A review by nomadjg
Rolling the R's by R. Zamora Linmark

4.0

We read this for my class in Asian American literature and one of my classmates, a poet from his community, brought the author in for her oral presentation about the book. He was really cool and I was kind of amazed at how well he understood what he did with the book. Few authors seem to admit to it. The book was at times a harsh read because of the narration of the sexual experience of 10 year olds, but he showed their agency and also explained that he was trying to show how fast they were forced to grow up. He mentioned that one might think of Edgar as a bakla Lolita which really made sense to me. In the novella, I loved the answers he gave to narrative questions posed in one chapter poetically in the next chapter. His writing of pidgin was beautiful and he had help with it because he doesn't speak it - an amazing revelation. Also, he dealt with the 70's and cartography/urban planning in a wonderful way. I was kind of nostalgic for 5th grade and 1979.