Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016 $15.95 Wendy C. Ortiz’s Bruja is a collection of dream vignettes that pull us into a moment of life that is often unseen, and even more so, unspoken. Each dream scene is written in language that is sharp, but not simple, as it shakes us awake to …
A Sky the Color of Chaos: Based on the True Story of My Haitian Childhood by M.J. Fièvre Beating Windward Press, 2014 $20.00 “Memory is mutable,” M.J. Fièvre writes of her wealthy childhood outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, during the President Duvalier’s regime. While Jessica (the name she goes by in the memoir) and her sister, …
The Benedictines by Rachel May Alleyway Books, 2016 $16.00 Anne James is a thirty-year-old Visiting Artist at Saint Christopher’s, a Benedictine Catholic boarding school in rural Maine. Although she had a Catholic upbringing, Anne can’t relate to the monks who run the school: “They are a mystery, even to the dogs.” She sees their long dark …
Each Vagabond By Name by Margo Orlando Littell University of New Orleans Press, 2016 $15.95 From a distance, it seems the people of Shelk—a sleepy, working-class mountain town—live ordinary lives. They have ordinary jobs, ordinary homes, and ordinary families. In Each Vagabond By Name, the characters are content with the ordinary until it is disrupted …