Steeped in rich imagery and keen insight, Joseph’s poems make for a fascinating journey of faith, family, and culture.
A nostalgic collection of poems and short prose about the author’s Bene Israel upbringing.
In her opening essay, entitled “What’s in My Bones,” Joseph touches upon her childhood in Kolkata, India, within India’s oldest Jewish community, the Bene Israel. Acknowledging influences from British literature, American culture, world folklore, and more, the author sets the stage for the poems and essays to come. Most focus heavily on food, whether with detailed descriptions of the meal itself (“Let us heap the sugar-sprinkled poha / tall as a pyramid, mixed with shredded / coconut, precious dried fruit and nuts, / scented with the most fragrant / of spices…”) or reflections on the dish within its larger cultural context (“Sweet, some said it was, like wafers / and honey. Some said it was eaten / plain. Some that it was baked / on hot desert stones or made / into bread. Or added to bread. / Some said, like needles / of sea salt, it crumbled”). Other poems describe a melding of worlds, such as “Mumbai Goddesses,” in which the author recounts the first time her mother and grandmother introduced the idea of Santa into her childhood home. Joseph occasionally plays with form and spacing, forcing readers’ eyes to dart across the page in poems such as “The Angels of Konkan” and “What Ravens Do." Most poems are fairly short, no more than a page and a half, with the longest, “Leaf Boat,” spanning seven pages. Joseph’s words are simple and straightforward, although readers can peel back layers of meaning upon subsequent reads. The author quietly and expertly imbues even the most basic objects with meaning and efficiently uses plenty of mouthwatering metaphors to straddle both old cultures and new: “Sugar rose-tinted coconut milk thickening / tired arms bated breath silky cubes cooling / do spirits whisper old recipes / in a new land new life new history…” Her various reflections on the past prove to be both beautiful in form and broad in scope.
Steeped in rich imagery and keen insight, Joseph’s poems make for a fascinating journey of faith, family, and culture.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 978-1952781193
Page Count: 66
Publisher: Mayapple Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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