Confident, stirring writing by a prescient poet.
A collection of writings from Bolivian poet, essayist, and feminist activist Zamudio (1854-1928) addresses enduring social issues.
Though the bulk of the author’s body of work, which spans poetry, prose, and nonfiction, dates back a century or more (the pieces here were originally published between 1887 and 1942), it’s only recently that political and social conditions have renewed interest in her writings and facilitated their translations for a global audience. This collection has two sections, one for poetry and one for prose, focused on themes including feminism (“Born a Man”), Indigenous identity and revolution (“End of the Century”), mental health (“To a Suicide”), and the viability of a battered society (“Masquerade”)—subjects that Zamudio grappled with as a woman far ahead of her time, culturally speaking. Yetter’s translations aptly retain the exigencies of the author’s writing, though the poems do lose their rhyme schemes in English. In the prose section, Zamudio employs an almost epistolary, introspective style to document many of Bolivia’s societal and political foibles; one story—“Yesterday’s Meeting”—uses an animal motif (much like George Orwell later used in Animal Farm (1945)) to relay bureaucratic tensions and flaws in democracy. Zamudio employs the struggles of women and Indigenous people as fodder, both for her own work and for broader revolution. Her imagery is both whimsical and grounded, optimistic and learned; as she writes in “Poet,” “it is necessary that she must dive into / Life’s most bitter dregs; / To know horrid misfortune / And rugged paths; / Hurt by life’s cliffs and thistles, / Wounded by the shocks of life. / That is inspiration!” We watch and read the news to understand what’s going on in the world, but we also seek out art to contextualize how all these events make us feel and show us how to get through them; Zamudio’s work serves these purposes brilliantly.
Confident, stirring writing by a prescient poet.Pub Date: July 4, 2022
ISBN: 9780984375677
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Fuente Fountain Books
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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