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Broken River by J. Robert Lennon

My dear husband recommended I read Broken River by J. Robert Lennon because it features an inventive character called the Observer, and it’s also about a house, and what the house contains. (I’m kind of always writing about houses and what they contain, which is why Robert suggested I read this novel.) The Observer character evolves over time within and outside of several carefully constructed and smartly intersecting narratives. Overall I found the book really well made and engaging. It’s creepy in all the best ways (which is maybe evident from one glance at the cover). I recommend you read it especially if you want to see how someone can make something intricate and also smartly accessible, that isn’t shaped like most traditional narratives.

Here are some bits I particularly love—as is the case often in my posts, these passages are torn from context but maybe that doesn’t matter?—and maybe you will see why I love them. (Also, I have never seen anyone write about those weird tube men, and how brilliantly Lennon does so, below!):

p. 26: “In any case, the identity of, fate of, and story behind the previous inhabitants of the house is something Irena intends to research while she is here. If the results are interesting, maybe she can incorporate them, somehow, into her novel. Because at the moment, the novel has no real plot—it’s just descriptions of things. That’s what Irina is good at. She believes that she inherited this deficiency from her father, who is a visual artist and does not require narrative to make something of value. But if that’s her cross to bear, she will do it stoically.”

p. 118: “The observer lets her go. It is time to turn its attention to the family many miles to the north, though the Observer is increasingly aware that it needn’t choose one time, one place, on group of human being to attend to. Indeed, it is quite capable of observing anything, all things. But it has begun to recognize that its purpose, as opposed to its ability, is limited: or, more precisely, its purpose is to be limited. It is unconcerned with, bored in fact by, the enormity of its power. It is interested only in the strategic—the aesthetic—winnowing of that power.”

p. 119: “Of course the humans die. Quite possibly all of them. Perhaps the Observer will die as well; it doesn’t know, and it can’t imagine what it would do differently if eventual death were a certainty. But the humans, it suspects, know. This is likely why, years ago, at the beginning of the Observer’s existence, the murdered man and woman screamed, even before any damage was inflicted upon their bodies: they were justifiably fearful that their lives were about to end. If the humans know that death is coming (and, by the Observer’s standards, it would seem that it tends to come very soon), their words and actions must all be profoundly influenced by that fact. They fear making wrong choices, so they avoid making any at all. They keep very still, hoping that death might fail to take notice of them.”

p. 158: “Of course Eleanor wouldn’t have it any other way. She is not one of those parents who believes that her child must find a tribe, invest herself in society, hide her eccentricities in an effort to blend into the group—even though these are the lessons she herself was taught, and shat she has historically done, and what, despite her engagement in ostensibly solitary pursuits, she is presently doing for a living. No, what she wants for her daughter is intellectual and creative self-actualization without compromise. In other words: Don’t be like me. Be like your father.”

p. 203: “By hour three of her journey here, her lower back ached with a familiar, almost homey, pulsing intensity that bordered on nausea. She had completed the decrepit-barn-and-speedway portion of the trip and had entered the domain of inexplicable traffic lights, roadside diners, and auto dealerships outlined in colorful flags and punctuated by convulsing forced-air tube men. (She doesn’t understand the tube men. They catch the eye, yes, as only a madly flailing twenty-foot-tall monster can; but who decided such a sight could make you buy a car?) Sewn-on smile notwithstanding, the tube men appeared to her earnestly, even violently repulsive. Turn back, their frantic motions seemed to say. There’s danger here. We’re tall enough to see over the trees, and only nightmares await.”

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At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf by Tara Ison

Cover of novel, At The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by Tara Ison

I had the great fortune to get to know Tara Ison when I was a student at the Antioch Los Angeles MFA program, where she taught. (I’ve written previously here about Tara’s work.) Tara’s classes and workshops were always compelling, as is her writing. Tara’s new novel, At The Hour Between Dog And Wolf is an incredibly nuanced and humanity-deepening book—told through the deceptively simple view of a teenaged girl, but containing the grace and texture of Virginia Wolf…for instance, page 62 begins a stunningly long passage of interiority while the protagonist is sewing, and four pages later we are gently reminded of the work (literally) in her hand with the following, “Or—this has never occurred to her before, the needle paused in the cloth—what if her mother didn’t go Underground at all? What if it was a lie?” This intrusion of the needle in the fabric exquisitely reminds us we are embodied, reading a story that is embodied…simply gorgeous. I didn’t write down a lot because I wanted to give over to the reading.

Tara’s novel contains a modern understanding of trauma and what makes a person do what (some would argue) they must, in order to survive. How trauma and necessity can shift an identity so fully that the twists of what is right and who we are ends up looking like light through a prism…anyway, here’s a passage ripped from context, but to illustrate how powerful, suspenseful, breathtaking is the text:

p. 214:

“Pray, keep the faith. God is with us. Everything will be fine.

But she still always looks out the door, first. There’s that old feeling of an end rushing at her, again, the threat of another, bigger end, the kind that drops from the sky or bursts into your room without knocking, or grabs the back of your head and twists. And though you clutch and squirm there’s nothing to hold onto, no matter how hard you pray you still feel flung through the air and to the ground somewhere else, where nothing and no one is the same, the same is what ended, is gone forever. But maybe if she looks first, she’ll see the end in time, marching up the road toward her. Maybe this time she’ll be able to take the right action, keep it from happening, shut and bolt the door closed. Maybe she’ll be able to keep it from coming in.”

What a fine treasure this book is, and a call through dark times toward understanding of what hatred can yield, and how we might better fight its harms.

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Fiebre Tropical by Julián Delgado Lopera

Front cover of Fiebre Tropical by Julian Dalgado Lopera

Fiebre Tropical by Julián Delgado Lopera is amazing. You should read it. Whether you read Spanish or not, the lyric and poetry is resonant…the flow within these pages is so beautiful and real and incredible. The story, the characters, the narrator’s beautiful voice. All of it. Please read this book.

Here are some gems, completely out of context but to show you how gorgeous it is:

p. 144: “How desperate had she become? Nobody in the family wanted to dive deep into her desperation. No one wanted to remember. But if you watched Myriam close for years, you could almost peel the amnesia off her skin, like an onion, layer by layer, until you reached a yellowing coat wrapping her body like a mummy, and here’s where she had stored her gray bitten-down nails, here’s where she stored bruised knees, numb heart, deadly popsicles. She must have been frenetic, manic, sleepless. So hopeless, almost no light shone inside her.”

p. 204: “Alba crawled around the house, close to the floor, recoiling every time she saw men’s shoes, plugging into the dirt, swimming deep in the soil, deeper into the soil, watching some of the horse’s bones go by, skeletons of children, a lost shoe, emeralds gleaming cutting piece from her arms that quickly regrew, she swayed from side to side with her mouth open, eating fresh dirt, swallowing fresh dirt, bathing in its misty coolness.”

p. 252: “I needed a perfect place to smoke the cigarette in peace. I walked past the pool, chasing the disgusting ducks with red balls on their beaks. Patos desgraciados, inmundos asquerosos. What the fuck happened there, Nature?”

p. 272: “We smoked and smoked and smoked so many cigarettes that by eight p.m. I was made entirely of smoke, bones of smoke, skin of smoke, curls of smoke, if someone had blown on me I would have disappeared.”

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“a shareable heat” (Alexis Pauline Gumbs interviewed by Ariel Gore)

I’m savoring the latest from Ariel Gore: her school-in-a-book called The Wayward Writer: Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like a Superstar.

I’ll post about this book and what it helps manifest at intervals. Here’s a sliver of wisdom and heat for today.

On p. 31, Ariel Gore is interviewing Audre Lorde biographer Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

Ariel Gore: “What else should aspiring lit stars know about their lit star life?”

Alexis Pauine Gumbs: “Audre Lorde wrote a poem for her children where she said: 

‘Remember our sun

is not the most noteworthy star

only nearest.’

As ‘lit stars’ it matters where we are, it matters who we impact. It is not so much about our brilliance, or being the brightest and out shining other stars. It is about being close. Close to a shareable heat. It is about whether or not our communities can utilize the solar power in our writing to grow something that nourishes them for real.”

***

(I adore this notion of shareable heat. Here’s some shareable heat in sonic form, manifested by Damon Locks/Black Monument Ensemble, which you can enjoy here.)

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Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat

cover of Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat

Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat is a gorgeous novel.

Out of context, because I just want you to go read the book, here’s some proof, to lure you:

p. 199:

“People like to say of the sea that lanme pa kenbe kras, the sea does not hide dirt. It does not keep secrets. The sea was both hostile and docile, the ultimate trickster. It was as large as it was small, as long as you could claim a portion of it for yourself. You could scatter both ashes and flowers in it. You could take as much as you wanted from it. But it too could take back. You could make love in it and you could surrender to it, and oddly enough, surrendering at sea felt somewhat like surrendering on land, taking a deep breath and simply letting go. You could just as easily lie down in the sea as you might in the woods, and simply fall asleep.”

and more, on p. 215:

“Sometimes when she was lying on her back in the sea, her toes pointed, her hands facing down, her ears half submerged, while she was listening to both the world above and beneath the water, she yearned for the warm salty water to be her mother’s body, the waves her mother’s heartbeat, the sunlight the tunnel that guided her out the day her mother died.”

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See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur

Cover image of SEE NO STRANGER by Valarie Kaur

A friend asked me to join in a discussion of Valarie Kaur’s See No Stranger at the library, and the invitation ended up being a real gift. Kaur’s wise and practical information toward understanding our shared humanity is so necessary—especially in what feels like an impossibly broken world. One idea from the book has stuck with me. It gives me hope.

p. 27:

“As I move through my day and come across faces on the street or subway or on a screen, I say in my mind, Sister. Brother. Sibling. Aunt. Uncle. I start to wonder about each of them as a person. When I do this, I am retraining my mind to see more and more kinds of people as part of us rather than them. I practice this with animals and parts of the earth, too. I say in my mind “You are a part of me I do not yet know. I practice orienting to the world with wonder, preparing myself for the possibility of connection.”

Some other powerful passages:

p. 10:

“Wonder is our birthright.”

“Wonder is where love begins, but the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence.”

On Christianity:

p. 22

“In the United States, white supremacy is intertwined with Christian supremacy, one an extension of the other. Any theology that teaches that God will torture the people in front of you in the afterlife creates the imaginative space for you to do so yourself on earth.”

p. 26

“Her name was Faye and she was the first Christian I had ever met who did not believe I was going to hell. I would go on to meet many more people like her and learn that there are many ways to be Christian, just as there are many ways to be Sikh. Our traditions are like treasure chests filled with scriptures, songs and stories—some empower us to cast judgment and others shimmer with the call to love above all. There are no true or false interpretations. There are only those that destroy the world we want and those that create it. We get to decide which ones to hold in our hearts.”

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A Constellation of Ghosts by Laraine Herring

Cover image for Laraine Herring's A CONSTELLATION OF GHOSTS

Laraine Herring’s speculative memoir, A Constellation of Ghosts is a work of literary art, and possibly its own (new?) form. In this remarkable book, I find a frame for understanding and surviving the past. A frame for how to grow beyond the stories we accept into our bodies like breath (in the same way we accept breath: in order to survive).

This memoir is also a kind of how-to book about writing, a shape-shifting dive into bones and blood and story and generational connections and ruptures, and all of it, each vessel and bit that makes us human. 

(I suspect that, in some ineffable way, this book is a method.)

There’s so much in these pages to hold up and show you—I copied out five pages of jewel-like quotations from this memoir, words I will ponder through time—but for the moment, here are a few glimpses:

Page 81

“Please listen:  I am trying to tell you something true about grief and attachment and the shape-shifter that is home, but I am failing because I can’t look straight at it, so first I’m going to tell you a story about my father because his stories merge with my mother’s stories and I inherited much more than green eyes and a ski-jump nose and a love of books. And today, when I find myself standing between two lives, I have nowhere to look for understanding but the past, which does not die, but reinvents itself, masquerading as new thoughts, laughing at our feeble attempts to quiet its fury. One thing is certain: the past cannot be locked in the trunk. Its messages will tattoo themselves on your skin, and the secret decoder ring is story.”

 Page 109

“When we reach adulthood, we often run into trouble when an early belief system comes into conflict with a goal we are pursuing. Until that point of conflict, we rarely consider what stories might be lurking in the understory of our operating system. We’re often not sure where those early beliefs came from, and we definitely don’t remember choosing, ‘Yes, I’ll have this belief system,’ or ‘No, thank you, not this one.’ We absorb and absorb and absorb everything from our contexts, and because we are animals, our biology kicks in here to with our imperative physical needs. This means the larger people who are feeding and housing us when we’re infants and children have a disproportionate amount of influence over the stories we take in. They, too, may not be saying, ‘Look, this is how things are,’ (though sometimes they do), but they will be interacting with each other and with us in ways that will influence what we internalize about our new world. They will be contributing authors to our stories.”

Page 214

“Shadow-you is holding the wild cat stroking your brick nose and wondering how to love what will leave, wondering how to leave what she loves. The cat sleeps.

‘You fed her,’ says Raven. ‘What you feed will stay.’”

I love this book, and I know I will return to it. (Laraine Herring is also a wonderful teacher! You can find out more about her work here.)

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Don’t Go Crazy Without Me by Deborah A. Lott

Don't Go Crazy Without Me by Deborah A. Lott (cover image)

Deborah Lott’s memoir, Don’t Go Crazy Without Me, is an embodied act of generosity. The narrator shares her life, turns everything inside out, paws through debris, so we can see how it’s possible for people to love and survive. She writes with unwavering clarity and precision. She never varnishes things, never looks away or shrinks from writing about the intricacy, the sticky quality of finding oneself born into a situation, and staying deeply tied to the other humans who live there.

Reading this narrative—enjoying how boldly and beautifully it’s told—I feel a sense of openhearted optimism. A sense of hope, of humanity’s possibility of survival.

Also delectable is how Lott shares a riveting glimpse into the early writer’s psyche, her awareness about what it is to be a writer. Here are a few bright bits:

p. 186:

“I wrote in the persona of an orphan, inspired by the cheesy Keane print of a huge-eyed, sad girl harlequin that adorned my bedroom wall as my patron saint. The girl in the painting, like the speaker in my poems, was an unloved, misunderstood waif. I wrote in the persona of a child grieving and then turning away from her mother, whose true state she finally recognizes: Look up at me, mother, and feel a moist eye / look up at me, mother / for mother I cry / …so bury your face / and I’ll cover your head. I must walk alone now / for mother you’re dead. I wrote as the confused, estranged girl who, a la some episodes of The Twilight Zone, suddenly realizes that she is dead herself: Don’t hate me / Don’t hate me with wet eyes / Talk to me / Don’t let me cry / …I’ll never know why you were that way / Why did you have to go? / Because I’m dead, you wouldn’t stay?”

[For me, this passage recalled that particular sheen of 1960s & 70s sadness…that ubiquitous art by Keane, from childhood…the images of freaky-sad children and animals that I remember spanned the walls of our veterinarian’s office…I hadn’t thought about how haunting those images were for a long time. Recalling them made me wonder if they were an early seed for my own writing about orphans, or the sense of being an orphan.]

p. 199:

“On the walls of my bedroom, I hung up my poems. They were close enough for a foot to touch when I lay in bed and stretched one leg out toward the cool wall. I’d copied them with colored markers onto butcher paper in my own approximation of calligraphy. In this graphic form, they provided an assertion of self larger than on the pages of my notebook or diary. I saw them when I woke up every morning, and they provided the backdrop as I fell asleep. This is who you are, they said, a writer, an observer, a fighter for freedom and justice. Hang on.”

And finally, on p. 250 (a conversation between the narrator and her brother, as adults)

“‘You know, I’m writing a memoir about our family,’ I say. ‘Do you want to read it?’

‘I’m not sure. I bet if I wrote it, though, it would be a much different story.’

‘To the writer belongs the story. You could write your own version; no one’s stopping you. Maybe if you wrote, you wouldn’t have to hold onto so much actual stuff. Maybe you could find some peace in writing about it.’

‘Has it given you peace?’

I laugh. My brother knows better.

‘At least it takes up less room in my house.’”

May you, too, enjoy this powerful and life-affirming memoir. To learn more about Deborah Lott, visit her website.

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Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief by Victoria Chang

Cover of Victoria Chang's book, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief

I love how Victoria Chang employed the form of the letter in her gorgeous book, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. The interplay between her letters and the imagery shimmers with life. And I love how she grapples with gaps in memory, gaps and erasures in family stories, and struggles in the reaching toward understanding that is the human urge, and an impossibly hard urge to sit still within. It’s a gift: there is so much to learn about the writer and the process in these pages.

The beauty and clarity of Chang’s voice in these pieces is simultaneously heartbreaking and heart-mending.

Such as:

“These are the kinds of questions that absolutely did not matter at the time. The things that didn’t matter at the time are often the most urgent questions after someone has died.” (from Dear Mother, p. 27)

“When we say that something takes place, we imply that memory is associated with a physical location, as Paul Ricoeur states. But what happens when memory’s place of origin disappears?” (from Dear Mother, p. 49)

“Each book isn’t just a book, but a period of life, a period of learning how to write. Each book has its own hair color, its own glasses, its own favorite mug, its own computer, its own shirt and pants, its own tears.” (from Dear Teacher, p. 77)

“As I write, more and more of my cells are replaced by language. When they burn a writer’s body, the smoke will be shaped like letters.” (from Dear Teacher, p. 77)

“You told me that suffering can deepen and expand a poet’s work. And that sometimes suffering can put so much pressure on a person that they have no choice but to become a poet. You told me that suffering is one’s fate and that regardless of whether the fates have distributed suffering to me, if I see the world around mew, care about and for other people, face the setbacks of the world, read with hunger, get older, encounter illness, and if life is not lost on me—and if, all the while, I learn how to write better and pay attention better—maybe, just maybe, I would be able to write better poems.” (from Dear Teacher, p. 87)

“I don’t know if you know that Charles Simic once said: The world is beautiful but not sayable. That’s why we need art. I think that’s why we need all art. Not just art from some people. Or whether you know what Osip Mandelstam said: What tense would you choose to live in? I want to live in the imperative of the future passive participle—in the ‘what ought to be.’ I don’t know where this is or what it looks like, but I know somehow it begins with language.” (from Dear B, p. 130)

“Working on these letters and listening to the interviews made me think that grief and memory are related. That memory, trying to remember, is also an act of grieving. In my mothers case, sometimes forgetting or silence was a way to grieve lost lands and to survive. In my case, trying to know someone else’s memories, even if it’s through imagination and within silence, is also a form of grieving.” (from Dear Reader, p. 144)

“In the end, these epistles brought me much sadness and shame to write, but the process was also joyful. I’ve always loved what Jeanette Winterson in Art Objects says about the chisel:

The chisel must be capable of shaping any material however unlikely. It has to leave runnels of great strength and infinite delicacy. In her own hands, the chisel will come to feel light and assured, and she refines it to take her grip and no other. If someone borrows it, it will handle like a clumsy tool or perform like a trick. And ye to her, as she works with it and works upon it, it will become the most precise instrument she knows. There are plenty of tools a writer can beg or borrow, but her chisel she must make herself, just as Michelangelo did.

I’m still learning how to make my own chisel, but everything I write, no matter how crude, is an experiment with my unfinished chisel. Each time I sit down, I pull out my imaginary chisel, listen to the words that come up, like eavesdropping, crane my neck into language, into memory, into silence. And each time I write, the chisel becomes more and more finished and distinctly mine. And with each word, I become more and more myself.” (from Dear Reader, p. 146)