Anu Recommends #16
One (Dominican-American) author, three books, and one new release
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
How is April treating everyone? My reading is still going pretty slow, if I’m honest. I started reading Her Lost Words (from last Sunday’s newsletter) and it was going well a few chapters in but the more I read, the more I wasn’t feeling a book like that at this moment. So I’ve put it aside for now. I might pick it up later in the year; I might not.
Up until a few years ago, I’d have wrestled with not finishing a book (whether temporarily or permanently) and would have wanted to see it through even if I wasn’t enjoying it, even if I had to speed-read it. These days? Life’s too short to read a book you aren’t enjoying. Now I DNF (did not finish) without guilt; trusting my gut instinct honed over the years to tell me if it’s a ‘see you later/I’m not in the right time/place/frame of mind’ or a ‘see you never/it’s just not my type of book’. It’s never let me down so far—and I’m a strong believer in books finding you at the right time.
Talk to me about your thoughts on all of this, and also about if your reading habits have changed over the years; many of mine certainly have!
Before we get into the recommendations part of today, here are a few publishing updates posts that have me excited 😍
And now, onto the main course, so to speak.
A women-centric Dominican-American family saga
Any Elizabeth Acevedo fans among the readers of the Storyteller?
I encountered her work during the early pandemic with With the Fire On High, her first young-adult prose novel; later devoured both of her young-adult novels in verse—Clap When You Land, and her debut, Poet X, in that order. So I am thrilled to be given the chance to read her debut adult novel, Family Lore in advance of its August publication (thank you Netgalley and Ecco!).
Here is what Acevedo had to say about it on her Instagram:
“This novel has been humming underneath my skin for close to a decade and I’m delighted to share it with the world. Of all the places that could have helped usher it into being, it feels auspicious the manuscript landed in the careful hands of Ecco and my publishing family at HarperCollins. ¡Prepárense! This book is going from soft hum to full-throated chorus.”
And this is the publisher’s blurb.
From bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.
But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband’s infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor’s wake motivates this driven woman to solve her sibling’s problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, and often the forgotten one, but she’s decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.
And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi is reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; Ona is married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it’s worth it to keep trying—to have a child, and the anthropology research that’s begun to feel lackluster.
Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
Elizabeth Acevedo is someone I admire a lot as a writer, a poet, a person, and I’m planning a spotlight Storyteller issue about her for later in the year, so stay tuned!
Till then, here are my recommendations for each of her three books that I’ve read and loved so far.
A magic realism infused coming of age narrative
Afro-Latinx high-school senior Emoni Santiago has a two-year-old daughter to care for and an abuela whom she helps with the household. The only time she can let go is in the kitchen where she has special talent, which is why the new culinary arts class at school and its spring trip to Spain are perfect for her. But she doesn't have the time or money and needs to play by the rules she has set for herself. Or does she?
Shades of magic realism and a rhythmic writing style add extra layers to this slow, exploratory story of a teen having to make tough decisions but, through them, delightfully coming of age. This was rich in detail, sensory, and the teen experience and struggles felt thoroughly authentic and wide-ranging. The characters, even the supporting ones, were well developed (I particularly loved her Buela!). This was a wonderful Own Voices tale that discussed culture, language, and identity with nuance.
One thing I will say though: don't read this on an empty stomach or even if you're even slightly peckish. It will make you wish you had something to eat at that moment.
Two half-sisters, one devastating family secret
“How can you lose an entire person, only to gain a part of them back in someone entirely new?”
Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic with her curandera Tia whom she assists outside of school. She's working towards joining her father in New York City so she can study pre-med at Columbia.
Yahaira Rios lives in New York City. Queer, former chess champion, recently burdened with a secret about her father that has burrowed into her very core, yet carrying on being her parents' “good” child.
Born months apart, now almost sixteen years old, neither knows about the other. But, then, in a cruel yank of fate, their father's plane, on its way to the island to bring him home for his annual summer visit, crashes in the ocean. Even as they are grappling with grief and loss and the wrenching shift in their worlds—even as the rest, out there, and life in general continues as normal, they learn of the other's existence.
“Did she share in his confidences? While the whole while he lied to me? Or is she the only one who would understand my heart right now? If I find her, would I find a breathing piece of myself I had not known was missing?”
How do you contend with the sharp truths of the secrets harboured by a complex man you knew and loved only as Papi? How do you resolve the tangled feelings bubbling and simmering inside of you when the one person you want to fling them at is gone? How do you, knowing that even those we love most contain multitudes of not always good or perfect, come to terms with, forgive, and continue to love them, honour their memories without it tainting them?
A beautiful, moving, eventually hopeful, coming of age narrative of two grieving sisters as they navigate the complexities of their shared blood and familial heritage to find common ground and their respective, imperfect resolutions.
The only quibbles I have is that, though the girls have distinct identities, their voices sometimes sounded too similar, and I'd have liked more of their interactions.
This was my first novel in verse and now I cannot wait to get to the author's Poet X.
Daughter, twin, teen, curvy, Dominican, secret poet
“Late into the night I write and the pages of my notebook swell from all the words I've pressed into them.
It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.”
Xiomara Batista, whose name means one who is ready for war, is many things but the only element she has any control over is the last. She furiously and compulsively dresses her thoughts in the clothing of poems (“...isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark”) scribbled into her journal because it's the only place that seems to have any space for her words, or her as she is, not who her parents or the world wants her to be. Poetry is the only way she can experience small moments of soft, temporarily changing her world as she set her words down on the paper.
All she yearns for is to be heard. To be allowed to be who she is. To be respected for her choices. To be allowed to question the world and figure out her place in it on her terms—her dreams, her sexuality, her beliefs away from her oppressively religious Mami. To walk down the street without getting grabbed or catcalled. To love a boy without being labeled cuero. To write poetry and share it with the world.
“It's about any of the words that bring us together and how we can form a home in them.”
Elizabeth Acevedo's debut offering of a young Harlem girl discovering slam poetry against the backdrop of her bildungsroman is powerful and addictive and wrenching. If I wasn't already a fan of her work from Clap When You Land and With the Fire On High, this novel-in-verse would take care of that.
That’s all for today. Let me know what you’re reading, and whether I’ve managed to interest you in this brilliant author’s work 😉
As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue :) Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.
Take care and see you next week!
Anu
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Thanks Anu, a great read as usual.
Re: Magic Realism, I've really enjoyed Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years Of Solitude), and Isabelle Allende (The House Of Spirits), but then falling into the Haruki Murakami (though the brilliant A Wind Up Bird Chronicles) and devouring all is books.
It's a never ending story getting into good books. Thanks for the head ups about books I'd probably not come across otherwise :)