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the sun and her flowers

November 4, 2017March 29, 2019 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 256
Quick Review A collection of poetry that is both deeply emotional and eerily undemanding.

In honor of the sun and her flowers being on the shelf for a month, I am publishing my review of Rupi Kaur’s collection.

Rupi Kaur is an Indian-Canadian poet, who rose in fame through Instagram. After self-publishing her debut collection milk and honey with extraordinary success, her book was picked up by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Two years after Milk and Honey, her second and much awaited for collection the sun and her flowers was published on October 3, 2017.

As a student of literature, I have spent an exorbitant amount of time reading poetry for both pleasure and scholarly necessity. Through much practice and discussion, I have been able to unlock the difficult language of poetry. Reading it is an exercise in patience and detection. Poetry is often inaccessible.

I have not read Kaur’s milk and honey… yet. I picked up the sun and her flowers a bit hesitant because I have stayed away from poetry for awhile. The two adjectives I would describe this book with are: deep and accessible. I have never read poetry quite so accessible. It is no wonder she has met with such resounding success. Kaur is creating a generation who can appreciate poetry for what it is: beautiful.

Thematically, the sun and her flowers span issues of heartache to sexual assault to masturbation to death to immigration to beauty to infanticide and more. It is safe to say, there are few emotional heart strings Kaur does not strum. As a woman, it is impossible to read her work without feeling a kindred spirit. You can find my favorite poems on pages 65, 91, 173, 220, and 224. Although I love them all, these were some of the most powerful for me.

Kaur’s work ranges from a few lines to several pages. Usually each poem is accompanied by an illustration Kaur drew herself. Though they are simple drawings, emotion is deeply evident. Kaur’s writing style is unique. She was born in India, but she grew up in Canada. Her poems do not utilize capitalization or punctuation outside of the period. This is out of respect to her cultural and linguistic heritage; the Gurmukhi script only has one case and one punctuation mark. Kaur has mentioned she enjoys writing in this style because it indicates an equality between letters, which is non-existent in the English language.

I could not recommend her work more. It is beautifully rich in issues, emotions, and thought provoking sentiments.

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Memorable Quotes
“you’re everywhere, except right here”
“from head to foot i am layered in dust”
“it takes a broken person to come searching, for meaning between my legs, it takes a complete. whole. perfectly designed person to survive”
“i am willing to pay any price, for a beauty that makes heads turn”
“how can i verbalize consent as an adult if i was never taught to as a child”
“if i just learn to act like a lady”
“i have survived far too much to go quietly”
“my twenties are the warm-up, for what i’m really about to do”

Title: The Sun and Her Flowers
Author: Rupi Kaur
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781449486792

Books, Fiction

Bridges

October 6, 2017 RaeAnna

Read No
Length 194
Quick Review The plot is flat, and the characters are superficial at best. For having a grammar police of a main character, the syntax is riddled with errors. The cover is incredibly misleading. Overall, it reads like a sub par young adult novel.

Bridges by Maria Murnane is a novel about female friendship. Three women, who met in college, are in very different points in their lives. Told through the eyes of Daphne, a divorcée, mom and aspiring novelist from Ohio; she meets her friends in New York City for a long weekend. Daphne celebrates the impending marriage of the successful and perpetually single Skylar along with KC, the hottest, youngest grandma there ever was. Though they are close, they still have things to learn about each other, which could bring them together or drive them apart.

The story centers around three women in their forties, but the cover is incredibly misleading picturing three women looking to be in their early twenties. Not only is the cover mismatched but the title, as well. I have finished the book, and I still am not quite sure where Bridges comes into play.

Murnane tries to tackle the complexities of female friendship but falls short. Her characters are hollow. Their friendship feels incredibly surface. One of the largest contributing factors to this is the dialogue. Murnane makes a concerted effort to keep the dialogue light and true to how people talk; however, it doesn’t flow naturally. She tries too hard to make the dialogue witty and interesting. There are unnecessary characters, who do nothing to further the plot. Murnane is trying to stay relevant by using Lokai bracelets, but it’s kitschy and overdone. She also tries to incorporate internet dating through an irrelevant side character. The “horrifying” dating experiences she comes up with may have been avant garde in the 1940’s, but they’re nothing to bat an eye at for any actively dating woman under the age of 45.

Daphne seems to be a fictional version of Murnane as an aspiring novelist. The other characters are always referring to Daphne as something of a grammar police. She shows her knowledge of grammar in ludicrous ways, which add nothing to the story except irritate and distract the reader. After constant mention of being the perfect icon of grammar, the novel itself is riddled with grammar mistakes and odd word choices.

Overall, the novel could be something really interesting, but, as it stands, Bridges is a let down falling short of a the complexity that is female friendship. I would be happy to recommend you better novels about female friendship. Just let me know!

Memorable Quotes
“… love is completely random. There’s no rhyme nor reason whatsoever to where we’ll find it, or how.”

Title: Bridges
Author: Maria Murnane
Publisher: Self-Published
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780980042511

Books, Fiction

Children of the Jacaranda Tree

October 3, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 285
Quick Review The complexities of being a parent making choices forever impacting children, and children forever remembering and reeling from their parents’ choices.

Delijani begins Children of the Jacaranda Tree with a booming voice describing a mother’s love and desperate journey for survival. With moments of roman á clef, it is evident the topic of the novel is very near to Delijani’s heart.

The novel is about children growing up against the backdrop of Iran in the midst of the war with Iraq and struggle with the revolution during the 1980’s as well as the early 2000’s. The adults are revolutionaries in prison or raising the children of revolutionaries in prison. The children are grown up trying to piece together the meaning of their lives in relation to their parents and their home country.

The jacaranda tree is in the backyard of a grandmother. Every character goes in and out of this woman’s house. Some stay longer than others, but the tree plays a very small role in the book. Though it becomes a powerful symbol for each person; though, to each person it symbolizes something different.

Delijani is able to write with a palpable sense of fear as it permeates every main and supporting characters’ life in Iran as women, as men, as people, as revolutionaries. The adults fear for their lives and their freedom; they fear how to explain reality to their children. Though the children are too young to comprehend, they are able to sense fear. Every parent must explain the revolution and Evin prison to their children, but each struggles to explain it in a different way. As every parent must explain struggle and hardship, they do the best they can.

History repeats itself. Though decades separate the struggles of the parents and the children, they end up fighting the same battles with the same repercussions always with a sense of fear they will end up in Evin prison, where their parents once were imprisoned. The children repeat their parents’ hopes, actions, lives, and even mistakes. Some children know the details of their parents’ pasts, and some do not. The actions and pasts of their parents belong to the children in one way or another impacting their lives.

Every character in the story is trapped. Some are physically bound, and others are restrained psychologically. They are trapped by past, by grief, by tradition, by prison, by family, by responsibility, by secrets, and more.

Delijani writes a vibrant and emotionally charged novel about a subject so often forgotten, glanced over, or blatantly ignored. It is difficult to imagine this being the reality children had to grow up in less than thirty years ago. Delijani is able to bring that reality to life by telling the stories of so many children left behind.

Memorable Quotes
“It was important to her to know that she could choose those dresses, that this choice, although hidden from view, was still hers.”
“He was no longer anywhere.”
“The past is slippery, unreliable, like melting snow on marble stairs.”
“For secrets steal your childhood away from you.”

Title: Children of the Jacaranda Tree
Author: Sahar Delijani
Publisher: Atria Paperback (Simon & Schuster)
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9781476709109

Books

Blackass

September 25, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 272
Quick Review A modern retelling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis exploring identity through race in Lagos, Nigeria after a black man wakes up as a white man.

A. Igoni Barrett brings a new depth to a classic novel by diving into the complicated issue of race in Nigeria as well as the power of perception. Barrett writes with incredible wit.

Furo wakes up one morning to discover his once dark skin is now very pink and pale. Blackass follows Furo as he navigates the world he was once familiar with through very different eyes.

Furo is a young man in his early thirties. For the young and all ages in between, Twitter and Facebook have become incredibly integral parts of our lives, and Barrett is able to incorporate these aspects into the narrative. An entire section of the novel is dedicated to sleuthing through tweets, as we have all cyberstalked someone once. Barrett also describes the difficult challenge of trying to shut down a Facebook page and needing Google to find the answer. Technology has permeated every aspect of our lives including our literature.

Barrett explores how truly powerful perception can be both in favor and against a person. As people, we immediately begin sorting people into different classes by the way they look. Though we do our best to fight it, it is an intrinsic quality we have. Even the Nigerians tend to prefer whiteness to blackness in everything they do from the little things from bleaching cream to deferential treatment to blatant statements that white westerners are more together than black Africans.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is how well Barrett is able to capture the depth and range of the female experience in such a short novel. There are several women who weave in and out of Furo’s story. Each woman is able to portray a different woman’s part in society. In moments, I was astounded at the depth of understanding Barrett had for the female condition. It is powerful and moving in its unwavering honesty.

Barrett writes a captivating novel from beginning to end.

Memorable Quotes
“Then again, she had never faced the parental pressure he did – a woman can find a husband to take care of her, but a man must take care of his wife…”
“… I was already trying to say what I see now, that we are all constructed narratives.”
“A white man in Lagos has no voice louder than the dollar sign branded on to his forehead.”
“No one asks you to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world.”
“Who I was as a person was more than what I looked like, but then again, how people saw me was a part of who I was.”
“Womanhood comes with its peculiar burdens, among them the distant reminder of subordinate status whose dominant symptom was uninvited sexual attention from men.”
“Pity the man who never becomes the woman he could be.”
“‘And you’re a white man. You don’t have to fuck anyone for favours.’”
“No one’s path is laid out from birth, we must all choose our own through life, and what greater gift is given a person than the chance to see the destinations where the roads not taken might have led you.”

Title: Blackass
Author: A. Igoni Barrett
Publisher: Graywolf Press (Vintage/Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9781555977337

Experiences, Travel

Ames Public Library

September 14, 2017September 8, 2019 RaeAnna

I grew up in Ames, Iowa. Growing up the library was a mainstay in my life, and it often comes up when discussing childhood memories. The house I spent my first eight years in was located about half a mile from the library, so my mother, brother, and I would regularly go for walks to return and check out books.

When I was in Ames last month, I revisited the library for the first time in almost a decade. The library I remember as a child does not exist anymore. It has the same location, a lot of the same exterior, and the same name, but it went under an extensive renovation and expansion a few years ago. Walking through the library, I recognized nothing. It had vastly changed for the better. I think the expansion and renovation is amazing. It was a little bittersweet for me, but I think money is best spent on books and knowledge and community outreach, which a library epitomizes. I wandered around with my parents enjoying the newness of the building until I wandered into the kid’s section of the library.

As a little girl, there was a display case made of wood. Every month or few weeks, the display behind glass would change to reflect the season, activities, or holidays. It was the first, the last, and my favorite thing I looked at whenever I went to the library. Even as a teenager, I would stop by the display to take a peak. I had forgotten about the display. Like childhood, it had disappeared into a fuzzy haze I like to call the past. When I walked into the children’s section at the library, the first thing I saw was the display. In a library I no longer recognized, the display had remained the same. So many memories came rushing back all at once. I am normally a very level headed and non-emotional person. I do not cry often. As I stood there looking at the display with my Mom and Dad, I started to tear up. We were taking pictures for this article, and unfortunately, there are no pictures where I was not teary eyed. It’s funny how childhood memories can do that to you: sneak up and pounce out of nowhere.

Libraries hold memories for a lot of people I am sure. The library holds so many memories from my childhood. I grew up in that library in a way. For me, the library was the epitome of the world. Knowledge was always the key to everything. If I could access the knowledge the library held, I would have access to the world. Or at least, that’s how it felt when I was little.

I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in second grade. I was inspired. When I was done, the first place I went was the library. I had no idea how to navigate the library, so my mother taught me. This was in the era when the card catalogue still existed next to the computer while everything was digitized. My mother taught me how to look up books in the card catalogue and then through the computer. At first, it was difficult, and I kept having to ask my Mom for help. Eventually, I got the hang of things. It was the clouds parting and the sun shining through moment for me. I was able to find books about history, literature, language, and more.

The library was the beginning of the story of my life that would unfold.

In college, I worked all four years at the library. I enjoyed it immensely. It was a wonderful way to spend my academic career surrounded by the books I had worshiped my entire life. At Cornell, I studied Literature, French, and Russian, which is basically a triple degree in how to read well. In my life after college, I am now a freelance literary translator and editor and writer, a senior editor at a literary magazine, a rampant reader, and a book blogger – obviously, you are here reading this.

The Ames Public Library founded a passion that will stay with me forever just like the memories I cherish.

Books, Fiction

Interpreter of Maladies

August 10, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 198
Quick Review A collection of eight short stories exploring the meaning of disappointment and unfulfilled expectations.

I had never read anything by Jhumpa Lahiri, so I was excited to experience her writing for the first time. She did not disappoint. Lahiri explores the meaning of disappointment and the feeling of unfulfilled expectations. In most of the stories, the hopes and expectations of the characters are met in a drastically different way than they hope; driving home the message that life gives us what we want, it may not be how we want. Lahiri shows the build up, the enjoyment of living in a world filled with expectation, the realisation, and the mourning period when the inevitability of life is so painfully tangible.

The following eight short stories are in the order they appear in the book. They are each around twenty pages in length, give or take a few.

A Temporary Matter
Shukumar and Shoba were both born in the US. They are of Indian heritage; unlike Shoba, Shukumar does not have childhood memories of visits to India. They are going through a difficult time in their marriage after the stillbirth of their first child because the pain has become a barrier dividing them instead of bringing them together. They reconnect during an hourly power outtage every night for a week.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
A young girl and her family open their home to Mr. Pirzada, a Bengali man working on his degree in the US while separated from his family. The girl is torn between feeling like an outsider in her own home and excitement for having a new person visit every evening. She is also beginning to understand the difference between her family’s culture and that of the one she is surrounded by.

Interpreter of Maladies
Mr. Kapasi is a driver for tourists on the weekend, but during the week he works as an interpreter for a doctor.. He is driving a young family and developes a small crush on the wife. As they begin to talk, he realizes she is just as flawed as everyone else in the world and not a perfect creature.

Sexy
A young, career woman, Miranda, began an affair with an older married, Indian man, Dev, as she listens to her coworker, Laxmi, console a cousin whose husband is having an affair. To keep her affair alive, she spends money on a beautiful dress and lingerie hoping to wear it for Dev one day. Miranda ends up babysitting for the son of Laxmi’s cousin, who is aware of the affair his father had. Through an afternoon spent with a young boy, she becomes aware of the consequences her situation can have.

Mrs. Sen’s
Mrs. Sen watches Eliot after school, as she is trying to learn how to drive a car. Mrs. Sen is learning to drive and function in a new society. Mrs. Sen hates being far away from her home in India where she has whole fish and independence without a car. She has everything her family believes the could want like a rainbow of saris and a professional husband, but she misses the comfort of home.

This Blessed House
Twinkle and Sanjeev are newly weds in a house. Sanjeev isn’t sure he loves his wife but he’s irritated by her love of finding and keeping the Christian items left throughout the house by the previous owners. At their housewarming everyone is dazzled by Twinkle, and Sanjeev realizes he enjoys the status of his new, beautiful, young, charming wife.

The Treatment of Bibi Haldar
Bibi Haldar was plagued by an illness no one could diagnose or fix – which was probably epilepsy. She dreamt of having a husband to take care of. It was her only hope, and she couldn’t stop talking about it. After a particular episode, she was prescribed marriage to ease her symptoms, but no one would take her on as a wife because of her reputation as a lune. After a difficult few months of seclusion she was found pregnant. She never married, but, instead, had a son who she cared for without being plighted by another episode.

The Third and Final Continent
He was born in India, studied in London, and worked in Cambridge at MIT. His wife Mala joined him in the US having been married for six weeks but only spending five days together. They were strangers at the beginning of their journey, but looking back on their life in Cambridge they can’t imagine not knowing each other.

Memorable Quotes
““I only spoil children who are incapable of spoiling.””
“… life, I realized, was being lived in Dacca first.”
“It means loving someone you don’t know.”
“He did not know if he loved her.”
“ She wanted to be spoken for, protected, placed on her path in life.”

Title: Interpreter of Maladies
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Copyright: 1999
ISBN: 9780395927205