Shadowings by Lafcadio Hearn is a collection of Japanese legends, songs, girl names, and essays focused particularly on dreams. In the legends, one features a samurai who returns to his first wife one night only to discover that that she had died from his absence. Another features a man who must ride the dead body of a woman in order for her not to haunt him. There’s an essay on cicadas and how the Japanese infuse them into literature. Then an essay on the etiquette and minutia of girl names which catalogue hundreds of names and their meanings. There’s an essay on old songs and the contexts from which they come from. Finally, there are an assortment of essays ranging from how the author levitated in his dreams, to why we fear ghosts, to words he had dictated from a book in his dream. There are weird moments, though I appreciate the amount of detail Hearn goes into on how he categorizes and explains the names, songs, and cicadas.
Final Rating: 4/5
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Iron Horse Literary Review 26.1 is a collection of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and interviews. The story I enjoyed the most in this issue was ‘All B’s and One C’ by Patrick Font which details the life of a flunking student trying to get by in summer school. He takes weed from his father’s stash and sells it to his classmates. I liked how the voice of Joey comes through, the way he views María, and the lengths he will go to cover for himself.
Final Rating: 3/5 A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is an essay focusing on the implications and history of women in fiction. It details the types of struggles women have had to exist within in the literature landscape, imagining the lengths with which Jane Austen had to hide her manuscripts, the views of men on women writing, and the difficulties of the past and present. Though, there are also other calls to actions and reassurances for writers, in which she writes, “For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.” Or, “Perhaps a mind that us purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought.” And finally, “Therefore, I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast.” It’s an encouraging read seeing as Woolf mentions that women, given a hundred years would come into themselves in fiction. Seeing the landscape now, this seems to have become realized (though, not fully so). The thesis of Woolf’s argument is that if a person has the material means (i.e. a stable income, a private space) as well as drawing from both their feminine and masculine sides, then a writer can effectively become renowned. And while Woolf does mention many writers (including herself), come from wealth, it’s hard to reckon with the fact that other writers do not have those resources. How does one simply afford five hundred dollars a year (about nine thousand dollars today), without spending most of their time working and less of their time writing?
Final Rating: 4/5 South Dakota Review 58.1 is a collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Out of the pieces, I enjoyed ‘Nepenthes Northiana’ by Virgil Suárez, ‘When it Rains’ by Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Never Break Two Laws at Once’ by Adam Straus, and ‘Mascot Worship’ by William Musgrove. Particularly the story by Adam Straus was interesting in the way it handled desertion, anxiety, and dislike toward the military.
Final Rating: 3.5/5 (I am) A Real American by Bob Kan is a memoir about a Japanese American Air Force fighter pilot, his experiences overseas, and a few near-death crashes. Kan was witness to Pearl Harbor, joined the military, and was stationed in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. There are some interesting moments, for example one in which Kan’s aircraft loses one of its engines in Vietnam and he has to eject. However, there were some moments that didn’t quite hit the mark. While reading, I was particularly aware of the formatting/grammatical mistakes and felt that another round of edits was needed. I’m also not too fond of pro-military stories, even if told from a Japanese American.
Final Rating: 2.5/5 The Resurrection Appearances: Fragments of a Daybook by Jay Aquinas Thompson is a nonfiction chapbook detailing the days, weeks, and months after the death of their mother. It recounts the moment they encountered her body, her life, as well as ruminations on Christianity. I particularly liked the lines, “When people asked me how grief felt, I’d say it didn’t feel like anything, it wasn’t a feeling; it was a metabolism.” and, “God is a fire victim on bedrest: from each burn point an angel is born;” It’s a deeply moving chapbook on how Thomson views their mother’s death, how their child, Finn, deals with these emotions, and what it all means within the context of religion. Thomson finishes off by writing, “There’s no and then I realized…moment in grief…”
Final Rating: 5/5 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is a non-fiction novel about the Kansas murders of the Clutter family in 1959. It follows the lives of the Clutter family leading up to their deaths, as well as describing the murders, Perry and Hickock, as they decide to rob and kill the family. Both Perry and Hickock had been in and out of trouble with the law, and in one such case heard about Mr. Clutter who owned a farm and had a safe with at least ten thousand dollars in it. With that, Hickock concocts a plan to drive to their house once they’re out of prison, rob and kill the family, and disappear. Perry has an idea of them going to Mexico to discover gold after the murders, which they decide is their next course of action. Both Perry and Hickock are described as having tolerated each other, in part because they believed they’d get a big payout. However, once they get to the house, and tie the family up, they can’t find the safe. They collect forty dollars from Mr. Clutter’s wallet, and while Mr. Clutter is tied up, Perry has a momentary psychotic episode and slits Mr. Clutter’s throat. Then, knowing there can’t be any witnesses, he shoots the rest of the family. Then, they escape from the house, begin to cash fraudulent checks, steal from stores and pawn those items off, and finally make their way to Mexico. However, due to Hickock’s spending, they find they have lost all their money, so they decide to return to the US. All the while, the detective on the case, Dewey, searches for clues in the footprints left and the photos of the crime scene. Dewey finally gets a lead when an inmate who previously bunked with Hickock had told him about the Clutter family and how he described the safe to him. Eventually, they catch Perry and Hickock in Las Vegas, where they are brought back to Kansas to stand trial. Their trial is short, with the death sentence being the final verdict. They are on death row for about five and a half years where they appeal the verdict. However, the novel ends with their hangings while Dewey observes them.
Capote masterfully crafts a vibrant and haunting world in this novel, and I felt severely conflicted with the main murderer it focuses on, Perry. It’s alluded he had some sort of schizophrenia, and had had a rough childhood. I liked how at parts of the novel, Capote takes excerpts of people’s conversations, and how both Perry views himself and the rest of the world views him. It’s imagery and conflict feel completely real, and I can see why this novel has existed in the literary cannon. Final Rating: 5/5 The Kenyon Review Summer 2023 is a collection of poetry, short stories, and essays focusing on Women’s Health and ecopoetics. I was particularly drawn to the essay, ‘Shelter in Place’, by Sydney Tammarine, the essay, ‘How to Tell a True Love Story’, by Leslie Jill Patterson, the story, ‘Robber’s Lake’, by Emma Binder, the story, ‘Burnings’, by Kabi Hartman, and the poem, ‘Comfort Food’, by Terrance Hayes. In ‘Robber’s Lake’, a boy fashions himself a diving rig to go to the bottom of a lake and bring back his mother’s painting which he thinks will bring her out of her depression. He enlists the help of an older gay man and as the boy searches, his contraption fills with water and the man has to jump in to save him. This collection was strong in its discussion of the environment and how women are vital for a healthy world.
Final Rating: 4/5 Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn is a memoir about a son whose father gets into trouble, becomes homeless, and their complicated father-son relationship. The father believes himself to be a great writer (though never publishes anything), goes to jail for forgery and robbing banks, and becomes homeless after bouts of drinking and threatening people. Flynn has his own struggles with drugs and alcohol, gets into drug dealing schemes, but is able to carry himself through tough times. Flynn eventually works at a homeless shelter in Boston, where inevitably his father appears. Not only is Flynn trying to distance himself from his father, but then his mother then commits suicide. Flynn reels from this loss and at one point, decides to create a documentary with all his mother’s past partners. It’s a strong foray into how a father-son relationship can be continually fraught, but also is kept alive.
The memoir takes on different forms, with one part being a script for a play about santas and daughters, another part listing facts his father tells him, and some meta-textual references at the end. It’s a heartbreaking story about relationships, drug/alcohol abuse, and how best to pick up the pieces. Final Rating: 4/5 Holy American Burnout! by Sean Enfield is a collection of essays ruminating and expanding upon being a middle school teacher at a Muslim school during the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. Enfield discusses his frustration and sadness of the inhumane treatment of Black people in America, police brutality, islamophobia, and where he fits into the whole mix. The collection experiments with form, in one essay structured as if a lesson plan, another structured in acts, and others bouncing between space/time and pop culture. I particularly enjoyed the essays ‘To Pimp a Mockingbird – Lesson Plan’, ‘Teacher, Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’, ‘All My Niggas Was white – Notes from the Color Line’, and ‘To Be (or not to be) in a Rage Almost All the Time – An Essay in Five Acts’. It’s a lovely and powerful collection and I am happy to have been part of the team to publish it.
4.5/5 |
AuthorMaxwell Suzuki is a writer, poet, and photographer based in Los Angeles. Archives
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