Category: Reviews & Criticism

You’re Pretty Gay, a short story collection by Drew Pisarra, reviewed by Jarrod Campbell

The ease with which queer lives can, in the blink of an eye, turn from something mundane into a moment of incredulous absurdity becomes commonplace the moment a person accepts that truth about themselves. Many components add together and create complex formulae necessary for any concoction: childhood longing and distress, adolescent anxiety, adult damages, to…
Little Eyes, a new novel by Samanta Schweblin, reviewed by Shannon Nakai

In its eyecatching green-and-white cover and deceptively simple title, Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes offers a playful, incisive critique on what it means to follow a global trend in our increasingly connected, yet increasingly virtual culture. With the contemporary feel and multinarrative structure à la Tommy Orange or Marlon James, Schweblin invites us into workspaces, bedrooms,…
How He Loved the Bones, a new chapbook by poet Caitlin Scarano, reviewed by Jonathan Kelly

Caitlin Scarano’s latest chapbook How He Loved the Bones takes us on a journey of recovery as we traverse the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia—the locus of trauma both individual and collective. This work neither romanticizes nor condemns Appalachia; it situates the region within a broader mechanism of historical, patriarchal oppression while positing a…
“Cloud-bellies Full of Virgin Birds”: Arturo Desimone Reviews Tension: Rupture, poetry by Cutter Streeby, paintings by Michael Haight

In the prologue to Tension : Rupture poet Cutter Streeby admits to the unpredicted challenges of collaboration between two artists who, while using different media, deal with strongly interrelated autobiographical leitmotifs of substance abuse, resulting in a requiem for the past. The Tension : Rupture of the title seems to refer, therefore, not only to…
“Buoyant Also”: Liana Jahan Imam on Aisha Sasha John’s TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED

Aisha Sasha John’s most recent chapbook begins with a short page that might double as scrolling titles at the start of a horror film: “In the fall of 2018, I left Toronto for Vancouver—the city where I spent the bulk of my childhood and in whose suburbs my parents still live.” On a separate line:…
Saturday Morning Chapbook: Ryan Bollenbach on Expendables, a poetry collection by Emma Villazón

In Emma Villazón’s own words, the title of her first collection Temporeras, or “migrant woman farm hands,” translated by Thomas Rothe as Expendables, compares the precarious labor of temporary female farm workers with the labor of female freelancers who “manufacture intellectual property” for companies whose “raw material is the word.” Although, for the speakers in…
Boyfriend Perspective, a debut collection of poetry by Michael Chang, reviewed by Stephen Scott Whitaker

Queerness, in Michael Chang’s Boyfriend Perspective, expands infinitely outward and inward in this full-length collection by the non-binary poet. Chang not only navigates western culture dominated by norms inherited from the patriarchy, but also Chinese culture and its own restrictions with regards to gender and sexuality. And we are challenged by Chang’s poesy and content,…
The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych by Carlos Sirah, reviewed by Dave Karp

The 3rd Thing, a small Olympia, Washington, press, is explicitly committed to cross-genre, inter-surrectional experimental writing; it publishes books that challenge how we imagine. Carlos Sirah’s The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych certainly fulfills that mission. Sirah’s book is a recent entry in the American tradition of bardic incantations, from Whitman onward, meant to…
Funeral for Flaca, an essay collection by Emilly Prado, reviewed by Jamie Moore

One thing I learned right away from Funeral for Flaca, is that we can trust Emilly Prado with the playlist. She earns this credibility with the playlist-inspired structure of the book, each chapter named after a song that represents that moment her in life. And if you feel like I feel about playlists, you know…