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A review by katsbooks
Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed: 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora by Saraciea J. Fennell
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Update: April 2023
“...because sometimes we are from where we were least dead and not where we were born.”
“Invisibility can be suffocating. Invisibility can be your only refuge. Like every refuge, invisibility can be taken away. The consequence of being seen is that you're seen.”
“I wish they could understand what I know—willful ignorance is violent.”
My thoughts on this essay collection are much the same as they were last year when I read it. I loved the essays by Elizabeth Acevedo , Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Jasmine Mendez. However, I also really connected to the story by Julian Randall this time around, as well. I think these voices are so important to make space for and I'm really happy I got to share this with my book club. A lot of the things they talked about are really timely even two years after its publication. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in #ownvoices and the experiences of Latine and Afro-Latine people. I genuinely appreciated how quite a few of the essays in this selection focused on the Afro-Latine diaspora. Too many books don't focus on the intersectionality of a single human and several of the essays did just that.
This time around, I was more cognizant of the writing of some of the essays. It's hard to rate anyone's life but the writing for a couple of the essays just felll a little flat and made them a little harder to get through. However, I still appreciated the thoughts that they brought to the table.
Ultimately, I absolutely recommend this essay collection. As someone who isn't normally a fan of essay collections, I genuinely enjoyed it. So if you're normally into them, you'll probably really love it.
"You don't have to be perfect to deserve a good life. You don't have to be good to be missed."
"No one can do this life alone."
"Willful ignorance is violent."
This a beautifully curated collection of short stories and essays. Essay collections are not really my thing but I'm glad for bingo prompts that force me out of my comfort zone. I feel like I'm slowly figuring out the best way to read collections like these. I have to stop and read one story at a time and so I can spend some time digesting and processing it before moving on to the next. The stories told in this collection focused on the Latinx diaspora, a good majority focused on the Afro-Latinx experience. Every essay was incredibly heartfelt and it was a joy to read them. I really connected with the essay by Ingrid Rojas Contreras titled Invisible. It reminded me that there is still so much work to do in regards to accepting and listening to the voices of every person who is not white and cisgendered in this country. I also really liked A Mi Orden by Elizabeth Acevedo which probably comes as no surprise to anybody. Acevedo is an auto-buy author for me and everything she writes seems to be absolute gold. I also really enjoyed Alaiyo by Jasminne Mendez. As a fellow high school theatre kid, her descriptions of her time on stage really resonated with me and I appreciated her discussion of how white-centered much of the theatre community is.
Overall, this was a really great read. I enjoyed each of the stories and would love to read more by each of the authors.
“...because sometimes we are from where we were least dead and not where we were born.”
“Invisibility can be suffocating. Invisibility can be your only refuge. Like every refuge, invisibility can be taken away. The consequence of being seen is that you're seen.”
“I wish they could understand what I know—willful ignorance is violent.”
My thoughts on this essay collection are much the same as they were last year when I read it. I loved the essays by Elizabeth Acevedo , Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Jasmine Mendez. However, I also really connected to the story by Julian Randall this time around, as well. I think these voices are so important to make space for and I'm really happy I got to share this with my book club. A lot of the things they talked about are really timely even two years after its publication. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in #ownvoices and the experiences of Latine and Afro-Latine people. I genuinely appreciated how quite a few of the essays in this selection focused on the Afro-Latine diaspora. Too many books don't focus on the intersectionality of a single human and several of the essays did just that.
This time around, I was more cognizant of the writing of some of the essays. It's hard to rate anyone's life but the writing for a couple of the essays just felll a little flat and made them a little harder to get through. However, I still appreciated the thoughts that they brought to the table.
Ultimately, I absolutely recommend this essay collection. As someone who isn't normally a fan of essay collections, I genuinely enjoyed it. So if you're normally into them, you'll probably really love it.
"You don't have to be perfect to deserve a good life. You don't have to be good to be missed."
"No one can do this life alone."
"Willful ignorance is violent."
This a beautifully curated collection of short stories and essays. Essay collections are not really my thing but I'm glad for bingo prompts that force me out of my comfort zone. I feel like I'm slowly figuring out the best way to read collections like these. I have to stop and read one story at a time and so I can spend some time digesting and processing it before moving on to the next. The stories told in this collection focused on the Latinx diaspora, a good majority focused on the Afro-Latinx experience. Every essay was incredibly heartfelt and it was a joy to read them. I really connected with the essay by Ingrid Rojas Contreras titled Invisible. It reminded me that there is still so much work to do in regards to accepting and listening to the voices of every person who is not white and cisgendered in this country. I also really liked A Mi Orden by Elizabeth Acevedo which probably comes as no surprise to anybody. Acevedo is an auto-buy author for me and everything she writes seems to be absolute gold. I also really enjoyed Alaiyo by Jasminne Mendez. As a fellow high school theatre kid, her descriptions of her time on stage really resonated with me and I appreciated her discussion of how white-centered much of the theatre community is.
Overall, this was a really great read. I enjoyed each of the stories and would love to read more by each of the authors.