anharchive's reviews
90 reviews

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

5.0

The heart of this book beats alongside that of radical revolutionary legacies,  survivors of displacement, anyone fighting for justice. Abulhawa tells the story of Nahr in her Israeli jail cell backwards, from Jordan to Palestine to confinement. Containing painfully incisive observations on displacement, Palestinian steadfastedness, and one of the most moving and beautiful love stories, this is a book I dearly treasure and strongly recommend.    

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

5.0

The Forest Brims Over by Maru Ayase, 彩瀬まる

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Rui lives a stable life, as a housewife and muse of many of her husband’s most celebrated books. But something prompts her to swallow a bowl of seeds. Her slow germination into a forest is narrated by a panoply of voices, all echoing struggles of autonomy in patriarchy’s tangles. Sensuous, corporeal and lusciously lyrical, Ayase’s debut is in tandem with the tradition of feminist magical realism, expounding on the body, marriage, authorship, and love within a patriarchal system.               

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai

4.25

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

 An orbituary, a memorial, a reclamation for the refugee lives swallowed by the past, in the form of war or the waves afterwards. We follow Anh as she boards a boat that will take her to survival, to the UK where she negotiates her Vietnameseness and belonging. There’s not a plot or linear direction, just the looming shadow of history and the all-too heavy reality of what happened. Pin breaks linear storytelling in the way trauma unmoors and displaces – it is an important contribution to fleshing out the subjectivities of those living liminally. 

The Nerves and Their Endings: essays on crisis and response by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Chronic illness, Eating disorder, Terminal illness, Racism, and Xenophobia

Chinatown by Thuận

5.0

The Age Of Doubt by Pak Kyongni

5.0

Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

5.0

 

It’s obnoxiously difficult to review a poetry book. Because there is no synthesis to be made — not one I will attempt or allow, anyway. Each poem its own space, its own review. I can only try and ramble on about how much I loved this. in an unfashionable, messy way, because Ocean Vuong’s words speak for themselves. 
 Don’t read this book if you don’t want to welcome wells of tears. They pool and gather deep somewhere, in the crevices of your tired body. Everything makes me want to weep. The white spaces. The pooled ink. Each word, dash, point.
There’s that fossiling in your gut, organs shrivelling into each other for comfort,the kind of pain of holding in your cries — Vuong’s grief that you can feel in every part of your body. 

What are we, ever? You can never really stay in one place, settle in a word. 
There is life and there is stir in every nook or cranny or crevice, whatever Vuong looks at. He can alight the meaning in everything.

We live in a daze of sequences, routines, chores, responsibilities. And there are gaps in between that contain the universe, mean everything and remind you that you are here, breathing, pulsating and alive. Their rarity is what makes them so worth to live for, and what art will always pursue in its reproduction. These liminalities refract endlessly from Vuong’s spaces. 

There is always a delicious, unsettling, pleasant surprise at every turn of phrase of his, as the enjambement trips you into a picture, before rearing its full head. It’s like he’s unlocked the potential of prosaic poetic language. He understands the constitutive, double-entendre, overlapping potential of English, the building blocks imagery logic of it. It can be confusing, you can get lost in the swirls, but there is always a sense of clarity to be gauged from the ashes. 

Can you really say that you’ve finished a poetry book? Or has it really finished you? When I arrived to the final blank pages, I felt like I had arrived at the end of the world.