Book Review: "The Bright Afters" by Sadie McCarney

I have a Bookstagram friend to thank for putting this powerfully emotional book on my radar. I don’t think I would have found this otherwise.

The Bright Afters is a book of verse monologues set in Nova Scotia. When the book opens, it’s just before another school year begins, which sparks excitement and anxiety among the students.

“First-day hair matters. But something else gets tucked in with Aqua Net and bobby pins: you hide your secrets in your hair. And if you listen, you can hear the chorus of follicles whisper: this will be, this will be, this will be our year.”

On the first day of school, Colton, a gay student, is brutally attacked in the bathroom by another student. The reactions of everyone—from Colton, his sister Christine, and his best friend Annie, to his attacker, teachers, even the school janitor—compose a Greek chorus of sorts. There are secrets and confessions, rants and laments.

Obviously, the attack is disturbing and many of the reactions are unsurprising. But their being told in this type of narrative adds impact and power. I don’t read a lot of poetry—and the book doesn’t quite read like poetry—but this will remain in my mind for some time to come.

Book Review: "The Black Flamingo" by Dean Atta

Gorgeously unique, Dean Atta's The Black Flamingo is a salute to finding and loving yourself.

Michael is a half-Jamaican, half Greek Cypriot boy growing up in London. He realizes early on that being mixed-race makes him different, as he’s not black enough for some in his family and not Greek enough for others.

He also knows he’d rather play with dolls and his female friends, and kiss the boys. After some ridicule by his peers he finds a way to get by, and he forms a close friendship with Daisy, a fellow outcast. But while his coming out doesn’t surprise anyone, he realizes he still has some growing and learning to do, and he needs to figure out who he is.

When he gets to university, he’s ready for freedom, but he still feels out of place until he finds The Drag Society. It is there he learns exactly how amazing and fierce he is, how much the only person’s opinion that matters is his own, and that when you love yourself it makes it easier to love others and be loved by them.

"He is me, who I have been,
who I am, who I hope to become.
Someone fabulous, wild, and strong.
With or without a costume on."

What an incredible, emotional, powerful book. This is a novel-in-verse interspersed with poems Michael writes, but it doesn’t read any differently than a traditional novel.

I devoured this one. I think this is such an empowering, ultimately joyful book that I will remember for a long time. Dean Atta has created a gorgeous book about race and pride at exactly the right time. May we all be as fierce as the Black Flamingo!

My month of Pride Reads keeps rolling!!

Book Review: "Clap When You Land" by Elizabeth Acevedo

Elizabeth Acevedo's new book, Clap When You Land, is a novel-in-verse about family, grief, anger, and letting go.⁣

Camino is a teenage girl living in the Dominican Republic with her aunt, who works as a healer. Her father, who lives in New York, comes to visit every summer, and Camino lives for those visits. Yet on the day his plane is to arrive and she waits for him at the airport, she learns that his plane has crashed.⁣

Another teenage girl, Yahaira, lives in New York. Her father goes home to the Dominican Republic each summer, which causes a strain on his relationship with her mother. One morning she is called out of her class and told by her mother that her father’s plane crashed.⁣

⁣Both girls are grief-struck, devastated by the loss of their father. Camino has dreams of going to college in New York and studying medicine, and now isn’t even sure how she and her aunt will survive, especially as a dangerous man she has been protected from all this time circles closer.⁣

⁣Yahaira, who discovered a secret about her father before he died, feels guilty, angry, and deceived, yet doesn’t know how to live without her hero. She tries to push everyone away.

⁣When the two girls learn of each other, it is a shocking discovery of a connection that wounds but might ultimately save them both.⁣

⁣Clap When You Land is poignant, luminous, and powerful. Acevedo imbues her words with such vivid imagery and raw emotion. It didn’t quite hit me as hard as I expected it to given the subject matter, but it still was a book that will stick with me.⁣ Acevedo's two earlier books, The Poet X and With the Fire on High, are master works.

Book Review: "The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo

Wow. This was absolutely phenomenal. What a powerful gut punch.

Elizabeth Acevedo's National Book Award-winning The Poet X is deserving of every single accolade that comes its way. This immensely moving novel-in-verse will light a fire inside you while it takes your breath away.

Xiomara Batista is about to start her sophomore year at a high school in Harlem. She has been the object of male attention since she grew tall and her body grew curves. Her fiercely religious mother has only mistrust for Xiomara, as she is convinced that a teenage girl with a body like that will only get into trouble. But Xiomara spends more time fighting the jeers and the curious stares, and standing up for her meeker twin brother, Xavier, whom she refers to as "Twin."

"The other girls call me conceited. Ho. Thot. Fast.
When your body takes up more room than your voice
you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,
which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.
Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.
I've forced my skin just as thick as I am."

The best way Xiomara finds to combat everything that threatens to bring her down—her mother's religious fervor and mistrust, her father's disregard, the secrets that Twin seems to be hiding, and her growing desire for a boy to like her—is to write. She fills a well-worn leather notebook with her thoughts, her fears, and her poems. As her new English teacher encourages her to join a poetry club, Xiomara knows her words can't ever be heard by others or her secrets will fly away.

When she and her lab partner, Aman, begin a flirtation which grows ever more intense, Xiomara knows her mother's rules. She is not allowed to date, not even allowed to go anywhere with a boy. But for the first time, she decides to disobey her mother and spend time with Aman. She feels happiness, desire, guilt, confusion, but more than that, she can't quite understand why these feelings are wrong.

"How does a girl like me figure out the weight
of what it means to love a boy?"

But secrets can only be kept secret for so long. When Xiomara's secrets are exposed, their discovery, and her mother's reaction, threatens everything—her relationship with each of her family members, her self-worth, even her ability to express herself through poetry. She is lost, adrift, until she finds one beacon to help guide her back on course.

At times this is a difficult book to read because Xiomara's mother is so unflinching in her beliefs and so outwardly cruel to her daughter. In a small way, she reminds me of the mother in Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, because you just can't understand how a mother's love for her child could turn so twisted and cruel, even though you learn the reasons behind it.

Xiomara is a truly unforgettable character, and although you don't see him as much, I loved Twin as well, and wished he was more of a presence at times. To watch someone who has always carried herself with so much bravado find herself so vulnerable is sad, but you hope that she'll bounce back even bigger and stronger than she was.

I absolutely loved this book and read it in one day. I am not a fan of audio books but I am considering listening to this one, which Acevedo narrates herself, since she is an award-winning slam poet. I was utterly mesmerized by Acevedo's words and how they metamorphosized into such a memorable voice for Xiomara—simultaneously tough and soft, passionate and fearful.

This is a book about family, religion, friendship, young love, wishing you could be who your parents want you to be but not wanting to give up who you are, and the transformative power of words. The Poet X is a book I won't soon forget.

"I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark."