Maluchem do Raju, by Kazik Kunicki i Tomasz Ławecki

 This started out as a book review, and turned into a meditation on what we know about the past, and the kinds of stories we tell about it. It's one of the more personal things I've written, in that it's about my academic interests, but also my family history, and my translation work, and even has a little scene, of sorts, of me interacting with my parents.

Anyhow: here it is, my piece for the Field Notes of Modernism/modernity, with big thanks to Jeanne-Marie Jackson for inviting me to contribute!

A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ni Ghriofa

 KGB Bar is one of my favorite bars in the world, so I was absolutely delighted to contribute a review to their lit mag! All the more so because it gave me the opportunity to really think through why I admired A Ghost in the Throat so much. Here's what I ended up saying!

Sidenote, but — you might think that as someone who studies 18th century lit, and Irish fiction, OF COURSE I had heard of this book. But in fact, I learned about it, as I learn about many many many excellent books, from Caitlin Luce Baker's twitter feed. This just reaffirms what I've said many times before, that booksellers are far more up on the important stuff than academics are. And also, that bookseller twitter is so so good! If you want to hear more about excellent literature in translation, or stuff being published by indie presses, Caitlin is a great person to follow.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

 It's hard to believe that I somehow made it this far without having read this book. I've always heard it described as a classic, as important, as formative, and just generally soooo great, so I was delighted when a student who is writing an Honors thesis with me wanted to write about it, because it forced me to finally read it. 

So, the big thing that it made me realize is just how little I know about American literature and its history, because I was kind of bewildered by the apparent scandalousness of it. Weren't European writers, especially French ones, writing stories like this for a good 30 years or so already? The Awakening is published in 1899. Madame Bovary is 1856. A Doll's House is 1879. Was this stuff not translated until much later? Was it a big deal because it was an American woman who was articulating these ideas?

And also, OMG IT IS SO RACIST. Maybe if I read more 19th/20th century American lit, I would be more accustomed to this, but WOW. And nobody ever mentioned that, in all the things I've heard about the book! Is it because the racism is not the kind where there is lots of explicit discussion of people of color as lesser (though, ahem, Mariequita's "broad and coarse" feet might give you pause), but is rather the kind where the book is full of Black characters and none of them have a name? My student wants to write about the institution of motherhood as oppressive to the protagonist and I'm like, ok, sure, but you're gonna need to get into the fact that the vast majority of the actual work of caring for her children is done by "the Quadroon". The shit is blowing my mind. I bought myself a copy of a newer edition with an intro by Carmen Maria Machado, thinking that surely she would have something to say about this, but nope, not a word! And then I found this truly unfortunate NYTimes essay (no, I'm not gonna link to it), where a white women suggests — with only the slightest of disclaimers — the the summer of 2020 and the rise of "wokeness" can lead us back to The Awakening and the idea of pleasure as freedom. What the holy hell?

But ok. Calm down. I'm not saying that we have to cancel Kate Chopin. I just think that it is deeply wrong to talk about how this book can be seen as liberatory, inspiring, etc, without also AT LEAST acknowledging, but preferably reckoning with, the fact that Edna's pursuit of freedom is deeply entangled with her racial and class privilege. I mean, this woman up and decides to move out of her house into her own little apartment, and she actually does it, and it's FINE. Her husband isn't delighted but he works it out, her kids are with their grandmother, who is absolutely thrilled to keep them at her place — she not only hasn't taken anyone else into account, but even when this obliviousness becomes clear, there are no negative consequences. One of the most telling moments in the book, to me, is when her kids ask her where they are to sleep, in this new home of hers, and she tells them that the fairies will figure it out. Like, ooops, totally forgot that you existed for a minute there, but, uh, *throws a pile of glitter into the air* I mean, at this point, you really have to wonder, what else does this woman need to be free?

And this, of course, is actually a really interesting question, and one very much worth exploring. There's a great essay by Molly Hildebrand that really lambasts the protagonist as a negative example of solipsism (but also, maybe, a proto-vision of the female artist?), but I think it might be a bit too quick to dismiss some of the difficulties of these issues, I don't know. 

I will say, though, that this is a book that richly rewards close reading and re-reading — it's wonderfully opaque and ambivalent in a lot of ways. I'm having a terrific time wrestling with it with my student. But at the same time, I'm...kind of glad that I didn't read it at a more impressionable moment in my life.

Bright Dead Things, Ada Limón

 Just a short post, because I have such a backlog of books to write about and a lot to do these days... 

Awhile back, Pilsen Community Books posted a poem from this book, and I was so taken by it that I immediately ordered it from them. I started reading it and was absolutely blown away, and then, wonder of wonders, it turned out that Limón was doing a reading at Cornell! So I got to go and hear her read some poems, and tell stories about them, and about her family, and talk about her process, and her worldview, and it was all just so absolutely magical. What an incredible presence she is. 

Of course, maybe it was also just the pleasure of being in a room with people appreciating poetry, which I haven't done in a very long time (my classes don't count, heh heh), but I do think this was an exceptionally good reading. Some credit goes to the audience, who asked really interesting questions (those fancy Cornell folk!). I was especially struck by a person who asked whether she does the line breaks in the first rush of composition, or adds them later (apparently this person had heard someone, maybe Victoria Chang? say that their first draft is one line of prose, and the line breaks come after), and another person who asked whether she composes out loud, or in writing. These are maybe very obvious questions to ask a poet, but I hadn't ever thought of them, and I was very interested in the answers (she does the line breaks in the initial composition, and she does compose out loud, fyi. In my own feeble attempts at poetry, I do line breaks immediately but am constantly playing with them and changing them, and I never compose out loud.)

It's really hard for me to explain what is so absolutely magnetic and immediately captivating about these poems. I gave my copy of the book to a dear friend so I can't even look over it and try to figure it out (though I will definitely be buying myself another copy). But really, they are incredible, and you should go buy this book right away.

In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, Sarah Ruhl

 This is a fun, witty play. I borrowed it from the library because, having read Ruhl's essays, I was curious about her plays, and it didn't disappoint. It's simultaneously daring and kind of quaint, in a really interesting way — the tone teeters between irony and wide-eyed sentiment. I think this is in part because the subject matter — the use of vibrators to treat hysteria — unavoidably involves a certain amount of dramatic irony. We know what's really going on here (sex!), except we also sort of don't, because it's so difficult to really understand how people at the time experienced this kind of thing (or at least it is for me). Is it really possible to be so disconnected from your own sexuality? I know it is (and I know I'm very lucky to find it so hard to fathom), but then what does this mean for your sense of your body, for instance?

The brilliance of Ruhl's play is the way it activates multiple meanings of electricity, and the thrills and dangers attendant to it, and subtly plays with our sense of the Victorian era and its moral milieu. There is a faint suggestion, for instance, that sexual identity is more fluid, precisely because less explicitly categorized. There's also an interesting way that the play activates contemporary taboos by confronting us with the "innocence" of certain aspects of the Victorian era, like the racial politics, or the all-knowing authority of medical discourse, without a clear commentary to comfortably situate it in relation to current norms (is the doctor sexually abusing his patients? is the treatment of the African American character racist? The answers will seem obvious to many viewers, but the play withholds comment). This inevitable sense of then-vs-now is neatly echoed in the way the play is staged, with action taking place in two spaces simultaneously, the division between them alternately fixed and porous.

It would be really neat to see it staged, but it was a pleasure to read as well. In one of her essays, Ruhl says something like, stage directions should be meaningful, they carry important ideas and tone, etc, and this is very true here, such that you feel like you're being let in on a secret, in a way, by getting to read them. And you realize with particular clarity that any staging of this play is going to be a particular interpretation (most intriguingly, in the directions to the actors for the sounds they are to make during orgasm). 

It's a really sweet, enjoyable text, I'm looking forward to reading more of her stuff (and hopefully seeing it performed someday!).

Mothers: an Essay on Love and Cruelty, Jacqueline Rose

This book returns me to my questions about the difference between theory, auto-theory, and essay. The subtitle claims this to be an essay (and it's an expanded version of a piece from the London Review of Books), but I guess I nonetheless expected it to be more like a work of theory, or I guess just...more rigorous? Not rigor in the sense of hard, but rather, I wanted it to follow up on the promises it made, and develop the ideas more.

The first chapter was really compelling and laid out a bold and interesting argument about motherhood being a repository for cultural anxieties and unreasonable expectations; the idea that mothers are expected to both shield us from the horrors of the world, and also fix the world, but without every being granted power or resources. But the book doesn't really follow up on that argument. Instead, it's a sort of meandering, often personal, meditation on various ideas connected to motherhood — eros, ambivalence, how the experience is portrayed. Is this because it's an essay — is that what essays get to do? We think of auto-theory as fragmentary, but I think there is an expectation of circling back and having a clear through-line of an overall point.

Something interesting, that I think will end up really dating this book, is that there's a whole chapter on Elena Ferrante's novels, which Rose sees as the best representation of motherhood ever, it seems. It reminded me of just how much critical adulation there was for Ferrante, around that time — I think it's passed now (on to Sally Rooney, perhaps) — I enjoyed those books, but I just don't think they're quite as amazing as they were believed to be back then, or maybe, it's that I think the critical consensus on them sort of got them wrong. Anyhow, the fact that Rose devotes this much time to them (and really just says that they're fantastic because they show you the negative sides of mothering — the implication is that no one else really does, which I think is just not true, especially outside of Anglophone lit) sort of makes it seem like this book was written rather quickly, at a moment when Rose (and others) were still just SO excited about Ferrante.

Anyways. Overall, I liked it, I just wanted it to be something slightly different (in part because I read it with a student who is working on an Honors thesis with me, and thought it would be a good work of theory for her to dig into). I wonder, though, if my frustration also stems from a somewhat uneasy balance in the book between the various things it wants to do — theorize, discuss current politics, discuss literature, and do some personal reflection. These are tricky things to weave together, and I guess maybe it also requires some clear sign-posting (and marketing) about what you really intend. Or just a reader who isn't entering the text with strong expectations!

Garden by the Sea, Merce Rodoreda

I loved this book so much that I almost don't want to write about it. It was the perfect summer read. A lovely, melancholic novel — a gardener who describes the amusements and dramas of the families whose summer homes he cares for. The prose is gorgeous (the translation is excellent), the tone is perfect, I just wanted to crawl inside this book forever.