RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksAntiman wonderfully lives up to its description as \'a hybrid memoir.\' As I read poet Mohabir’s debut foray into nonfiction prose, I was reminded of my affinity for collage art—the way that so many different pieces of art can come together in surprising ways to make something beautiful and unexpected has always fascinated me. I found Antiman to be a collage of sorts. Mohabir weaves together stories, prayer lyrics, journal entries, dictionary definitions, and musical chords to create his kaleidoscopic, genre-defying memoir ... Through his prose written with the enigma of poetry, and poetry written with the movement of prose, Mohabir shares his experiences living life in America as a brown, queer, Indo-Guyanese man ... One of the most poignantly written relationships described in Antiman is that between Mohabir and his grandmother ... Mohabir does a wonderful job of balancing sadness and regret with humor and joy ... Mohabir’s experiences are vastly different from my own, yet Antiman is written with a poignant universality that invited me to deeply empathize with him ... Anyone who has struggled to belong, forced to put different pieces together to create an imperfect home in which to take refuge, will learn from Mohabir’s enthralling vulnerability in Antiman.
Ben Okri
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksOkri is a master in knowing what is better left unsaid. He trusts the minds and imaginations of his readers to fill in the absences. Okri does not name the boy or his feelings in the tense moment before he and the world around him are ripped to shreds. He does not describe the rubble and the shock of this calamity. Yet the reader can feel it all poignantly ... Though Okri’s stories rarely surpass a handful of pages, their brevity does not make Prayer for the Living a quick read. I found myself compelled to go over the same pages and stories multiple times. Within the shortness of Okri’s texts lie their multitudes; each word chosen is vital. While the text is often enigmatic, it leaves just enough room for a reader to untangle the webs Okri weaves. Okri’s style often drifts toward the poetic. He repeats structures and themes, creating cohesion and reinforcing important messages across his stories which can seem disparate at face value but are often intertwined in meaning ... By the time readers have settled into one story, the next one has already begun; however, these transitions never feel jarring. I found myself effortlessly swept up in Okri’s different worlds ... My heart sped up, my stomach dropped, I gasped, I laughed, I closed the book and gazed out the window for a few minutes then came back and opened the book again.
