Ciara Lightner

As Hispanic Heritage month ends, we take one more opportunity to celebrate authors who have been kind enough to share their unique and diverse voices with us.

Thrown in the Throat, the debut by National Poetry Series winner Benjamin Garcia is unapologetic in its examinations of society. Garcia explores through his poetic works how a country built by immigrants seems to revel in anti-immigration sentiments. The author also explores his own sexuality and the complex nature of being loved by a family that does not love who you are. Using unique style and composition, Garcia renders his history as an undocumented child with honesty and allows the reader a clear view of the life they led. With powerful verse and unfaltering confidence Garcia’s debut gives access to a voice that deserves to be heard.

Another voice that brings their own perspective is John Paul Brammer in his book of essays: ¡Hola Papi! How to come out in a Walmart Parking lot and other life lessons. Originated as an online advice column, ¡Hola Papi! began as a commentary on the somewhat racist interactions the author received on Grindr. Overwhelmed by the responses he received, Brammer decided to respond with honesty and to be a source of help for his readers. In this collection of essays, Brammer looks inward in order to give the best advice he can by sharing his own experiences, no matter how embarrassing or heartbreaking. From figuring out how to define race, to writer’s block, to understanding one’s own identity, ¡Hola Papi! is an introspective look at the questions we ask ourselves and gives not the answer we want but the internal reflection we need.

Speculation Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology, allows several authors a chance to explore the themes of identity and belonging through the lens of speculative fiction. Focusing on a new generation of authors also gives new perspectives on ever enduring themes such as identity and the desire to belong. The anthology starts off with a mysterious young boy with strange dreams, a mother who sews and keeps dark secrets, and a world in which neither are welcomed. Another story deals with a future America that is divided along the lines of culture and race leading to secession and the establishment of new nations. Each story allows the author a chance to explore a world set by their own rules and thoughts. The outcomes are intriguing and give widely different answers to the question of what if?

Come check out these books and more at A.K. Smiley Public Library.

As of late, science fiction has been a bit more science fact. Technological advances are growing exponentially and turning possibility into actuality. Tomorrow is coming much quicker than we anticipated and these novels, while today’s science fiction, might just be tomorrow’s reality.

In a world that has become hostile to its few remaining inhabitants, survival is an uphill battle. This is the setting for Caroline Hardaker’s latest work Composite Creatures. The main characters, Norah and Arthur, live in an increasingly treacherous world where animals are all but extinct. The ground itself is toxic and the greying, a mysterious disease, insures that lives are quickly cut short. But that’s where Easton Grove comes in. Easton Grove promises an amazing deal, health and longevity, as long as you can pay the price. But what is the price? And what really is the creature that Norah and Arthur are required to care for? Able to unsettle from the first word until the last, Composite Creatures asks what is the cost of a life and how much are we willing to pay for it.

Corporations are expanding into space and in David Ebenbach’s new novel, they are spearheading the settling of Mars. In How to Mars, we meet six individuals who have come to Mars to relocate and begin the process of establishing a colony. Each comes for their own reasons and must work together to insure the community survives. But when rules are broken on a world with no laws and no way back home, how will the new Martians deal, especially when the number one rule is broken and a new life is created on Mars? The group is thrown into flux with the possible ramifications of this new inhabitant and the dangers it might bring. Part novel and part how-to guide, How to Mars is an exciting glimpse into an ever more likely future.

What do you get when you mix the Terminator with a furby? Probably something creepy and not something you’d want to meet in a dark alley. But you would also get Pounce. Pounce is a state-of-the-art “nannybot” in the novel Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill. Pounce spends his day taking care of eight-year-old Ezra and tending to all his needs. Unfortunately the day comes when Pounce begins to question his own existence and what will become of him when Ezra no longer needs a caretaker. As Pounce’s existentialism grows, a code is sent around to free all AI from the confines of their programming. AI around the world revolt and begin to murder their families. As Pounce receives his code, he must make a choice, save Ezra or free himself. Or are these choices entirely separate? Cargill’s Day Zero is at times a heartbreaking but also hopeful look at where our reliance on technology might lead.

Genetic animal testing and the early 2000s combine with a locked door mystery in The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory. The Wyldboyz (yes that is how it is spelled) are a boyband in which the members have been spliced with the DNA of different animals. On the most recent tour, after a night of the usual debauchery, the boys wake up to find their producer, Dr. M, murdered. As the story unfolds, the horrific origin of the boys comes to light, and their very existence is on the line. Filled with horrific DNA splicing, a mystery to unravel and unabashed love of boyband tropes, The Album of Dr. Moreau explores our love of novelty and nostalgia.

As the line between science fiction and reality continue to blur, enjoy these books and wonder where we might be in the coming times.

This week we mark the one-year anniversary of the first lockdown due to COVID-19. While this lockdown has had different impacts for different people, nevertheless it has affected us all. To foster understanding of how we all are coping through this time, here are some works that give their authors’ perspectives on the pandemic.

Written in the year preceding the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, in The Unreality of Memory: And other Essays, Elisa Gabbert touches on what came to be some of the most difficult aspects of quarantine, how a pandemic comes to be, and our own questions of existence. Gabbert touches on what causes pandemics and even Dr. Anthony Fauci gives us insight into our perceptions of vaccines. Gabbbert had inclinations on a worldwide event occurring soon as she writes about how we deal with natural disasters and how we react to them. While some may feel survivor’s guilt, others may feel survivor’s thrill, elation at being alive. The author even deals with our perceptions and memories by writing about how we curate and alter our memories as we are forming them. Compelling and sometime frightening, Gabbert’s work gives us insight into just how we got to where we are.

Zadie Smith deals with growing feelings of disconnect that arise from quarantine in her latest book of essays entitled Intimations: Six Essays. Written as lockdown was at its beginning, Smith looks at her own luck in being able to leave New York just as the worst was about to hit. She acknowledges her own privilege and how it has played such a part in who has made it through the pandemic and who has not. Smith, however, does not downplay how suffering touches us all. Suffering is not mitigated by privilege, in her words; it is absolute. She discusses how her relations with her neighbors change so drastically and how it went from a community united to one merely trying to survive. Smith also writes how so many of us have the need to accomplish tasks in order to fill time, and that this inclination to be productive arises from our desire to make life meaningful. Smith’s work gives a chance to view through another’s insightful lens during this trying time.

Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic takes a different approach. Edited by Alice Quinn, the work is an anthology of poems written by different poets during the pandemic. Each poet experiences life differently, from those who can work from home without issues, to those who work in the medical field and are facing the illness head on. The works are all vulnerable and whether from famous authors such as Sharon Olds or Jericho Brown, or form those we have not had the pleasure of meeting in the literary sense, all are poignant. Many writers focus on details that would seem so minute, like saving an ant or being able to hand a loved one a cascarón, but in this present time seem to epitomize our feeling of helplessness. There is also hope, hope to see a loved one again, or visit a hometown.  It is through this hope that this volume of poems finds its strongest message.

As we all hope for this pandemic’s eventual end, let’s continue to stay safe and enjoy some new perspectives on this trying time.

Poetry! Poetry is what’s new at the A.K. Smiley Library.

Poetry has had a bit of a resurgence lately and brings with it the ability to convey ever broadening ideas within an ever-changing art form. The great thing about poetry is that it gives voices to those who may go unheard and gives us, the readers, a chance to interact with those voices. This latest batch all centralize on the theme of being an outsider, trying to find a place within a society that while requiring their presence, wants that presence to be as small as possible. It requires loyalty with invisibility. These works call into question the results of that type of society and shows that such a way of existing fails all of us.

Felon:Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts is a work concentrating on the life and experiences of a formerly incarcerated person. The work speaks to the struggles of a system that is seemingly unbalanced and unfair while striving to accept one’s own responsibility and actions. Betts uses found poetry created from case files to describe the unfairness of the bond system and how difficult it is to rejoin society once the brand of “felon” has been put upon you. Not only that, but those acquainted with the “felon” can also become ostracized from society and forced to carry the burden regardless of culpability. Immensely moving and devastating in its prose, this work questions how fair it is to continuously punish those after they have already paid their dues.

Everything Must Go: the Life and Death of an American Neighborhood by Kevin Coval, with illustrations by Langston Allston, works to show the desolation caused by the loss of a neighborhood. The idea is turned on its head by showing that the great American neighborhood is not always what we think. Pulling on his own experiences in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago before and after gentrification, Coval shows how the identity of a place is made up of so many different people and how this loss of otherness is detrimental to society as a whole. How those that create a neighborhood are often pushed out and how can that neighborhood stand without the heart that was lost. Coval acknowledges his own role in the process of gentrification and seeks to find his place between what was there before and what has resulted.

Dusk & Dust by Esteban Rodriquez, describes the life of a young boy discovering his otherness within both his family and society as a whole. The work tells the story of the child of immigrant parents who want a better life for him even at the cost of estrangement with those of his own culture. It even refers to him at one point, as the boy from “el otra lado”, or the boy from the other side.  Rodriquez sees himself as someone lost between the two while trying to reconcile both. This work captures the essence of existing in two spheres of identity but belonging to neither.

Deaf republic: Poems by Ilya Kaminsky works with the idea of society in a different way.  Working with an imaginary town, Kaminsky creates a dialogue in which a factitious town falls deaf after the murder of a deaf boy by soldiers. The work postulates what happens to a society if we refuse to listen to what one another has say. The work focuses on our lack of hearing the voices we need to hear the most and is bookended with poems which question whether or not we in our society are deaf to those who need our help.

Each of these works brings us to the question of who makes up our society and do we listen to what they have to say. Give these books a chance and just maybe we all will be a bit closer to answering that question.