Reviewed by Kyle Murphy A Kind of Madness, Uche Okonkwo’s debut short story collection, poses a question on its back cover: “Why is it that the people and places we hold closest are so often the ones that drive us to madness?” In ten brilliantly crafted page-turners set in Nigeria, Okonkwo provides no direct answers to this question, instead illustrating what this particular madness is: a silent suffering that plagues the minds of the stories’ respective protagonists. Okonkwo’s intriguing exploration interrogates internalized emotion to show how this suffering manifests in madness; for it is the apprehension about voicing concern that…
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You are poetry with verses that make you gasp and an ending that makes you joy-cry like the day you cover a heavy-handed arabee tattoo that begs for forgiveness with an olive branch from the motherland and you pick the olives and pop them in your pretty pink mouth and, when you’re left with the pits, you recall the seeds of doubt you sowed in falasteen, so you swim over the sea to dig them up and you throw your back out in the below-sea-level swelter and discover that the doubts have sprouted and overgrown, but it’s nothing you…
Reviewed by Dave Oei Molly X. Chang’s To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is an Asian fantasy debut novel about Yang Ruying (Ruy), a young woman who lives in a land conquered and occupied near the time of her birth. Ruy’s once well-regarded family has fallen into despair and hunger through atrocity and war crime, and her mission now is to safeguard what little remains— the lives of her sister and grandmother. The story is inspired by Chang’s grandfather’s experience living in Manchuria, China during World War II, surviving the horror that was Unit 731, the Japanese military’s subjugation of and…
Some say it’s older than the universe itself but we could see it through your binoculars, the ones you carried to the opera the time we split forever over the third act of Lehar’s Stargazer. We lie on the grass beneath Methuselah adjusting the lenses, Bausch & Lomb your dad’s, their leather holster nearby repaired a few times by an Amish cobbler in Canton, Ohio. Both men would disapprove of us two women=sin, E=mc2 The energy I pour in you today I will wrestle back tomorrow; all the while, Methuselah floods its light into the void for fourteen billion years.…
By Jackelin Orellana UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA alumnus David Martinez wrote his debut memoir, Bones Worth Breaking, while grieving his brother’s death. With a background in writing fiction, David never intended to write a memoir. One day, he got hit by a car, and that experience made him take a deeper look at the scars that life had left on his body. Each scar turned into a story, and each story eventually evolved into a book-length work. Martinez writess with uncensored honesty about drugs, mental health, and his experience growing up Mormon. He challenges readers to look deeper into the invisible…
By Kevin T. Morales Ashley Granillo delved deep into her family and the community of Pacoima, California, for her debut middle-grade novel, Cruzita and the Mariacheros, the compassionate and humorous story of a seventh grader who struggles with grief while trying to reconcile the conflict between her dreams of pop stardom with her family’s need for her to participate in the day-to-day operations of their bakery. Cruz, the story’s heroine, feels like she doesn’t fit in at home because she wasn’t raised speaking Spanish, an increasingly common issue for today’s American Latinx people. The Coachella Review spoke to Ashley about…
By Ty Landers UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA alumnus Travis Burkett’s first novel An American Band hits shelves as the immigration crisis at the southern border of the United States continues to flummox Washington. Though his book, set in alternating timelines between 2015 and 1984, is not overtly political, the border problem serves as a brilliant conceit for a well-paced and entertaining literary crime novel, providing an opportunity for a wide-eyed, engrossing examination of an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Burkett’s novel takes an unflinching look at the craven structures of corruption that often spring up around pursuits of happiness. In the novel,…
Reviewed by Toby LaPlant Garrard Conley, author of the bestselling memoir Boy Erased, makes his fiction debut with All the World Beside, a soft-spoken exploration of the interplay between religious belief and personal fulfillment, and how love, in its many varieties, can expand our understanding of who makes up a family. With complex characters that embody contemporary relationships to sexuality and gender while belonging wholly to Conley’s historical setting, the novel is a compelling invitation to leap into faith in a queer past that remains largely hidden. Set in colonial America, in the aftermath of the ferocious exercise of condemnation…
By Yennie Cheung Despite Estonia’s declaration of neutrality during World War II, the Soviet Union invaded and illegally occupied the small Baltic country in 1940, leading to mass executions and deportations of Estonians to Siberia. In Candles for the Defiant: Discovering My Family’s Estonian Past, debut author Kaia Gallagher uncovers her family’s history in the region during the war. At its core a story of love and loyalty, the book focuses on Asta Vares—the mysterious aunt whose wartime death long haunted Gallagher’s family—and Asta’s fiancé, Bruno Kulgma Kull, a law student who joined the Communist Party as an Estonian patriot…
By Sean Belfina Water, earth, fire, air. Fans of Nickelodeon’s beloved animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender know the rest. Its element-bending action, humor, and heart glued many to their television sets during its original run from 2005-2008. Heavily influenced by Asian culture, the show broke westernized fantasy stereotypes and spotlighted representation. Now, Netflix has adapted the show into a live action series starring an all-Asian and Indigenous cast. The series looks to remix the animated series and bring new viewers to this vast fantastical world. At the helm of this flying bison is Albert Kim, notable for his work…
I See the Blind Flashing in the morning light, knowing change is but a coin tossed in the air, neither heads nor tails, cement-kissed cheek unable to turn (keeping still) lest I wake the sleeping ones. Cuffed up for being of color, of consequence. Feeling weight, long dead, of a grandmother’s song: On Sundays, I see the blind. When they caught up to me, I slept like a stone, newly polished – a glistening red. Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work…
By Perrin Pring Upon arriving in California over twenty years ago, writer Jaime Stickle had the unsettling experience of being asked if Jaime Stickle was really her name. It was then she became aware of a young woman, Jamie Stickle, who had been found burned alive in her car in Pittsburgh. The only difference in their names is a slight variation in spelling. Over the next twenty years, Jaime went on to have a productive career in storytelling, but she never forgot about the unsolved death of the woman whose name was nearly identical to her own. With her new…