A moving story about cultural alienation and familial identity.
In this 16th-century love story, an Onondaga girl and a Welsh boy meet on a deserted island.
Following the death of her mother, Nushèmakw is raised by her mother’s clan in an Onondaga village, although her absentee father is Lenape. Naturally empathetic, she’s haunted by powerful visions and always somewhat alienated from her fellow villagers because of her mixed heritage. Nushèmakw is also ungovernably mischievous. After she twice interrupts ritual ceremonies and angers her cousin and warrior-in-training, Guiarasi, she is sent to live with her father and his people at the age of 12. But when her father dies as a result of a siege, she’s forced to flee unaccompanied to Little Turtle Island until it’s safe to return. Meanwhile, Owen, a Welsh boy, is sent to become a friar. He apprentices as a scribe, translating manuscripts. He resists taking the full orders to become a brother because the vow of chastity would prevent him from marrying and starting a family. He becomes entranced by the politically subversive writing of Sir Thomas More and is endangered when King Henry demands that all his subjects pledge allegiance to the crown at the expense of both God and the pope. Owen flees with his uncle Seamus and ends up washed ashore on Little Turtle Island, where he meets Nushèmakw. Both blessed with a facility for learning languages, they’re quickly able to devise a makeshift one with which to communicate, and they begin to fall in love. But Nushèmakw frets that a marriage between the two would imperil Owen since Guiarasi still hatefully vows his revenge. Johnson (Yellow Bird, 2010) writes in a meditatively poetic style, full of emotion and depth: “Then you came. This strange man, all alone. I saw then how large the universe is, and how many secrets it holds. I could see the whole world spinning under the heavens.” Both characters’ stories are powerful enough to stand alone, and the author dexterously weaves them into one coherent narrative. She also provides a penetrating, timely exploration of cultural difference.
A moving story about cultural alienation and familial identity.Pub Date: June 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-90947-8
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Garden Gate Farm
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes quite sad—i.e., an accurate portrait of life in one's 50s.
The further adventures of Candace and her man-eating friends.
Bushnell (Killing Monica, 2015, etc.) has been mining the vein of gold she hit with Sex and the City (1996) in both adult and YA novels. The current volume, billed as fiction but calling its heroine Candace rather than Carrie, is a collection of commentaries and recounted hijinks (and lojinks) close in spirit to the original. The author tries Tinder on assignment for a magazine, explores "cubbing" (dating men in their 20s who prefer older women), investigates the "Mona Lisa" treatment (a laser makeover for the vagina), and documents the ravages of Middle Aged Madness (MAM, the female version of the midlife crisis) on her clique of friends, a couple of whom come to blows at a spa retreat. One of the problems of living in Madison World, as she calls her neighborhood in the city, is trying to stay out of the clutches of a group of Russians who are dead-set on selling her skin cream that costs $15,000. Another is that one inevitably becomes a schlepper, carrying one's entire life around in "handbags the size of burlap sacks and worn department store shopping bags and plastic grocery sacks....Your back ached and your feet hurt, but you just kept on schlepping, hoping for the day when something magical would happen and you wouldn't have to schlep no more." She finds some of that magic by living part-time in a country place she calls the Village (clearly the Hamptons), where several of her old group have retreated. There, in addition to cubs, they find SAPs, Senior Age Players, who are potential candidates for MNB, My New Boyfriend. Will Candace get one?
Sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes quite sad—i.e., an accurate portrait of life in one's 50s.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4726-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Chicana writer Castillo (whose reputation until now has been mostly regional) brings a warm, sometimes biting but not bitter feminist consciousness to the wondrous, tragic, and engaging lives of a New Mexico mother and her four fated daughters. Poor Sofi! Abandoned by her gambler husband to raise four unusual girls who tend to rise from adversity only to find disaster. ``La Loca,'' dead at age three, comes back to life—but is unable to bear the smell of human beings; Esperanza succeeds as a TV anchorwoman—but is less successful with her exploitative lover and disappears during the Gulf War; promiscuous, barhopping Caridad—mutilated and left for dead—makes a miraculous recovery, but her life on earth will still be cut short by passion; and the seemingly self-controlled Fe is so efficient that ``even when she lost her mind [upon being jilted]...she did it without a second's hesitation.'' Sofi's life-solution is to found an organization M.O.M.A.S. (Mothers of Martyrs and Saints), while Castillo tries to solve the question of minority-writer aesthetics: Should a work of literature provide a mirror for marginalized identity? Should it celebrate and preserve threatened culture? Should it be politically progressive? Should the writer aim for art, social improvement, or simple entertainment? Castillo tries to do it all—and for the most part succeeds. Storytelling skills and humor allow Castillo to integrate essaylike folklore sections (herbal curing, saint carving, cooking)—while political material (community organizing, toxic chemicals, feminism, the Gulf War) is delivered with unabashed directness and usually disarming charm.
Pub Date: April 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03490-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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