An unflinching collection of poems from a bold literary voice.
Reyes presents a collection of poems exploring race.
The political is personal in this poetry collection that focuses on issues of race and the poet’s own identity as a Black Nuyorican woman. Reyes begins by contrasting a letter from Frederick Douglass, in which he praises the Irish’s treatment of him, with her own experience of racism as she traveled from England to Ireland. In “On the ghettoization of childless women,” she observes that “Life is shorter & narrower than it should be for / those of us not meant for your social security.” In “séance at the Beauty Parlor,”she compares Black women who use relaxer to elephants evolving to lose their tusks. Reyes incorporates research into her poems, sharing that at least 40% of White households in New York included a slave in 1711, as well as a New York Timesstatistic citing the alarming death rate of BIPOC women due to pregnancy-related causes. The author includes several visual elements, including victim sketches by the prolific serial killer, Samuel Little, as well as a copy of the 14th United States census circa 1920. Throughout the book, Reyes rails against marginalization and censorship by “well-meaning white folks.” But weariness seems to set in by the end: “Do you ever stop / & wonder what you too lost / Or nah, it’s cool here” (“ghost thought”). The author plays with form—even the color of the text—to suggest truth fading away. The writing is as clever as it is complex: In “The crow is barking up a storm,”the author writes, “Five black males talk, / they call it a murder.” Her descriptions strike a delicate balance between beauty and brutality, such as the “Crimson-black grapes” that “hang taut before / the harvesting / flame” that are part of the “cruel horticulture” of winemaking (“Paradise as tinder”).Reyes deftly combines historical fact with modern cultural touchstones such as director Tim Burton and the 23&Me DNA testing service. She also includes QR codes that link to YouTube readings of her work. The chaotic narrative could make some readers feel overwhelmed and unmoored—this may be the poet’s intention.
An unflinching collection of poems from a bold literary voice.Pub Date: April 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781632431196
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Omnidawn
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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