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A review by bhrtng
Into the Forest and all the Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo
4.0
4 stars for this collection of poems about missing and murdered women and girls.
I was hesitant to get into this book because I am definitely NOT a true crime girly. I feel like a lot of the content around true crime can get exploitative and trauma porn-y and I was worried this would feel that way. Instead it reads like a tribute to each of the victims. Each poem is different but I found that overall the author took time to highlight what made each victim unique outside of her circumstances (i.e. things she enjoyed, her career, children, family, etc.). The author also makes a point in her introduction to call out how disproportionately women of color are affected by these crimes, especially indigenous women. At the end of each poem, there is information about the case and the victim with a phone number for anyone who may know something. What stood out to me (again from the intro) is that the author says, /someone/ knows something. While these cases may currently be unsolved, there is still information out there for many of them. Overall I found this book to be well done even when the poems were simplistic at times. There are certainly some that will stick with me for a while. There is some criticism that the nature of so many poems on a topic causes them to lose their individuality but instead I found that it pointed to the universality of the white supremacist patriarchal violence that we as women can't escape. In the end, I appreciated getting to know these stories that the media has overlooked and ignored and I feel like these poems honored the memory of the victims.
I was hesitant to get into this book because I am definitely NOT a true crime girly. I feel like a lot of the content around true crime can get exploitative and trauma porn-y and I was worried this would feel that way. Instead it reads like a tribute to each of the victims. Each poem is different but I found that overall the author took time to highlight what made each victim unique outside of her circumstances (i.e. things she enjoyed, her career, children, family, etc.). The author also makes a point in her introduction to call out how disproportionately women of color are affected by these crimes, especially indigenous women. At the end of each poem, there is information about the case and the victim with a phone number for anyone who may know something. What stood out to me (again from the intro) is that the author says, /someone/ knows something. While these cases may currently be unsolved, there is still information out there for many of them. Overall I found this book to be well done even when the poems were simplistic at times. There are certainly some that will stick with me for a while. There is some criticism that the nature of so many poems on a topic causes them to lose their individuality but instead I found that it pointed to the universality of the white supremacist patriarchal violence that we as women can't escape. In the end, I appreciated getting to know these stories that the media has overlooked and ignored and I feel like these poems honored the memory of the victims.