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A review by hilaryreadsbooks
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes on by Franny Choi
4.0
[thank you Ecco Books for a gifted copy, out in November]
I read poetry like I chase feelings, eye them wearily because they shine an eerie copy of myself back at me like clouded-over mirrors. It is me, but not me. This grief is mine, but it is not mine. I live in a world like this, but it is only one among an infinite of worlds that have ended and continued on.
The world keeps ending, and the world (somehow) goes on. Franny Choi reminds us that even prior to this one, there have always been apocalypses. Colonialism. Imperialism. Enslavement and taking of bodies and lands. Individual grief and mourning. Some people have already been brought to the edge of catastrophe, thrust into a real dystopia that isn’t science fiction or even fiction. Some somehow continue to live in a world where their lives are not valued. Some did not survive. For these people, this type of ending world is not new. It is wearily familiar.
I feel in Franny’s poems anger, disbelief, grief. In: do you remember? In: do you even see us?
In: are you leaving us behind? Again? To return to your sheltered “normal”?
And yet somehow the world continues on for those who continue to sit at the tip of the end. I think of LOVE AFTER THE END, where Indigiqueer speculative fiction remind us that Indigenous people have always lived past the end. Somehow, “…we’re okay. Hurting but okay. We’re surviving, though it’s true, we don’t know what that means, exactly.” Fighting, protesting, loving. Somehow still dreaming.
I read poetry like I chase feelings, eye them wearily because they shine an eerie copy of myself back at me like clouded-over mirrors. It is me, but not me. This grief is mine, but it is not mine. I live in a world like this, but it is only one among an infinite of worlds that have ended and continued on.
The world keeps ending, and the world (somehow) goes on. Franny Choi reminds us that even prior to this one, there have always been apocalypses. Colonialism. Imperialism. Enslavement and taking of bodies and lands. Individual grief and mourning. Some people have already been brought to the edge of catastrophe, thrust into a real dystopia that isn’t science fiction or even fiction. Some somehow continue to live in a world where their lives are not valued. Some did not survive. For these people, this type of ending world is not new. It is wearily familiar.
I feel in Franny’s poems anger, disbelief, grief. In: do you remember? In: do you even see us?
In: are you leaving us behind? Again? To return to your sheltered “normal”?
And yet somehow the world continues on for those who continue to sit at the tip of the end. I think of LOVE AFTER THE END, where Indigiqueer speculative fiction remind us that Indigenous people have always lived past the end. Somehow, “…we’re okay. Hurting but okay. We’re surviving, though it’s true, we don’t know what that means, exactly.” Fighting, protesting, loving. Somehow still dreaming.
Content Warnings
Graphic: War and Violence
Moderate: Sexual violence and Gun violence