their son to balance out some long-ago bad investment advice from the Colonel; on the other hand, they would very much like to get the other family’s kebab recipe. The fate of this half-hearted setup unfurls over many years and almost 700 delicious pages that the author has apparently been working on since the publication of The Inheritance of Loss (2006), which won the Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. You can almost feel the decades passing as the novel becomes increasingly concerned with the process of novel-writing; toward the end, Sonia can’t stop thinking about whether, if she writes all the stories she knows, “these stories [would] intersect and make a book? How would they hold together?” Desai’s trust in her own process pays off, as vignettes of just a page or two (Sonia’s head-spinning tour of a museum with the great artist; Sonny’s lightning-strike theory that only people who have cleaned their own toilet can appreciate reading novels) intersect with the novel’s central obsessions—love, family, writing, the role of the U.S. in the Indian imagination, the dangers faced by a woman on her own—and come to a perfectly satisfying close.
A masterpiece.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780307700155
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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