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kyatic's Reviews (974)
(Review of an ARC received via Netgalley)
I really enjoyed this one. It's incredibly well curated, with an interesting mixture of modern and historical people, and the contributions made by each person range from drag artists, basket weavers, activists, translators, curators, seed keepers, and myriad more. All of the bios are informative enough to give a good idea of the person's contributions, but not so thorough that you can't do your own reading afterwards. I've bought the work of quite a few of the people mentioned in it and look forward to learning more about them. The artwork style is bold and complements the profiles of each person really effectively, giving a nice insight into their character and background. All of the additional information about Native culture and history was also very enlightening; I've read up on Native history and experiences a fair amount in the past, but there were a huge amount of new things to learn here. I could honestly have read another 150 pages of it quite happily, and my only real critique of it would be that it's so short, at under 150 pages, with an extra list of 'Native people you should also know' tacked onto the back, with just a one sentence bio given to each. I would have liked full profiles on all of those people, too.
This is the sort of book that I think pretty much any age would benefit immensely from reading as it's definitely accessible enough to span a wide age group, and I really hope that it gets a good reach when it's published. I can see this being an enormously useful resource and reference.
I really enjoyed this one. It's incredibly well curated, with an interesting mixture of modern and historical people, and the contributions made by each person range from drag artists, basket weavers, activists, translators, curators, seed keepers, and myriad more. All of the bios are informative enough to give a good idea of the person's contributions, but not so thorough that you can't do your own reading afterwards. I've bought the work of quite a few of the people mentioned in it and look forward to learning more about them. The artwork style is bold and complements the profiles of each person really effectively, giving a nice insight into their character and background. All of the additional information about Native culture and history was also very enlightening; I've read up on Native history and experiences a fair amount in the past, but there were a huge amount of new things to learn here. I could honestly have read another 150 pages of it quite happily, and my only real critique of it would be that it's so short, at under 150 pages, with an extra list of 'Native people you should also know' tacked onto the back, with just a one sentence bio given to each. I would have liked full profiles on all of those people, too.
This is the sort of book that I think pretty much any age would benefit immensely from reading as it's definitely accessible enough to span a wide age group, and I really hope that it gets a good reach when it's published. I can see this being an enormously useful resource and reference.
(Review of an ARC via Netgalley)
This was a really beautiful and evocative collection about language and cultural identity, and how America (and the white Western world in general) seeks to dampen both. Afiriyie-Hwedie's language here is really just phenomenal; she has an almost supernatural ability to tell the story of a whole life in one line of poetry, and although this collection is very short it feels complete, like not a single page or word is wasted. All the poems here are tightly crafted and layered with so many meanings that I think you could probably read this entire collection cover to cover multiple times and have a different experience every time.
Having said that, I did find some of the poems were a little hard to parse and I wasn't sure I fully comprehended all of them, but I chalked that up to the poet's experience being so very different from mine; there are things she's experienced and writes about that are a completely new frame of reference for me, a white monoglot who's lived in the same country my whole life. I still enjoyed the language of the poems, even those I didn't entirely understand.
As far as poetry collections go, this is one of the most impressive in terms of poetic technique and language that I've read this year, and it's obvious that Afiriyie-Hwedie is one of those poets who's going to end up on every MFA syllabus going, and she should.
This was a really beautiful and evocative collection about language and cultural identity, and how America (and the white Western world in general) seeks to dampen both. Afiriyie-Hwedie's language here is really just phenomenal; she has an almost supernatural ability to tell the story of a whole life in one line of poetry, and although this collection is very short it feels complete, like not a single page or word is wasted. All the poems here are tightly crafted and layered with so many meanings that I think you could probably read this entire collection cover to cover multiple times and have a different experience every time.
Having said that, I did find some of the poems were a little hard to parse and I wasn't sure I fully comprehended all of them, but I chalked that up to the poet's experience being so very different from mine; there are things she's experienced and writes about that are a completely new frame of reference for me, a white monoglot who's lived in the same country my whole life. I still enjoyed the language of the poems, even those I didn't entirely understand.
As far as poetry collections go, this is one of the most impressive in terms of poetic technique and language that I've read this year, and it's obvious that Afiriyie-Hwedie is one of those poets who's going to end up on every MFA syllabus going, and she should.
(ARC received for review via Netgalley)
This is one of the most unusual poetry collections I've ever read, in both good and bad ways. I loved the ease with which Gbalajobi writes and uses rhythm, as well as his imagery - I can't put my finger on it, but a lot of the poems here reminded me quite a lot of the translated Cavafy I've read before, or some of Catullus' less raunchy poems.
Some of the lines, like this one:
'My heart is filled with cobwebs
(that’s what happens to unoccupied spaces)'
were so wonderful that I would have liked to have had a paperback copy to underline them. There's a lot of humour in here, too, and myriad pop culture references which helped to ground the collection in the here and now, although I do wonder if the poet relied a little too heavily on familiarity with those to set the tone and mood; as someone who doesn't like Lana del Rey, I didn't fully appreciate any of the poems which relied on her music specifically to evoke atmosphere, but that's probably on me.
But then, there were lines like:
'Our hips match the rhythm of Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road –
You are a cowgirl riding a shotgun.'
which just seemed like a sort of ludicrous image, and when I got to:
'my body knew before you told me,
“Two months. it’s Dave’s…”'
I found that line so bizarre and unintentionally hilarious, like I was watching a telenovela or an episode of Eastenders, that it jarred me out of the poem completely. Those were the two worst offenders - the rest of the poems didn't suffer for them.
The strongest poems here are the ones about racism ('Your Sin is Your Skin, Boy' was probably my favourite - the rhythm in that one made me want to hear the poet read it out loud) and love, or perhaps more accurately obsession. I liked the variety of tones, too; there's as many joyful poems here as there are mournful ones, and it made for an interesting read, although I do also think it could stand to be beefed up a bit more as it's a very short collection.
Not my new favourite, but a really interesting style and I'm glad I read it.
This is one of the most unusual poetry collections I've ever read, in both good and bad ways. I loved the ease with which Gbalajobi writes and uses rhythm, as well as his imagery - I can't put my finger on it, but a lot of the poems here reminded me quite a lot of the translated Cavafy I've read before, or some of Catullus' less raunchy poems.
Some of the lines, like this one:
'My heart is filled with cobwebs
(that’s what happens to unoccupied spaces)'
were so wonderful that I would have liked to have had a paperback copy to underline them. There's a lot of humour in here, too, and myriad pop culture references which helped to ground the collection in the here and now, although I do wonder if the poet relied a little too heavily on familiarity with those to set the tone and mood; as someone who doesn't like Lana del Rey, I didn't fully appreciate any of the poems which relied on her music specifically to evoke atmosphere, but that's probably on me.
But then, there were lines like:
'Our hips match the rhythm of Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road –
You are a cowgirl riding a shotgun.'
which just seemed like a sort of ludicrous image, and when I got to:
'my body knew before you told me,
“Two months. it’s Dave’s…”'
I found that line so bizarre and unintentionally hilarious, like I was watching a telenovela or an episode of Eastenders, that it jarred me out of the poem completely. Those were the two worst offenders - the rest of the poems didn't suffer for them.
The strongest poems here are the ones about racism ('Your Sin is Your Skin, Boy' was probably my favourite - the rhythm in that one made me want to hear the poet read it out loud) and love, or perhaps more accurately obsession. I liked the variety of tones, too; there's as many joyful poems here as there are mournful ones, and it made for an interesting read, although I do also think it could stand to be beefed up a bit more as it's a very short collection.
Not my new favourite, but a really interesting style and I'm glad I read it.
