brice_mo's reviews
450 reviews

Thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McNeel Publishing for the ARC!

F.S. Yousaf’s Prayers of My Youth is a lovely, warm, and wide-eyed collection of devotional poems.

Most of these pieces revolve around the speaker’s relationship to the Divine, though a few wade into romantic love. Regardless of the subject matter, every poem feels defined by a courageous and hard-won tenderness.

Instead of the anguish that dictates many spiritual poems, Yousaf shares a faith that allows him to write soft and simple poems. They carry the quietude of someone reading over you as you rub the sleep from your eyes.

That isn’t to say that this is a one-note collection.

There are moments of life’s ugliness that break through, as seen in “Devastation—,“ but they serve to deepen the book’s spirituality. We can feel the speaker making a conscious decision to pursue abstraction when life resists it.

In the end, Prayers of My Youth feels like a little book with a muscular humility—the kind that allows for worship.

Thanks to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC!

It’s hard to be a body, but why does matter matter?

Dianna E. Andersons’s Body Phobia is a thoughtful and full-bodied primer on the American fear of embodiment, offering a unique look at the ways it is rooted in a legacy of Protestantism.

This is a deeply personal book, and Anderson excels at infusing a moving transparency into their conversation with scholarship. They introduce so many wonderful scholars like Anthea Butler and Sami Schalk, but they mediate every heady concept through the lens of their personal experience. We always see how these issues impact real lives. Dualism means nothing until readers understand how it caused the author’s panic attacks. This approach makes it a perfect book for people who might bristle at the density of queer theory or disability studies.

Without a a doubt, the aforementioned religious focus is the book’s defining quality. I suspect some readers will be a bit befuddled by how often Anderson addresses religion, whereas others will wonder why the book doesn’t center exclusively around it. The references to people like John Piper always feel like an unexpected interruption, but I think that’s appropriate. It highlights the subtle pervasiveness of religious thought in American culture.

When Anderson identifies parallels between criminalization of disability and the way it’s associated with original sin, it feels novel. When they draw attention to the devastating impact of framing weight as a marker of holiness, it’s resonant. When they point out how evangelicals view children as “tools in the broader culture war,” it’s an urgent call to awareness.

These points feel like interruptions precisely because they are such “minor,” seemingly innocuous beliefs; that is why the consequences are so dire.

Anderson’s arguments are compelling, but what’s even more remarkable is the grace and compassion with which they articulate them. They write with wisdom and seem to consciously avoid bitterness, which allows them to make substantial, pointed critiques in a way that could be received by even the most conservative readers.

While most of the book is excellent, the chapters that intersect most directly with Anderson’s own life are easily the strongest. For example, their explorations of transphobia and fatphobia fare better than the chapters on bodyminds under capitalism or racialization. These topics are still addressed thoughtfully and thoroughly, but they struggle ever so slightly with a wandering scope.

Regardless, Body Phobia is an exceptional book for readers who are just beginning to consider what it means to be a bodymind in space, and I’m grateful to Dianna Anderson for their work here.

Thanks to NetGalley & Broadleaf Press for the ARC!

Amanda Tyler’s How to End Christian Nationalism cannot live up to the impossible expectations of its title, but it does feel like a meaningful addition to an ongoing conversation.

By this point, there are countless books on Christian Nationalism, but few of them are as academically robust as this one. It builds on Anthea Butler’s White Evangelical Racism, and it is very thoughtful about the sources it draws from. I appreciate Tyler’s numerous interviews, and they complicate the discussion purposefully, ultimately making the book’s constituent chapters stronger than the project as a whole.

Unfortunately, I suspect Tyler’s background will deter the readers most in need of her message. A Georgetown grad? A “woman preacher”? An “unequally yoked” marriage? These arbitrary judgments will be dealbreakers for too many readers, and I think they highlight a problem inherent in the book:

The premise of Christian nationalism is that any sort of pluralism is wrong, so diversity in thought is a threat.

What Tyler frames as sociological exploration will be received as spiritual explosion, which almost makes me wish she were more aggressive in her theological critiques. Many of her well-intentioned best practices just feel toothless.

It’s not enough for the author to write that the constitution hasn’t aged well when Christians model their reading of it on notions of biblical inerrancy. Similarly, I would argue that one can’t speak truth to power when power is viewed as truth—when there’s a tacitly Calvinist understanding that social capital is karmic confirmation of God’s favor. When Donald Trump announces that Christians will only need to vote “one more time,” it’s interpreted as the ushering in of God’s kingdom rather than the combustible end of the American experiment. These are problems of theological origin.

Likewise, the sociological explanation of Christian bigotry feels inadequate; it isn’t simply that people act out of fear. Many Christians justify their cruelty through an apocalyptic view of salvation—better for us to burn you now so you don’t burn later. Therefore, their gleeful willingness to minoritize people into oblivion follows the sickly logic of erasure—put your identity in Christ or have your identity removed. It’s not a matter of misplaced hope; it’s a theological non-negotiable.

As a result, Tyler’s solution—collective action—seems a little optimistic for a faith tradition that has been so culturally mediated through individualism. When the author shares a necessary reflection on how this model originates in racial liberation, it feels out of place, not due to authorial weakness, but because individualistic, white supremacy eclipses alternative theological readings.

Ultimately, the challenge with the book is that Amanda Tyler implicitly calls for a radical reformulation of theology without realizing it—what is a simple ask to her will be an unacceptable compromise to many people.

If this sounds like I hate the book, I don’t; I just think it’s telling—and sad—that the interviewees sound more like heretics than saints in the context of American religious discourse. This is not a fringe issue. Like all books on the subject, much of How to End Christian Nationalism’s success is the nuance it lends to the anger and grief people should feel about religious violence. 

It can’t adequately imagine a way out, but maybe it can help people begin to work their way through.

Thanks to NetGalley and Querencia Press for the ARC!

Melissa Eleftherion’s gutter rainbows is a tricky collection—it’s a thoughtful response to traumatic experiences, but the speaker's moments of lucid catharsis rarely reach readers.

Much of the book revolves around objectification and abuse, and there are moments that are really effective. “GUTTER FLOWER” is an appropriately sour depiction of the way girls are sexualized from an early age—each phrase upending the one that came before. Similarly, “the interiority of female misogyny” dances between specificity and abstraction in a way that accentuates the pain of its subject matter.

Unfortunately, the nature of the topic demands that the poet write too obtusely at times, so large parts of the collection feel withholding to the point of amorphousness. One can sense that the act of writing offered release, but the act of reading almost does the opposite—it captures something alternately unclear or self-loathing. There’s a poem called “Self-Portrait as Used Condom Riding the Wonder Wheel,” and your gut reaction to that title is probably a good gauge for how well you’ll be able to handle the book.

Despite those critiques, I think the book’s final third—"cleavage”—is really inspired. In this section, the speaker parallels their life with iconography derived from a variety of minerals. It’s a rhetorical device that feels generative and never gimmicky, and Eleftherion unfolds it in a way that is sure to reward re-reads as we get closer to the speaker’s core. 

Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the ARC!

Kwame Dawes’s Sturge Town is a collection of sturdy but sparse poems that feels hampered by its length.

Poetry is subjective, so take these critiques with a fistful of salt.

I think good poems feel like watching a skilled dancer—the years of rehearsal are so effective that they are never felt. Every gesture feels birthed in the moment it appears, and the beauty and mystery of the art is the feeling that it could never be witnessed again.

Sturge Town doesn’t feel that way to me.

Although these poems are very competently written, they feel mechanically self-conscious, like seeing a dancer silently keep time or strain to hit their mark. Much of this seems rooted in the book’s length, which causes the specific dimensions of each poem to gradually lose their shape. It’s a shame because Dawes has clearly put so much intention and care into these pieces—it’s just that his voice becomes indistinct in such an expansive volume.

Ultimately, I found myself wanting to see the poet take more risks. His writing feels very traditional—one might say archaic—and, for me, it curbs any potential momentum. Kwame Dawes displays a surgical steadiness, but the excitement of poetry is that sometimes it’s okay to let your hand slip.

Thanks to NetGalley and Haymarket Books for the ARC!

We the Gathered Heat is an incredibly curated anthology from AAPI poets, sustained by the call-and-response energy of a great open mic night.

Edited by Franny Choi, Bao Phi, No’u Revilla, and Terisa Siagatonu, the book feels substantive without ever feeling bloated. With this many voices, the poems are unburdened by any need to “accomplish” anything; they are able to pursue themes instead of issues.

That’s not an indictment on other poetry collections, but it is a testament to the freedom afforded by this form. The vast range of personal experiences never reads as trope—Oh, this is the food poem. Yes, here’s the poem about micro-aggressions.Instead, when these topics appear, alongside all of their corresponding joys and griefs and complexities, they are situated in individual experience and secured in a community of other poems. Reading We the Gathered Heatfeels like hearing a great playlist for the first time—it’s full of surprises that feel intuitive in hindsight, and it will have people writing down all the names of artists they want to look up (Note to self: read more from Na Mee and Gabrielle Langkilde). I think part of the success in creating this vibe is rooted in the editorial decision to genuinely encompass AAPI writers—not simply East Asians or Asian-Americans. 

This is a book about definitional expansion, not reductionism.

In the book’s opening, the editors reckon with the impossibility of consolidating so many experiences under the simplistic label of AAPI, and this is another place where the anthology’s form shines. Most of these poems are written with orality in mind, and they are meant to be performed and shared in their immediacy. There’s a boisterousness that makes the definitional nuances of “AAPI authorship” feel like a discussion for another time. 

For now, it’s enough to have so many people gathered for a momentary, meaningful community.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!

Mosab Abu Toha’s Forest of Noise is a blunt collection of documentary poetry that follows the ongoing violence in Gaza from its epicenter.

It’s a complicated project.

Poetry about violence often seems like an exercise in futility because bloodshed makes the world contract; a poem should do the opposite. In other words, it can feel like trying to turn something destructive into something generative, and the result can read as artifice. Thankfully, that isn’t the case here.

Instead, the poet uses the futility of the form to bring readers close to understanding.

Visual documentary tends to focus on loss of life, but Mosab Abu Toha uses poetry to focus on a loss of living. Maybe a better way to say it is that he foregrounds the lives unlived, rather than simply depicting death. For example, we read about cemeteries that have been destroyed, resulting in not only present destruction, but also the erasure of the past and a choking of the future—a kind of death after death. For readers who are unable to consume the barrage of violent photographs or videos online without feeling distanced—a dulling of the senses—Forest of Noise offers a thoughtful alternative.

These poems wearily contort themselves into comprehensible shapes, constrained by the violence surrounding and penetrating them. Almost every line lumbers bluntly into place, which feels like the only way they could possibly exist. They are conscious decisions to reorder the world’s ruptured syntax.

There’s little doubt that this is an excellent collection.

That said, while reading, I personally struggled with the mediation afforded by the poetic form. As these poems pile up, their specificity is slowly replaced with a kind of anonymity. In a way, this could be seen as a testament to the impact of violence—it gradually dehumanizes and detaches—but that seems antithetical to the book's apparent intention to memorialize. I can imagine some readers encountering these as “powerful” poems and immediately moving on with their lives, but perhaps that’s just a challenge implicit in the form.

Regardless, this collection is bitterly needed, and I admire Mosab Abu Toha’s courage and belief that poetry can mean something in the face of genocide.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!

Conceived as a partner piece to the late Kelly Caldwell’s Letters to Forget, Cass Donish’s Your Dazzling Death is an extended reflection on grief.

If readers choose to read both books (which feels almost necessary), I recommend starting with Letters to Forgetbecause Donish’s collection offers the catharsis that book aches for. The poet dwells in sorrow, but they seem animated by the power of naming it. Where Caldwell’s book is often elusive and bleak, Your Dazzling Death is specific and—surprisingly—hopeful.

Let me explain—

I noted in my review for Letters to Forget that many of those poems wrestle with a world where there is no space for Caldwell, but Donish tenderly creates that space here. That alone feels like an act of hope. These are intensely imagistic and material poems, and they read like an open-armed embrace of Caldwell and all of her pain. They imagine a world with room enough for their love.

I struggle to find a good way to describe the book, but the first word that comes to mind is “symphonic.” The speaker often writes with a euphoric bombast, and it feels like such a conscious response to the self-erasing insularity of Caldwell’s book. These poems are not an elegy—they are a monument. 

They are evidence that grief can expand our capacity for love rather than shrink it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!

Replacing the urgency of its predecessor with quiet tenderness, Find Me as the Creature I Am sees Emily Jungmin Yoon exploring what it means to be creaturely.

Upon a first read, these poems might strike readers as a little scruffier and scrappier than Yoon’s other work. A Cruelty Special to Our Species is so rooted in a particular cultural and historical experience that the shift to universality here might be viewed as simplistic.

However, with a little attention—and this is all the speaker asks for—readers are invited to consider where they fit into their ecosystem. There are still themes surrounding race and embodiment at play in this book, but they are re-contextualized through the lens of a world bigger than humanity. We read about the contrast between Frozen IIpromoting ecological care while its merchandise chokes the ocean, and we encounter the complicated ambiguities of why some animals end their lives when their partners die.

Despite the heaviness of some of the subject matter, this book feels like the relieved recognition that poetry isn’t everything. In “I leave Asia and become Asian”, the speaker follows a complex reflection on race by noting that she is “working on her life” instead of another poetry collection. The statement feels like the origin of many of these pieces, particularly in the way they favor a comfortable immediacy instead of a mechanistic, pre-meditated precision.

In other words, they feel creaturely.

Many of these poems feel like an argument for unburdened and unquestioned love—an animal reflexivity and disinterest in psychological scrutiny. They are quiet I love yous in the face of ecological uncertainty. 

The world might end; it might not. Either way, the speaker will be with her loved ones.

Thanks to NetGalley & University of Pittsburgh Press for the ARC!

Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s Obligations to the Wounded is a crackling collection of short stories about Zambian women, defined by an impressively light touch for such heavy themes.

These stories focus on characters who are surrounded by people who feel no obligation to care. Whether it’s a daughter navigating the fractures of her own family history through her mother’s dementia or a girl exploring her gender identity in the wake of her father’s death, these are stories of cultural constraints and the way they are navigated.

Obviously, there is some really dark subject matter, but I think it’s telling that the book’s title refers to “the wounded,” not “the victims.” Kalimamukwento treats her characters with such care, ensuring that that while they may be injured, they are never objects—these stories are told vibrantly but never graphically. The author’s writing style feels richly lived-in, and she has an amazing ability to situate characters believably in history and culture, whether we’re reading about a young, queer girl forced into polygamous marriage, lifelong favoritism toward sons, or impending deportation from the United States.

Personally, I think the first half of the book feels more developed than the latter half, but there are some notable exceptions—“#BaileyLies” is an incredible online back-and-forth between a Zambian journalist and a white, opportunistic memoirist who writes exactly the kind of exploitative, “humanitarian” book you would expect. It’s difficult to write believably about online discourse because it’s already such a heightened space, but Kalimamukwento does so with a steady hand, and this piece is a great example of how she is able to craft thematically knotty stories that never feel dense or clumsily blunt. This is such a meaningfully intentional book.

All in all, Obligations to the Wounded is excellent, and I look forward to reading The Mourning Bird as soon as I get a chance.