A wild trip that gets lost—but it wants to.
A psychedelic, verse picaresque in the vein of Carlos Castañeda.
Chiaia’s (Ten Poems and Ampersands, 2011) novella in verse commences in a fever state, his narrator racked by dengue fever—a fitting start for poetry that may best be described as feverish. Readers might suspect that Chiaia’s economy of language has less to do with literary austerity than with the need to write quickly and sparely to keep up with an ambitious, demanding muse. In vigorous and angular verse, Chiaia unspools the journey of his weakened narrator, suspended between two destinies as he makes his way from life with his fiancee in Mexico to a search for a shaman-teacher amid the Mayan pyramids of Guatemala. Neither path is without complications—“she just called / mind spinning with / pause on the phone / & / regret // I’m not coming back, I told her. / She told me she was late”—and Chiaia animates the narrator’s disquiet with powerfully visceral vignettes: The bus “stops in a small town called Zunil / I get off. The bus shakes to a stop / like a wet dog / I don’t stray too far. / I am scared. / I have that feeling like an uncooked potato / in the gut.” Driven by a linguistic curiosity awakened in a chance moment during his adolescence, the narrator has quit his job and leaves behind his pregnant fiancee in hopes of becoming a Mayan daykeeper, an “aj q’ij / devoter of self / to time / day / & sun.” Doing so requires a somewhat indulgent psychedelic peyote and ayahuasca trip as well as a sobering confrontation with the late 20th-century massacre of the Mayans. The cycle of illness comes round—“My hands are / bound. My elbows are sore. Like / dengue all over again”—but the narrator, now more enlightened, understands that “[w]hen the past goes wrong / without hope / the future needs something, it / will come back now until // the ticks will get tocked / the spins will get spun / the tocks will get ticked.” An experience both entrancing and frustrating, Chiaia’s verse novella is both liberating and, at times, oppressively patriarchal. His verse is lightning fast, clear and unencumbered, but the story can be murky and tangled, not sure if it wants to be an encomium for an ancient people, a philosophical treatise on the nature of time, an exposé of the Guatemalan genocide, or just a swaggering, self-absorbed adventure.
A wild trip that gets lost—but it wants to.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0980207354
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Coatlism Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
In more ways than one, a tale about young creatures testing their wings; a moving, entertaining winner.
A fifth-grade New Orleans girl discovers a mysterious chrysalis containing an unexpected creature in this middle-grade novel.
Jacquelyn Marie Johnson, called Jackie, is a 10-year-old African-American girl, the second oldest and the only girl of six siblings. She’s responsible, smart, and enjoys being in charge; she likes “paper dolls and long division and imagining things she had never seen.” Normally, Jackie has no trouble obeying her strict but loving parents. But when her potted snapdragon acquires a peculiar egg or maybe a chrysalis (she dubs it a chrysalegg), Jackie’s strong desire to protect it runs up against her mother’s rule against plants in the house. Jackie doesn’t exactly mean to lie, but she tells her mother she needs to keep the snapdragon in her room for a science project and gets permission. Jackie draws the chrysalegg daily, waiting for something to happen as it gets larger. When the amazing creature inside breaks free, Jackie is more determined than ever to protect it, but this leads her further into secrets and lies. The results when her parents find out are painful, and resolving the problem will take courage, honesty, and trust. Dumas (Jaden Toussaint, the Greatest: Episode 5, 2017, etc.) presents a very likable character in Jackie. At 10, she’s young enough to enjoy playing with paper dolls but has a maturity that even older kids can lack. She’s resourceful, as when she wants to measure a red spot on the chrysalegg; lacking calipers, she fashions one from her hairpin. Jackie’s inward struggle about what to obey—her dearest wishes or the parents she loves—is one many readers will understand. The book complicates this question by making Jackie’s parents, especially her mother, strict (as one might expect to keep order in a large family) but undeniably loving and protective as well—it’s not just a question of outwitting clueless adults. Jackie’s feelings about the creature (tender and responsible but also more than a little obsessive) are similarly shaded rather than black-and-white. The ending suggests that an intriguing sequel is to come.
In more ways than one, a tale about young creatures testing their wings; a moving, entertaining winner.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943169-32-0
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Plum Street Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A YA novel that treats its subject and its readers with respect while delivering an engaging story.
In the ninth book in the Bluford young-adult series, a young Latino man walks away from violence—but at great personal cost.
In a large Southern California city, 16-year-old Martin Luna hangs out on the fringes of gang life. He’s disaffected, fatherless and increasingly drawn into the orbit of the older, rougher Frankie. When a stray bullet kills Martin’s adored 8-year-old brother, Huero, Martin seems to be heading into a life of crime. But Martin’s mother, determined not to lose another son, moves him to another neighborhood—the fictional town of Bluford, where he attends the racially diverse Bluford High. At his new school, the still-grieving Martin quickly makes enemies and gets into trouble. But he also makes friends with a kind English teacher and catches the eye of Vicky, a smart, pretty and outgoing Bluford student. Martin’s first-person narration supplies much of the book’s power. His dialogue is plain, but realistic and believable, and the authors wisely avoid the temptation to lard his speech with dated and potentially embarrassing slang. The author draws a vivid and affecting picture of Martin’s pain and confusion, bringing a tight-lipped teenager to life. In fact, Martin’s character is so well drawn that when he realizes the truth about his friend Frankie, readers won’t feel as if they are watching an after-school special, but as though they are observing the natural progression of Martin’s personal growth. This short novel appears to be aimed at urban teens who don’t often see their neighborhoods portrayed in young-adult fiction, but its sophisticated characters and affecting story will likely have much wider appeal.
A YA novel that treats its subject and its readers with respect while delivering an engaging story.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 978-1591940173
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Townsend Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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