Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Illustrated by Fumi Nakamura
RaveWorld Literature TodayThe book is as much about color and race in our modern world as it is about gratitude for the smallest and strangest miracles it still manages to hold ... Each [essay] is wrapped in language that engages so deeply with its own curiosity, and with such a taste for the way certain words move in the mouth, that all we can do is share in the wonder—even taste it, if we dare follow our gasping breath into a repetition of the words that called it forth.
Carolyn Forché
RaveWorld Literature TodayAnyone familiar with Forché’s work knows that her poetry of witness moves well beyond stunning imagery, having broad implications for the lives it hopes to remember and the readers it hopes to implore ... The pages are filled with imaginative language, but as one delves deeper into each poem, it becomes clear that the most striking lines are often just so because they exist simultaneously as impossible and true—not imagined at all but actualities that take on layered meaning in the context of the broader work and Forché’s activism ... There is in these poems a sense of responsibility: to the fullness of lives unnecessarily unbound; to poetry and its insistence on meaning; to attention and action, no matter the cost. And yet the work is open. It is filled with entry points, porous, allowing room for readers to make their way in, to touch the cold gray walls and leave with a newfound urgency for one another; for what they cannot see or hear, except in that shared \'stone of the mind within us / carried from one silence to another.\'
Naomi Shihab Nye
RaveWorld Literature TodayWhile Naomi Shihab Nye’s newest book of poetry offers no easy answers, its questions push well beyond the margin of the pages ... Bringing what is as concrete, known, and essential as milk into the harsh language of resistance, the lines compel us to recognize the privilege of silence afforded by distance. Startled spaces like this created between the poems and the world continue to echo for me; a volley of fresh, visual metaphors spoken on behalf of those who have often been most powerless in the face of violence ... throughout the work, and often through Janna’s own words, Shihab Nye exalts the wisdom and uncluttered hope of children and of imagination ... Fearless in the face of unrelenting power, the poems are at once tactile and enraged, refusing to acknowledge anyone’s ability to constrain language ... With very few exceptions, the poems in the book are deeply powerful both on their own and in their connections to one another ... With very few exceptions, the poems in the book are deeply powerful both on their own and in their connections to one another.
