A thoughtful and varied set of spiritual poems, essays, and stories.
Yuen reflects on the human response to hardship in this debut collection of poetry and prose.
The author writes in a preface that, over the last few years, he’s made it a point to sit down regularly and write a poem or short prose piece. The subjects of the pieces collected here are “current events, efforts to understand my own faith at a more intimate level, and reflections about whether people can still find peace and joy in life despite the things that threaten it.” The various phases of the Covid-19 pandemic provide topics for many works, but Yuen also muses on other world events, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Uvalde shooting, the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. There are essays of a more memoiristic nature, as well; “The Land of Saints and Poets,” for example, recounts an encounter Yuen had with a grieving couple at Blarney Castle during a trip to Ireland. Many pieces—the poems particularly—deal with God and Yuen’s relationship to faith. There are even a few fiction pieces, such as “Superman Does His Laundry,” which features the Man of Steel sharing his distaste for the titular chore. Batman shows up as a reference, as well: “My friend, Bruce, once asked me why I even bother at times, especially when good things don’t last forever and it’s only a matter of time before something bad happens.” To this, Superman imagines his response, which serves as a mission statement for the book: “Good is still good and bad is still bad, and those things never change. It’s all a matter of how we respond to it.”
The pieces are almost equally divided between poetry and prose. The poems are generally of an inspirational nature; they sometimes rhyme, as in “All That Remain” (“If I were to always think that my life was a tragedy / Then I would never know what it means to have victory”),but more often they read like prose essays broken into lines. The better poems are the ones rooted in the physical world, such as “The Violinist,” which imagines a musician in war-torn Ukraine, or the self-explanatory “A Poet Argues With His Coffee Over Coffee.” The prose pieces, though, generally make for better reading; when they tread into religious territory, they do so in a way that effectively incorporates aspects of Yuen’s life. In “A Meditation on Fasting,” for example, he writes about his attempts to feel closer to God by eating only one meal a day twice a week: “We are more than just biological machines hardwired with simple survival directives,” he writes in typically sensible prose. “We are spiritual beings who crave more, who need more than just physical nourishment….God wants us to be free just as He created us to be more than just flesh.” Christian readers, in particular, are likely to enjoy these faith-based writings, which strive toward a greater understanding of the world and the self. A thoughtful and varied set of spiritual poems, essays, and stories.Pub Date: June 10, 2023
ISBN: 9798218186210
Page Count: 171
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Sullivan, winner of Milkweed's 1996 National Fiction Prize for her fifth novel, this follow-up to The Cape Ann (1988), limns with discerning sympathy the struggle of a young girl to escape the terrible toll of a mother's mental illness. The story is set once again in the small town of Harvester, Minnesota; the time now is the mid-1930s, when Sally Wheeler's mother Stella begins having crying spells. She cries when Sally enters kindergarten, she cries in department stores, she cries over anything remotely sad. By the age of seven, Sally resolves that she will never cry as long as she lives. And while her mother gets worse, sinking farther and farther into a depression blamed on menopause, Sally struggles to live a normal life. Sullivan's insights into a child's desperate need for normality and acceptance give immediacy to her story. Close friends like Lark and Beverly- -characters from The Cape Ann—help, as do adults like Lark's mother Arlene Erhart and the widowed Mrs. Stillman and her shell- shocked son Hillyard. Grandparents are loving and attentive, and so is father Donald, but nothing can compensate Sally for her mother's worsening condition. Stella is eventually hospitalized; Sally and her father become the subjects of local prejudice; and, as Sally moves on to high school, these pressures take their toll: Her grades decline, she begins sleeping with boys, and she becomes involved with pathologically possessive Cole Barnstable. A drama teacher, recognizing her acting ability, helps her find some contentment, but when he dies in an accident, Sally falls apart, retreating into herself and cleaning house obsessively, although good friends do come through. Finally encouraged to realize her talents, Sally writes and stars in the ``The Kingdom of Making Sense,'' a play celebrating a place ``where everything is possible, for sadness rarely lasts beyond an hour.'' A perceptive and refreshingly unsensational account, if at times too slowly paced, of a child's determination to claim and affirm life.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-57131-011-8
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
The symbolism of Mary and child coming to liberate the immigrants may be heavy-handed, and occasionally Hussein’s language...
The first novel in English from one of the most important writers in Urdu, an Indian-born author (The Weary Generations, 1999) virtually unknown in the West. That should change.
The story is narrated alternately by Amir, an illegal immigrant in Birmingham, and by his teenaged daughter Parvin, who, having come to England at five, is struggling between the traditional expectations of her father and her desire to enter into the life of her adopted country. Adding drama are the time-shifts between Amir’s first coming to Birmingham and the present, when he is a legal homeowner but nevertheless engaged in a running battle with his wife and children, who have little idea of his struggles to give them a new and better life. It’s a conflict that brings to mind such writers as Henry Roth and Roth’s vivid images of the Lower East Side, as well as V.S. Naipaul with his tales of Indian immigrants in the Caribbean. But, while Abdullah does not suffer from such comparisons, his novel is unique in its depiction of a particular kind of suffering in what most of us consider a civilized country. Unforgettable, for example, is Amir’s memory of living in a house with eight other Pakistanis and his description of their absolute terror at being discovered by the authorities. One of the men finds a lover named Mary, who gets pregnant and later becomes the catalyst for a violent struggle that will break up the group home and force Amir and the others out on their own. After much difficulty, Amir becomes a British citizen, gets a job at the post office, and buys his own home. His dreams are realized, yet he doesn’t do nearly so well with his wife, daughter or son, all in different ways rejecting their father and the life he has chosen for them.
The symbolism of Mary and child coming to liberate the immigrants may be heavy-handed, and occasionally Hussein’s language can be awkward. But altogether Émigré Journeys is a remarkable performance.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-85242-638-1
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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