Reviews with content warning for Racism - Call Us What We Carry

Oh yeah, this book is goonna go down in history for, at the very least, almost perfectly capturing the feelings we had during the moments we lived through between November 2019 and August 2021. I'm always a sucker for time travel in movies and tv, but mixing the distant past with the present? More than that, using the direct words of the past as if they were said in the present?! Future historians, it's all here. It's all there. It's all real. It made me uncomfortable a couple times but that's because the wound is still fresh. As said in some of the poems, it's still ongoing. I'm sure I'll read this again in 10 20 30 60 years with a familiar hindsight and vague rememberance, and probably feel as sick to my stomach as I feel now. But, not a bad sick. A sad sick. Mourning sickness. We'll never not mourn, even if we forget. But with this book at least a part of us will always remember.

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aargot1's review against another edition

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5.0

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thereadingnurse2021's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

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cademia's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.75

At times a little cheesy and Tumblr-poetryesque, but some really beautiful poems as well. Worth the read for the cool formatting alone.

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kelseyr713's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

3.0

Beautiful and playful use of language and form. This won’t be what everyone thinks of when picturing a book of poetry, but I really appreciated the experimentation throughout. I also found it a bit repetitive in terms of how many poems focused on COVID.

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rosalind's review against another edition

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hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

1.5

I saw a review on Goodreads where someone called this collection ‘unbearably didactic,’ and that about sums it up for me. I can always respect someone who loves language and likes to play with words, but these linguistic games don’t always bequeath some revelatory truth. Sometimes it’s just a spoonerism, babes.

Also, for the love of Lady Gaga’s dove brooch, Amanda, please put yourself on an alliteration ban. Sometimes stylistic selections succeed, but soon a surplus can sully the savour and royally f*** off your reader. Sorry.

There are some really lovely moments in this collection, but ultimately comes across as a monopolisation on a moment, which is fine, get that dollar. I wish AG so well, and I hope her craft flourishes. But for my taste, a lot of ‘Call Us What We Carry’ should have stayed in drafts. Like, a lot.

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maple_dove's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

4.0

The "Spanish" influenza did not originate in Spain. In fact, the first recorded case was in the United States--in Kansas on March 9, 1918 (bewareth March). But because Spain was neutral in World War I, it did not censor reports of the disease to the public. (pg. 81)

To tell the truth, then, is to risk being remembered by its fiction. Countless countries laid blame to one another. What the US called the Spanish influenza, Spain called the French flu, or Naples Soldier. What Germans dubbed the Russian Pest, the Russians called the Chinese flu. (pg. 81-82)

It's said that ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance is this: a vine hat sneaks up a tree, killing not by poison, but by blocking out its light. (pg. 82)

The Tribune reporter Henry M. Hyde wrote that Black people "are compelled to live crowded in dark and unsanitary room; they are surrounded by constant temptations in the way of widespread saloons and other worse resorts." (pg. 83-84)

The oppressor will always say the oppressed want their overcrowded cage, cozy & comforting as it is; the master will claim that the slaves' chains were understood, good, all right, okay--that is to say, not chains at all. (pg. 84)

We politely asked the white lady behind us
If she could please take the next lift
To continue social distancing.
Her face flared up like a cross in the night.
Are you kidding me? she yelled,
Like we'd just declared
Elevators for us only
Or Yous must enter from the back
Or We have the right to refuse
Humanity to anyone.
Suddenly it struck us:

Why it's so pertubing for privileged groups to follow restrictions of place & personhood.
Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power has shackled on the rest of us.

It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior. (Pg. 143-144)

Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.

To be kept to the edges of existence is the Inheritance of the marginalized. (Pg. 145)

For what does the Karen carry but her dwindling power, dying and desperate? Dangerous & dangling like a gun hung from a tongue? (Pg. 145)

There is more than one hue of haunting.
We want to believe that
What we care for can keep.
We want to believe.
The truth is, we are one nation, under ghosts.
The truth is, we are one nation, under fraud.
Tell us, honestly:
Will we ever be who we say. (pg. 166-167)

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