A moving debut from a young writer with great promise.
A poet’s homage to her family’s past.
Swarthmore College student Young, Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States, revives her family’s “long-forgotten history,” from its unrecorded beginnings in Africa to the present, in a multigenerational memoir delicately crafted in verse. “The only way to tell this story is through poetry,” writes the author, “because Black girlhood is eternally laced with rhythm, from the Negro hymns Amy Coleman whispered as she bore her enslaver’s child to the rhythm of the gospel my mother sang at fifteen when she was hailed a child prodigy.” Central to Young’s history is Nannie Pearl, born in 1898 in West Tennessee, the first girl among her forebears to attend the local one-room schoolhouse. At 22, Nannie became pregnant and married; Gentry was one of Nannie’s 11 children and was Young’s great-grandmother. Most women in Young’s family found themselves pregnant as teenagers, marrying in haste to a boy who rarely stayed around. “I am from five generations of shotgun weddings / Of women with stronger wombs than wits,” Young notes, and of mothers who warned their daughters about repeating their mistakes. In an expanding family, Gentry became a “second mother” to her many sisters and brothers instead of enjoying the innocent pleasures of childhood. She was “terrified” when, pregnant, she married at 14. Her daughter Yvonne became pregnant when she was a high school freshman. Yvonne’s daughter, Young’s mother, was engaged at the age of 16. “My family,” writes the author, “has spent centuries in search of girlhood / Even when it came only in the form of running from being a / woman.” With lyrical precision, Young refracts Black history through her family’s experiences of racism and “deferred dreams”—“And if you have enough color / just living shatters fantasies.” Near the end, she writes, “Everywhere in this world I walk, I’ll walk with Gentry. Because this is my legacy.”
A moving debut from a young writer with great promise.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-49800-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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