Reviewed by T.J. Tranchell Certain books defy expectations, even when a reader goes into one without them. Uncanny Valley Girls, the new memoir by poet Zefyr Lisowski, adeptly subverts even the expectations that seem to be set up by the author. Lisowski brings a self-deprecating sense of humor along with an expansive openness to this recounting of her life as…
By Breen Nolan Award-winning author Edgar Gomez is back with his second book Alligator Tears, an arresting memoir-in-essays that chronicles his experiences growing up in poverty with a single mother amidst the backdrop of touristy Florida. Gomez’s writing evinces a skillful analysis vital for examining one’s life on the page. Whether interrogating the systems hell-bent on silencing marginalized individuals or exploring the path to…
By Jesenia Chavez In her debut book, Hazel Kight Witham delves into middle school with a memoir in verse. She zeroes in on a fateful day where a young Witham reckons with her own fear and shame at her classmates discovering she has two moms. She loves her moms, Judie and Sharon, but middle school is an unfriendly place for…
This year, the front yard is a garden gone wild. An unruly thing. A bobbing field of bitter arugula. The herbage is higher than my waist. The sunflowers are already taller than me, and the bushy hop vine reached the top of its pole weeks ago. The intersection, an offset, four-way stop, is surrounded on three corners by mature trees:…
rejection She is forty and has no right to apply to Columbia. She doesn’t have the youth, the money, the looks, the prestige, the background, the career, the sidewalks, the parents, the network, the status, the sidewalks, the youth, the smarts, the money, the money, the money, …
The first thing I learn from running on the treadmill at the gym while watching cable television is that you should not be at the gym watching cable television on a Friday night. There is no wait for a treadmill, but there is also nothing entertaining on, even if your idea of entertaining is watching Jon Taffer scold small business…
I was eight before I knew she was crazy. Until then, I thought maybe it was me. Maybe I was confused or maybe not all that bright, not brilliant like her. I was eight before I understood that talking to trees, dogs, the coat hanging in her closet, dancing with imaginary fairies that only she could see, was something other than spectacularly magical. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes between creativity, genius, and mere insanity, especially when you are too young to even know how to slant your pen.
Lacy Crawford’s memoir Notes on a Silencing speaks to the ways gender, privilege, and power silenced Crawford twenty-five years ago. When Crawford was fifteen years old, she was lured to a boys’ dormitory one night, pulled from beneath the night shadows, and sexually assaulted.
On the one hand, Stephanie Danler lives in the “Writer House” of our dreams: a small cottage hidden away in Laurel Canyon, with a yard for dinner parties and a mythic history that may or may not involve Fleetwood Mac.