MixedAstra... asks a thorny question about the purpose of a novel: what does one make of a book that teaches us how to read it so well that it reveals the limits of its own vision? ... Thrust’s formal devices follow the pattern of Laisvé’s underwater journeys, as the novel dives into one historical moment and then surfaces at another, sifting through the detritus of the ocean floor for hidden treasures that reveals another untold story. The intricacy of the novel’s architecture rewards multiple rereadings ... In many ways, this rendering felt true to life, in that to be nonwhite, for most of modern history, has meant to be both overlooked and scrutinized. And yet at times Yuknavitch’s narrativizing of these poles can feel exaggerated, almost dramatic ... the pains the author takes to represent accurately the stories Thrust draws upon is evident through her extensive research of primary and secondary sources about the people and eras the novel concerns. But, as she also acknowledges, there are \'unintentional distances\' that \'exist in any human interaction that leads to bearing witness or representing the experiences of others.\' Before we can create the cacophonous, polyvocal future that Thrust envisions, perhaps we must recognize how sometimes truly vast those \'unintentional distances” are. That throughout history, those “unintentional distances\' themselves have occasionally contributed to the silencing of certain stories ... reflects the complexities of the novel as form and the story of its own becoming.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
RaveThe Harvard ReviewThe collection...expands across the page in lines and strophes of various lengths that initially appear as if in fragments. As the book progresses, however, the less these lines resemble fragments of erasure or censure, and the more they come more closely to resemble a network of rivers. Themes and images spring up, run underground, disappear, and then overflow elsewhere in the book ... Within Cenzontle, binary oppositions—of gender, socio-political difference, and even of human or non-human—are merely the banks between which the potential for the creative play flows, ultimately culminating in political resistance ... Cenzontle reveals a river-like flow of trauma between generations, and the ways in which we revisit our past in order to make sense of ourselves.
