PositiveZYZZYVACustoms inspects language itself as a device for colonization and country-making, which in this land is the same ... At times, Sharif is the speaker in her poems, retelling with clarity and cunning the relationship between agents of the state and subjects of state surveillance ... these poems...illustrate the sense of belonging one must develop to themselves, to art, and to the pursuit of liberation, especially if one thinks they cannot truly belong to the country in which they live ... Sharif makes clear her political and poetical influences in these poems, which deal in freeform, syllabic, and epistolary structures ... At times, Sharif is the speaker in her poems, retelling with clarity and cunning the relationship between agents of the state and subjects of state surveillance ... Part of what a settler-colonial nation state demands of its people to maintain order, function, complicity, and compliance are certain forms of speech that are deferential to power and dismissive of one’s needs. We do this regularly and fluently in America, where police kill Black people over the course of a traffic stop. Participating in this form of language is integral to saving one’s life, but it’s a trap, Sharif seems to say, negating one’s power.
Elias Rodriques
PositiveZYZZYVAThough All the Water I’ve Seen Is Running tells a fictional story, its impetus and grounding in Florida are very much real; the only way to work through the grief of his friend’s passing was to write about the loss as if it was someone else’s ... Though written at a slant, the book’s narration has a kind of poetic realism to it ... Perhaps one of the greatest triumphs of the novel is that for all of the ways the story is shaped by the boundaries of class, race, space, and time, Rodriques shows a love that defies these—a love that in many ways feels boundless.
Michelle Zauner
RaveZYZZYVACrying in H Mart, much like a song, much like life, offers a kind of circularity ... In the end, Crying in H Mart succeeds the way good music nearly always does but good writing doesn’t always have to. Writing has to craft a compelling narrative but music has to make you feel; Zauner’s memoir achieves both.
