book reviews

Review: Don't Call Us Dead

6/1/2018

The Other Side of the American Dream
Review: Don't Call Us Dead

Mikaela Langdon

Danez Smith
Poetry
Graywolf Press
Cost: $16.00

One aspect that makes poetry such a powerful form is how it is often used to tackle pertinent and even controversial topics. Race and sexuality are two timely issues, and Danez Smith tackles both of them in his book of poetry Don’t Call Us Dead. As a gay, black man in America, Smith has a unique perspective that shapes much of what he writes. In some ways, his poems speak to a very particular demographic and yet, they ring true for larger audiences.

Review: The Missing Girl

5/1/2018

A Little Goes A Long Way
Review: The Missing Girl

Elizabeth DiPietro

Jacqueline Doyle
Fiction
Black Lawrence Press, pp. 30
Paperback, $8.95 US

The woman running for her life from a man in a park. The girl who passes out at a party after a tainted drink. These are familiar stories we’ve been exposed to time and time again in the media. In fact, they’re so common they border on cliché. We’re under the impression there is nothing left to say, but there’s still, for a lack of words, fresh blood in these stories.

Jacqueline Doyle’s debut chapbook The Missing Girl features a collection of stories about the threats women face. From rape to questionable encounters, Doyle’s genius is that through her flash fiction pieces, she relies on our societal knowledge to fill in the blanks of her finely drawn bits of terror; and through them reminds us that for women nothing and nowhere is safe.

Review: The Expanse Between

4/1/2018

The Fiction of Privacy
Review: The Expanse Between

Joe Magaletta

Lee L. Krecklow
Fiction
Winter Goose Publishing
Paperback, $13.99

In Lee L. Krecklow’s debut novel The Expanse Between, he delivers a page-turner that will leave most readers unsure of what they would do by the end. It does an interesting job of introducing a commentary on the growing Internet, screen-obsessed culture. It takes place sometime in the mid-2000’s before this craze had really taken off, and in doing so shows that perhaps the human condition always had the impulses that the technology of today is making easier to appease.

Review: Incarceration Nations

2/1/2018

A Global Look at the Injustice of Justice
Review: Incarceration Nations

Kelly Walz

Baz Dreisinger
Nonfiction
Other Press, pp. 336
Cost $16.95

Baz Dreisinger has crossed oceans and boundaries—both figuratively and literally—in her new book, Incarceration Nations, which provides a first-hand account of Dreisinger’s two-year quest to penetrate the walls of some of the most notorious correctional facilities around the globe. Dreisinger maintains a dual purpose in her pilgrimage and her account. She hopes to inject small doses of hope and creativity into the inmates she encounters, as well as provide an account to the world that will foster awareness and spur a cause-to-action mentality for the prison crisis that exists in today’s world. Dreisinger’s work seems to accomplish both purposes, as the impact that she has made in the lives of the people who reside in “The Houses of the Living Dead” is evident. The astounding facts and accounts of the inmates’ lives that are carefully crafted into this book have and continue to invoke necessary changes in the global prison system.

Review: Hoopty Time Machines

11/1/2017

A Jump Into Reality
Review: Hoopty Time Machines

Jordan Moslowski

Christopher DeWan
Fiction
Atticus Books, pp 133
Paperback, $14.95 US

Every child hears “Once upon a time” and immediately knows that “happily ever after” is on its way. Snow White is woken up with Prince Charming’s kiss. Ariel gets her legs and her man. Cinderella is reunited with her precious glass slipper and her true love. But what happens when you wander off into your own once upon a time, only to find that Cinderella’s other shoe has dropped on your head? Suddenly you’re sitting on the commuter train, heading into another Monday of sucking down crappy coffee in that tiny office it took you five years of making copies and running office lunch orders to get promoted to.

Now you’re thinking happily ever after might just be for fairy tales after all.

Review: A Dark Ordinary

9/1/2017

Seen, But Not Heard
Review: A Dark Ordinary

Myriah Stubee

Susanne Dyckman
Poetry
Furniture Press Books, pp.74
Cost: $13.99

A Dark Ordinary has a combination of visually intriguing poems, reminiscent of e.e. cummings, and poignant prose poems that grasp your imagination. Using vivid imagery, unusual description, and vibrant language, Dyckman successfully paints a portrait of the sad, bleak, “dark ordinary” lives of child laborers in early 1900s America.

Review: Glass Harvest

8/1/2017

A Celebration of Chaos
Review: Glass Harvest

Rachel Carly

Amie Whittemore
Poetry
Autumn House Press, pp. 78
Cost: $17.95

In her debut poetry collection Glass Harvest (2016) Amie Whittemore unites all aspects of the universe: family, nature, farmland, music, and even the mythical and mysterious. It is full of surprises, moments of elation followed by moments of poignant grief, dark imagery juxtaposed with snapshots of beautiful, rural landscapes. With her poems, Whittemore celebrates the offbeat and unconventional, resulting in a collection of poems that mirror the chaos and unpredictability of family, both in form and content.

Review: I'll tell you in person

6/1/2017

Are You Talking to Me?

Review: I'll Tell You in Person

Amanda Rennie

Chloe Caldwell
Creative Nonfiction Essay Collection
Coffee House & Emily Books: 184 pp.
Cost: $16.95

Some people seamlessly accept the maturity and responsibility that comes with adulthood. Some of us call our moms a lot. Some dig their heels into the ground with the resistance of a toddler heading to time out. Chloe Caldwell, by certain definitions, is the latter. Caldwell’s latest essay collection, I’ll tell you in person, includes lengthy but devourable essays about some of her craziest decisions, most obstructive and devastating problems, major disappointments, and the relationships that got her there.

Review: Songs for a River

5/1/2017

The Beauty of Nature and the Dullness of Man

Review: Songs for a River

Rachel Saltzman

Jerry McGahan
Fiction/Media - Stories
Knut House Press: pp. 241
Cost: $35.00 (full color edition)
$15.00 (black and white edition)

Songs for a River, McGahan’s third book, combines eloquent descriptions of nature, vivid artistic philosophies, and serene paintings of grazing buffalo in mountainous landscapes with a complicated romance that spans almost the entire novel. There is a Zen-like quality that carries over from page to page, inviting the reader to see art, nature, and relationships as more than just ordinary aspects of one’s life. But between the lovely portraits of wild North-West America, McGahan addresses the similarities between art, humanity, and the spirit of nature; although our pride as humans is to live and govern above the rest of the animal kingdom through reason and emotions, at our base nature we rely on the same instinctual tendencies as our hoofed and feathery counterparts. And even though we might consider ourselves beings of intellectual and artistic ability, it is difficult to push aside the lingering traces of animal ancestry along with the need to break free from societal restraints.

Review: Welcome Home

4/1/2017

The Making of an American Dream

Review: Welcome Home

Nicolina Givin

Jude Ezeilo
Non-fiction
Alternative Book Press: 158 pp.
Cost: $9.99

Jude Ezeilo’s heartwarming introduction to America provides a new ethical and moral viewpoint to the country that Americans are accustomed to today. Welcome Home: A Memoir is an exchange between Ezeilo’s past and present selves, both working toward obtaining United States citizenship. Arriving at such a young age from his home country of Nigeria, two-year-old Ezeilo soon discovers the work and dedication it takes to achieve the American dream.