Category: Reviews & Criticism

“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…
Pine, a poetry collection by Julia Koets, reviewed by Carolyn Oliver

Pine, winner of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize, is the second book of poems by Julia Koets (author of Hold Like Owls and The Rib Joint: A Memoir in Essays). Grounded in the woods, fields, and shores of the South, these poems chart the love between women, by custom and necessity long kept secret. Pine…
The Prince of Mournful Thoughts, a story collection by Caroline Kim, reviewed by Philip Clapper

The stories in Caroline Kim’s collection The Prince of Mournful Thoughts all relate in some way to Korea, Koreans, or the Korean diaspora. Each story has a unique viewpoint character. The wide range of stories are often quite personal, the principal conflicts primarily having to do with familiar or other personal relationships. The pieces are…
“Reacting to Crisis”: Tania Pabón Acosta on Margaret Emma Brandl’s Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies)

Margaret Emma Brandl’s new novella, Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies) (released this July as an eBook), tracks two sisters on their search for each other during the aftermath of a tornado that has ripped through Tuscaloosa. The book operates on two levels, both personified in sisters Kennedy and Esther. Not only do we witness the…
As Breaks the Wave Upon the Sea, a short story collection by Robert Wallace, reviewed by Maria Judnick

For thirteen summers, I rose early every morning for swim practice. I relished watching the sun rise as I did my laps, listening to the last early birdsong as the neighborhood stirred awake, pacing myself by the slow, steady wake of the swimmer in front of me as my mind wandered, pondering the big questions…