You Can't Be Serious: Refocusing after COVID

Shortly after publishing my last post, I started feeling sick. Yep, I had COVID. This led to listening to a bunch of free mysteries on Audible that were so militantly mediocre that when I fell asleep (a frequent occurrence), I didn't worry about going back and figuring out what I missed. They will not be mentioned further here. 

Now that I'm mostly recovered and am caught up on the work I missed while sick, I'm trying to refocus. It's hard . . . 

Fiction

Emily Henry's Book Lovers appears on NPR's "Books We Love" list for 2022. Granted, it's a long list (400 titles), but I don't think Book Lovers belongs on it. It's a romance novel featuring a book editor and a literary agent, who hate each other on first meeting but very quickly thereafter find each other nigh-on irresistible. Passable escapist listening when one has COVID; otherwise, no. 

I had had a book titled The Writing on the Wall on my TBR list for a few years. After I read the book by W.D. Wetherill, I discovered the book on my list was by a different author. But this one was interesting. It features three protagonists--Vera, a modern-day teacher whose daughter is in some at-first-unnamed legal difficulty; Beth, a young married woman wishing she could get an education in Post-WWI America; and Dottie, a nurse whose son has enlisted in the Army during the Vietnam era. What makes the book interesting is that Vera discovers the latter two women as she is pealing wallpaper in a mountain getaway her sister has purchased. Vera is staying there trying to come to terms with her daughter's situation and has volunteered to help rehab the house to thank her sister. Beth and Dottie, it turns out, wrote their stories on the walls of the house and then covered them with wallpaper. There's a strong anti-war message in the three women's stories, as well as a theme of women's need to tell their stories even if they're never heard. To me, it didn't seem like a very realistic way of telling one's story, but I did enjoy the book. Meanwhile, the other The Writing on the Wall is still on the TBR list. 

I admire Gabrielle Zevin's work because every new book is totally fresh. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is no exception. Sam and Sadie became friends when Sam was in the hospital following a terrible car accident in which his mother was killed and he was seriously injured; Sadie visited him regularly but their friendship ended abruptly when he learned she was receiving community service credits for visiting him. They run into each other years later when he is at Harvard and she is at MIT; they start developing a game together and eventually become successful game developers. There are ups and downs in their business and their relationship and, as they experience these ups and downs the reader is challenged to think about disability and how one copes with physical pain, the benefits of building alternative worlds and playing in them, art, what makes a good teacher (not sleeping with students), and cultural violence. Sometimes Zevin went a little deeper into various aspects of gaming and game development than I needed to go, but overall, I enjoyed the book. 

I don't have high expectations for the free books you can get from Audible and Amazon, but occasionally one surprises me. I Came to Say Goodbye by Caroline Overington was one of those. It was doubly surprising because it involved a plethora of issues--parenting ranging from questionable to abusive; the perfidy of the social welfare system, particularly child protective services; immigration to Australia; female genital mutilation; treatment available for the mentally ill; quacks promoting misinformation about children's health. And it's narrated by a father and daughter who have some serious character flaws--yet I ended up caring about them. Maybe I've gotten soft.

Mystery/Thriller

If you liked the movie Memento, you will find the premise of  Stay Awake by Megan Goldin familiar. I definitely can't adequately describe the plot, but here's an attempt:  Protagonist Liv has a rare form of amnesia: when she wakes up, she has forgotten everything that came before. Her arms are covered with admonitions like "Don't fall asleep." Her low-rent apartment, when she can find it, contains many Post-its with similar messages. When she sees "Wake Up" painted, in blood, on the window of an apartment where a man she knows (although she doesn't remember him!) was murdered, she fears she is being set up. I'll stop there to avoid spoilers. Goldin doesn't execute her idea perfectly and Liv can be an annoying character, but I enjoyed the book. 

Nonfiction

Questlove is a very smart man, and what he doesn't know about music is likely not worth knowing. In fact, his encyclopedic knowledge of music sometimes made it hard for me to track where he was going in Music Is History, in which he starts the year he was born and examines musical highlights and historical connections year by year. He also puts together playlists that support the themes he identifies for various years. I respect this work, but someone younger and more knowledgeable about contemporary music would probably "get it" more fully than I did. Since I listened to this as I was recovering from COVID, I might have had some brain fog (how's that as a way to excuse myself for keeping up with Questlove's genius?). 

My sister-in-law Kathy recommended Kal Penn's You Can't Be Serious, so I picked it up and found it both entertaining and informative. Penn ("real" name Kalpen Modi) basically tells his story in four large chunks: growing up as a somewhat nerdy Indian American kid in New Jersey (not gravitating toward his extended family's career expectations for him), his efforts (eventually successful) to make it in Hollywood in the face of rampant discrimination, his time working in the Obama Administration (he remains a big fan of how President Obama approached governing), and his efforts to get a show featuring a multiethnic cast treated fairly by NBC (spoiler: that did not happen). I guess I am naive, but I did not expect that discrimination in the entertainment industry would have been so open in the 1990s and early 2000s and would remain so institutionalized in the 2010s. Sad. I had read when the book was published that Penn came out in his memoir. Somehow, this "big news" kind of approach had prepped me for a lot of angst about the process. Totally not hte case. He writes about dating guys and finding his somewhat unlikely fiance in a matter of fact manner, which feels like the way LGBTQ+ people should be able to write about their lives. Recommended.

Poetry

I read Elizabeth Alexander's memoir about her husband's death and thought it was brilliant. I've also enjoyed a couple of Mellon Foundation (she is currently the President) webinars that she facilitated. Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 is her first poetry collection I have read. Many of her poems focus on African American history and life--I especially enjoyed the series of poems on  Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color and the poem "Tina Green," that tells a

small story, hair story, Afro-American story
only-black-girl-in-my-class story,
pre-adolescence story, black-teacher story.

Another theme of her work is family (there's a series on postpartum dreams that is wild).  I found "Cleaning Out Your Apartment," written about her grandfather, deeply moving. 

A fifty-year-old resume
that says you raised delphiniums.
Health through Vegetable Juice,
your book of common prayer,

your bureau, bed, your easy chair,
dry Chivas bottles, mop and broom
pajamas on the drying rack,
your shoe trees, shoe-shine box.

I keep your wicker sewing kit,
your balsa cufflink box. There's
only my framed photograph to say,
you were my grandfather.

Outside, flowers everywhere
the bus stop, santeria shop.
Red and blue, violent lavender.
Impatiens, impermanent, swarm.

Among my other favorites in the collection are the poem she read at President Obama's inauguration in 2009 ("Praise Song for the Day") and a poem on "Butter" that ends with a reference to Little Black Sambo, which was an odd reading moment--but still, it's about butter!

Favorite Passages

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Excerpt from "Praise Song for the Day," by Elizabeth Alexander

Books that Moved Me: Our Missing Hearts and Speak

Just spent the morning with my book club talking about why books are challenged/censored (fear was our main conclusion) and why people feel compelled to try to limit what other people's children read rather than just choosing deciding if a book is suitable for their own children (I think "people are annoying" was our main conclusion).  Speak, the book I read for the meeting (see YA section below) definitely deserves to have a wide audience of teenagers and those who love them.  But on to what I've been reading.

Fiction

With her new book, Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng has gone in a new direction. Following an economic crisis, blamed by leaders on China, the United States has passed the PACT act--the Preserving American Culture and Traditions act (yes, the PATRIOT act echoes here). PACT means that books are restricted, people are asked to report on their neighbors, children are removed from parents with dangerous ideas, and Asian Americans are treated as potential traitors. The book essentially tells two stories--the first is the story of Bird, a preteen boy whose mother Margaret, a Chinese America poet, disappeared some years before. He lives with his father, a former linguistics professor who now shelves unread books in a library. The title of one of Margaret's book, Our Missing Hearts, has become a slogan for those protesting removal of children from their families. Motivated by this fact and his receipt of a page filled with drawings of cats that he knows is from his mother, Bird sets out to find her. When he does, the book becomes Margaret's story--how she came to be in the situation she is currently in and what she plans to do about it. It's a powerful book about intolerance and injustice, courage, art, and resilience. And, librarians are the true heroes in the story! And it's beautifully written! Highly recommended. 

The online University of Illinois alumni online book group I joined earlier this year is currently reading The Violin Conspiracy, by Brendan Slocumb. It's the story of Ray McMillian, a gifted young African American violinist who discovers the family fiddle is actually a Stradavarius worth $10 million. This causes various conflicts, in his family (the elders claim that the violin belongs to them, not to Ray) and with the descendants of the slave-owning family who "owned" Ray's fiddle-playing ancestor (who claim the violin was stolen from them). Then, as Ray is preparing for the prestigious Tchaikovsky competition, the violin is stolen. The narrative moves back and forth between Ray's childhood, when he got no family support and was subjected to discrimination as a black child playing classical music,  and his preparation for and participation in the competition, as he freaks out (understandably) about his violin. I enjoyed everything about Ray's life as a black musician, including encounters with unfriendly police, but didn't find the "mystery" particularly compelling. Interesting note: Several commenters in our group thought that Ray's childhood was taking place in the 1970s, while it was actually the early 2000s (I think). I feel like this might reflect white readers' self-delusion about how much has changed--in schools, in the classical music world, and in society in general. We want to believe Ray would not have experienced discrimination from his music teacher in the 2000s, but, sadly, Slocumb, a musician and music teacher, knows more than we do.  

Mysteries/Thrillers

Ice and Stone is the latest entry in Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series, and it's pretty good for the 34th book about one character, perhaps because it deals with a timely topic--the murder of indigenous women. Although the specific reason for their murder seems unlikely to be the motivator for the murders that have and are occurring in the real world, the prejudice and lack of investigation by law enforcement seems on point. There is a weird subplot about an attack on Sharon and Hy's office that goes nowhere, but I still recommend the book.

I know I complain a lot about bad mysteries, but The Coroner, by Jennifer Graeser Dornbush, may be the worst ever--obnoxious main character who is supposedly a brilliant doctor but acts like an idiot (I actually kind of wanted her to die when she was attacked by a murderer); constant mentions that she drives a leaf (is the author getting a kickback from Nissan or is she trying to virtue-signal?);  multiple violations of the Fourth Amendment by law enforcement officers (mystery writers really need to get the law right--no one in this book could ever have been convicted because pretty much all the evidence was illegally gathered); a corny romance;  and a terrible cliffhanger. Authors who write cliffhangers clearly don't care about their readers--they just want to sell the next book in their series. To make matters worse, this one involves the main character--a freaking doctor--sitting by someone praying for their survival. Why isn't she DOING something? Seriously, the worst. 

I first thought Look What You Made Me Do was a complete rip-off of My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite. It certainly starts off similarly, but author Elaine Murphy does take the story in a different direction. Carrie is the witless accomplice to her sister Becca's crimes, helping her dispose of the bodies. But Becca's latest victim is discovered in a park--along with 13 other bodies, not killed by Becca. Because it's a mystery novel, Carrie and Becca start trying to identify the other serial killer. And chaos ensues. Not really a fan. 

Black Widows by Cate Quinn is not the first mystery I've read in which the murder victim had more than one wife, but it's still quite different. Told from the perspective of the three wives of dead husband Blake--Rachel, the controlling first wife, who was raised in a polygamous cult; Emily, a teenager who has an unspecified sexual problem; and Tina, a former drug addict and hooker, who probably loved Blake the most. The police ping-pong back and forth in terms of who they think the killer is--all three wives are arrested at different times--before the "surprise" of who really killed Blake is revealed. The book was somewhat entertaining, but a couple of things bothered me. First, all three wives (as well as Blake's mother) were presented as somewhat mentally damaged, which I don't think is a fair portrayal of LDS women (although, granted, I don't know any women in plural marriages). Second, while I'm not generally one to worry about authors writing about people different from themselves, it seems odd that a British author who has apparently never even been to Utah, would decide to write this book. Perhaps if she had actually spent some time with LDS folks, she might have drawn more complex characters and not portrayed every LDS character (except for one kid missionary who loaned Tina his car) so negatively. 

In Desert Star, by Michael Connolly, Renee Ballard has become the lead detective of the LAPD's newly reconstituted cold case unit. The catch is no other detectives are assigned to the squad--she must rely on volunteers and consultants. Of course, she draws Harry Bosch into the unit with the promise he can work on a case that has haunted him because he knows who did it but can't bring the perpetrator to justice. But first he has to help find out who killed the sister of the city councilman largely responsible for getting the unit funded. Lots of red herrings, but overall it's okay, though it's hard to believe a major city would actually have a unit manned by volunteers. Also, I feel like the more closely she works with Bosch, the less interesting Ballard becomes. Hopefully, the next title in this series will do more with her character. 

Science Fiction

Blake Crouch's latest, Upgrade, explores the idea that humans might be perfectible via gene modification (think CRISPR), delivered without the manipulated realizing what is happening. Protagonist Logan Ramsey, an agent with the Gene Protection Agency, goes into a basement where an IED with ice shrapnel explodes. At first, doctors do not think he has suffered any lasting damage, but then he starts noticing he's stronger, smarter (he can beat his daughter at chess), and more focused than ever before. Soon enough, he learns that this was all a trick by his mother, a brilliant scientist who everyone thinks committed suicide after she was responsible for the deaths of 200,000 people when one of her attempts to edit genes had the opposite effect of what was intended. She has also "upgraded" Logan's sister and wants the two of them to "save humanity" by upgrading people globally. Logan sees the potential downsides, while his sister decides to take on their mother's challenge. The rest of the book is a bit too much of a "chase scene" for me--and it's hard to develop character when the focus is on action (and science). Not my favorite Crouch book. 

Young Adult

This month, my book group decided we would each choose a banned book and report back to the group on what we read and how it informed our perspective on people who challenge books in a supposed effort to protect young people. I chose Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, and it's incredible. It's narrated in first person by a high school freshman, Melinda, whose friends have all abandoned her because she called 911 from a summer party. She hasn't told her friends what happened to her at the party (it's clear she was assaulted, but we don't learn the details until we're quite a ways into the book)--they're just mad because the police came and friends and older siblings got in trouble. Melinda opts to speak as little as possible, which frustrates her parents (who are not the most insightful folk) and teachers. Only her art teacher seems to understand how to help her. Although much of the book is sad--Melinda's voice seems authentic and the reader aches for her--but parts are also funny, and the ending is upbeat and carries a positive message about how taking action can help not only yourself but others. The edition I got from the library was the 10th Anniversary Edition, which included a poem constructed from letters and emails Anderson received from readers as well as some thoughts from Anderson on censorship. She is more understanding than I:

"Most of the censorship I see is fear-driven. I respect that. The world is a very scary place. It is a terrifying place in which to raise children, and in particular, teenagers. It is human nature to nurture and protect children as they grow into adulthood. But censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in darkness and makes them vulnerable.

"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them. They need us to be brave enough to give them great books so they can learn how to grow up into the men and women we want them to be."

 Absolutely think teenagers and their parents and teachers should read this book.

Nonfiction

My friend Carolyn loved The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics so much she recommended it in her Christmas letter a couple of years ago. Although it took me a long time to get to Daniel James Brown's book, once I did I really enjoyed it. I knew NOTHING about rowing, but Brown does such a great job, I actually got totally engaged in his descriptions of the crew's workouts and competitions. But the real heart of the book is the story of the "boys" from the University of Washington who made up the victorious team, particularly Joe Rantz, who got the author interested in the story; the UW team members were from middle class and lower middle class families, many hard hit by the Depression, little resembling my stereotype of crew as practiced at the elite schools of the East Coast. I was amazed at how popular rowing was as a spectator sport, one that was broadcast over the radio--who knew? The author also does a great job detailing Germany's successful plans to use the games as a propaganda opportunity while hiding the atrocities already occurring there. Given the extent to which Avery Brundage was complicit in this propaganda effort, I'm amazed he continued to hold high office in the U.S. and International Olympic Committees after the war--and into the 1970s!! 

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of the Plants was written by a botany professor, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, poet, and mother,  Robin Wall Kimmerer. I don't think I will capture it's essence, but it's an examination of how the two ways of knowing represented by science and the wisdom of people who learn by engaging deeply with the world around them (over generations) are both complementary and contradictory. Kimmerer makes a case that in order for life on earth to be sustainable given the current challenges, we must move away from the culture of commodification to a recognition that humans have a reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. She makes this case through stories from her own life and teaching,  explorations of indigenous wisdom, and scientific research she and her students have done with a view toward exploring those reciprocal relationships. It's deep and inspiring, but I feel like it was almost too much to process. I think I should probably have read it over a period of time, spending time with each chapter or, perhaps even better, choosing a couple of chapters and digging deeply into them with other readers.  

Favorite Passages

Today it strikes Bird as unbearably sad, to pass by and leave no trace of your existence.

The world was on fire, you might as well burn bright.

Because telling you what really happened would be espousing un-American views, and we certainly wouldn't want that. [Yes, some of the book rings almost unbearably true of our current situation.]

    --Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

. . . I take it [War and Peace] with me whenever I have to travel, hoping that one day I'll understand it. POr at least understand why Leo Tolstoy had wanted to gift the world with a mostly boring novel of over a thousand pages. It's still a mystery to me, and I keep hoping I'll come upon some gem-like insight that will explain it. 

    --Marcia Muller, Ice and Stone

They were now representatives of something much larger than themselves--a way of life, a shared set of values. Liberty was perhaps the most fundamental of those values. But the things that held them together--trust in each other, mutual respect, humility, fair play, watching out for one another--those were also part of what America meant to all of them.

    --Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat

Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection "species loneliness"--a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors.

    --Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass [I could reproduce a lot more passages, but I've already gone a bit overboard]

You Better Be Lightning lights up late October

How can it be November already? Here's a look at how October ended.

Fiction

A friend gave The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, by Robert Dugoni, a rave review, so I picked it up. Sam "Hell" Hill was born with red eyes--a fact that subjected him to discrimination and bullying as a youngster. The bullies were a classmate and the principal of his Catholic school, a nun with a drinking problem. He finds two friends--Ernie, the only black student in the school and, Mickie, a rebellious girl--who make his life bearable and who continue to be his friend into an adult. As an adult, Sam becomes a tinted-contact-wearing ophthalmologist who takes on the case of his childhood bully's daughter, whom he suspects is being abused. The result is a personal crisis that sends Sam careening away from his friends and the life he has built. I thought the story of Sam's youth was engaging, but I was so annoyed by his interpersonal idiocy in his adult life that I found the adult portions of the story unsatisfying.  

This Is How It Always Is, by Laurie Frankel, is the story of a family with five sons, until the youngest son Claude declares he wants to wear a dress and be called Poppy. It's certainly worthwhile to explore how a transitioning child affects all the other members of a family, and I liked the book's treatment of Poppy and her brothers. On the other hand, I often wondered what her parents were thinking and why they were doing things like suddenly moving the family from Madison to Seattle and then trying to keep Poppy's status secret. And the event that seemed to bring the family to some kind of resolution--a medical mission to Thailand, in which the doctor-mom took Poppy along and both had life-changing experiences--seemed quite unrealistic. I wanted to like the book more than I actually did.

I might say the same thing about Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. Here the central character is a brilliant woman, Elizabeth Zott, trying to succeed as a scientist in the 1950s and 1960s, further handicapped by being a single unmarried mother. The challenges are undoubtedly real, and her efforts to continue her career in unusual ways are admirable if slightly unbelievable. Her gifted daughter Mad is a wonderful character who wants to figure out the mystery of her dead father's family history, with the help of her friend Rev. Wakely, another wonderful character. I enjoyed much about the book, but I sometimes thought that the author was trying for humor in situations that really had no room for humor. For example, Elizabeth was sexually assaulted by her thesis advisor in grad school--not a humorous situation, but the way in which Garmus describes how Elizabeth stabbed him with her pencil is written in a way that seems intended to be funny. Sorry--not funny. 

Two of Kate Atkinson's works of historical fiction--Life After Life and A God in Ruins--are among my favorites of the past 20 years. But her new book, Shrines of Gaiety, is a disappointment. Set in the seamy underside of London in the years after World War I, the book features a large cast of characters, three of whom stand out: Gwendolen Kelling, a former combat nurse who has come to London to look for two young girls who have run away from York (and to escape the boredom of her life there); Freda, one of the girls Gwendolen is searching for, who has found London to be rougher than she imagined; and DCI John Frobisher, who is investigating the deaths of young women and to whom Gwendolen turns for help.  Other, less interesting characters are the family of nightclub impresario Nellie Coker and two crooked cops trying to steal Nellie's businesses. Bad things happen to almost everyone and then the book ends with a "here's where everyone ends up in the future" tacked on. I guess if you're very curious about the underside of this period, you might find the book interesting, but I did not. Not recommended. 

Mysteries

Five Decembers, by James Kestrel, is the most recent winner of the Edgar for Best Mystery Novel and, for once, I think the honor is well-deserved. Indeed, Five Decembers is more than just an excellent mystery--it's an excellent novel. The action begins in Honolulu in November 1941. Police officer Joe McGrady is faced with a challenging case--two young people murdered and found in a barn; one is the nephew of a high-ranking naval officer, putting more pressure on the police. Joe finds clues that lead him across the Pacific, and he heads to Hong Kong in search of the killer. Given the time, you can guess what happens--although what happens to Joe after the attack on Pearl Harbor is far from predictable. I don't want to give the rest of the story away--suffice it to say, I recommend this book. 

22 Seconds is the latest entry in the Patterson/Paetro Women's Murder Club series. This one involves violent protests against a new California gun law, as well as gun runners and drug cartels moving goods between Mexico and the United States. Subplots involving anyone other than Lindsay Boxer are underdeveloped--either a total waste or a set-up for something in volume 23. Not great, not horrible. 

I did a mini-binge of the first three novels in the Jane Ryland/Jake Brogan series by Hank Phillippi Ryan--The Other Woman, The Wrong Girl, and Truth Be Told, the latter two of which won Agatha awards. Jane is a reporter, Jake is a police officer, they're attracted to each other but can't have a relationship (or at least a public one) because it would be a conflict of interest. They get involved investigating the same crimes, and both seem to go off half-cocked fairly often. Crimes that seem unrelated actually end up being part of one big criminal fiasco. The sexual tension story line gets tedious, but the books are fairly entertaining.  

The Housekeeper, by Joy Fielding, is kind of Halloween-appropriate. A daughter hires a housekeeper to help her father care for her disabled mother and the woman goes from being a dream to a nightmare. It's a decent premise, but Fielding foreshadows so much that there's little suspense.

We know from the beginning of Things We Do in the Dark, by Jennifer Hillier, that protagonist Paris Peralta is now who she claims to be. But her current life has plenty of drama--her husband has been murdered and she's a suspect. Then an old friend, who also happens to be a true crime podcaster (that trope is getting tired and it's not used particularly well here), starts to investigate a case that involved her in her earlier life. Soon, her two lives come together. There are some surprises although one is signaled a bit too obviously before it is fully disclosed. Mediocre.

Nonfiction

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (second ed.), by bell hooks, is a well-argued discussion of why the situation of black women must be considered as due to both racism and sexism/misogyny. hooks examines how misogyny affected black women in slavery; she also looks at black men's misogyny and the varied ways that this misogyny affects black women. Also of note is the racism of the feminist movement, which rests hard on women of my age, but is supported by the evidence. Recommended.

Poetry

A friend posted enthusiastically about going to a performance by queer poet Andrea Gibson, so I ordered her latest book, You Better Be Lightning. It took me a while to finish the book as it's pretty intense. She writes about relationships, about love and loss, the vulnerability of LGBTQ youth, illness, goosebump moments . . . life.  Some of her poems are exceptionally brief but still pack a punch:

No Such Thing as the Innocent Bystander

Silence rides shotgun
wherever hate goes.

Spelling Bee without Stinger

I love myself
is often spelled
g-o-o-d-b-y-e

Some of the poems are quite lengthy, some look like prose. There's a wide array of material here, but every piece conveys emotion, often painful, but sometimes joyful (check out Gibson reading "Acceptance Speech after Setting the World Record in Goosebumps," which reminds us that joy comes in diverse and individual forms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XK-hb_bjqU). As with any poetry collection, some poems resonant, others don't, but Gibson's work is affecting and I plan to check out more of what she's written. 

Favorite passages

The process begins with the individual woman's acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.

When feminists acknowledge in one breath that black women are victimized and in the same breath emphasize their strength, they imply that though black women are oppressed they manage to circumvent the damaging impact of oppression by being strong--and that is simply not the case. Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women they are referring to the way in which they perceive black women coping with oppression. They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.

    bell hooks, in Ain't I a Woman (and I could pull out a lot of other wisdom as well)