Review of Por La Sombrita by Barbara Perez Marquez

By Vickie Tu, written July 2023

What does “Por La Sombrita” mean? That is the question I was left pondering when I first came across Barbara Perez Marquez’s collection Por La Sombrita (2023), now available from Bottlecap Press. Upon further research, I was met with three different answers. One, “Por La Sombrita” is an idiom that literally means “handle with kid gloves” but figuratively means to be careful or quietly. Two, although a different translation, “for the shade,” it figuratively means the same as to be careful or not to worry. Three, when I asked a Spanish speaking friend of mine, she translated it to “in the shade” but had never heard the saying before. After exploring Barbara Perez Marquez’s version of the translation, I came to the conclusion that in this collection, “Por La Sombrita” means to stay in the shade as a way of not hurting yourself through exposure to the sun. The saying transforms into a symbolic message from Barbara’s own reflection on her experiences through childhood and family life that caused her burns.

Por La Sombrita is broken up into two parts: “Growing Pains” and “Family Matters.” With these two parts, Barbara separates her perspective from learning mature subjects from her childhood experiences to examining familial events through a mature lens. Each part works itself to be a beautiful articulation of significant moments of her life that stem from memories that seem simple but are actually much more complex.

With the first part, “Growing Pains,” Barbara explores her life from the perspective of herself as a child but with the mature realization of adulthood. Most notably, in the poem “11 or 12,” she explains the memorable experience of lying about her age to benefit her family. She says, “That if I was eleven I got to stay for free, therefore they had to pay for one less to make the vacation possible.” Her memory resonates strongly with something I recognize from immigrant culture. She perfectly describes the occurrence of lying about your age at the Chinese buffet to eat for free that I underwent but through her own lens that made sense for her childhood. With the way that Barbara notably echoes her childhood memories through her pieces, it showcases her relatability to a reader like me as well as displays the small simple moments in one’s life that are simply overlooked but could be used to explore a deeper dive into culture, adulthood, and maturity.

With the second part, “Family Matters,” she connects segments and pieces of her life to create a larger whole of a complex story that shaped the story of her identity. Although some moments are relatable, others are unique incidents that frame her self-reflection. Where we see her true individuality is through two striking memories. The first is in the piece “Playing Doctor” where she describes a traumatic assault event and the second is in the piece “The Weight of Parenting” where she carries a gun for the first time. With both events, Barbara displays very isolated and uncommon occurrences in her lifetime that sets her apart from other translations of childhood. The weight of the topics is heavy and become the most notable because of their mature and taboo nature.

It is a surreal experience to see the images of her and her family with their old photos. With each image, you see pieces and bits of her life that allow a glimpse into the perfect life seen from the outside, but the cracks seen within her writing and memories. We are able to see the woman who disciplined her through these pieces and the man who protected the household. Being able to imagine her mother, father, sister, grandmother, and herself through the photos creates a raw and genuine realization of one’s life through this collection.

Overall, Barbara’s collection is a noteworthy work of art that conveys a person’s life through remarkable segments of memories. This collection left me examining parts of my own life that seem simple but perhaps could allow me to reflect further on who I am. It is a cluster of blurred, imperfect memories that when put together, show the life of one woman, her family, and own identity.

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Vickie Tu is a rising senior at University of Maryland, College Park, studying English with a minor in Classics. She was born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and plans to move to New York City after graduation to start her career in the publishing industry. When she is not reading or working in her campus’ bookstore, she enjoys attending hockey games for her favorite team the Washington Capitals. You can find her on Instagram @vickie.tuuu.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Review of Becoming by Michelle Obama

Read Bailey Drumm’s review of Becoming by Michelle Obama, published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 3 (Re)Formation issue (fall 2020). Information about where to find Becoming and (Re)Formation is below.

By Bailey Drumm

“Are you enough? Yes.” This mantra rings throughout Becoming by Michelle Obama, as she navigates the reader through the benefits of being truly, honestly one’s intended self. In order to address this, she chose to split her book into three sections: “Becoming Me,” which discusses her childhood leading up to her dating Barack Obama; “Becoming Us,” which encapsulates the beginning of their relationship up to President Obama’s inauguration in 2009; and “Becoming More,” which summarizes the Obama family’s time spent in the White House. She’s been a daughter, a mother, a wife, an attorney, a first lady, and an author, but what Obama assures readers is that being their genuine selves is their most attractive form. That’s what others want, and what they should want for themselves. A person will shine once their core being is defined.

Obama opens the book with “Becoming Me,” mentioning that she used to love when people would ask her, as a child, what she wanted to be when she grew up, because she had the perfectly constructed answer to impress adults. Now, as an adult, she hates the question, because growing up isn’t finite. Who we are, and what we are, are many things. We become different people as the world around us changes, and we form and reform ourselves around it.

After being stuck inside for months, I, as I’m sure many others have, became all too acquainted with my ‘alone’ self, versus who I became in a crowd. Currently, we are shedding our work masks and learning not to apologize for the inconveniences we have chosen to love. An essential part of being yourself according to Obama. We all have families to take care of and passions to support. Obama even brings up a time when her husband missed a flight back to Washington, D.C., to vote on a crime bill because of a sick child. Though professionally it may have been frowned upon, his family was (and is) his core value. And it is these small decisions and sacrifices explored in “Becoming Us,” that serve as a nice reminder that as humans, sometimes it’s okay to disappoint others, as long as we are following what we truly believe in.

Finally, in “Becoming More,” Obama discusses the lack of a guidebook to being the first lady, just as there is no guidebook to navigating life. Pointing this out is the first step to acknowledging that you have to make your own path. During her time as first lady, distributing information on nutrition, the process of food production, and general public health was Obama’s priority. Unfortunately, the world around her took more notice to what she was wearing than what she cared to address. To combat this, Obama made a point to present herself well—she even got a ‘glam squad’—in hopes that the public would notice the initiatives she was promoting as much as her image.

From a young age, Obama was encouraged to learn and advocate for herself. In fact, this mandate became another platform of hers, along with advocating for female role models, while in the White House. Over time, she came to realize not all children had the advantage of being helped at home. This lack of guidance caused some children to be devalued at school. She states, “Hearing them, I realized that [those with at-home guidance] weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.” A desire to impress (to emulate) can lead a child to accomplish things they may not have had the drive to do alone. Not only do her initiatives teach children the skills they are seeking out, but also the confidence to succeed in areas and situations they may feel intimidated by, rather than doubtful of their own worth. Obama wanted to make sure children who may have hidden potentials have the chance to speak and be heard through advocacy and mentoring programs.

In Becoming, she expresses that, growing up, her family was a group of planners, which made her an avid planner as well. Throughout the book though, she does not shy away from recalling difficult scenarios she was unable to plan around. In her mid 20s, she lost both a good friend and her father close together. Around the same time, she was assigned to be Barack’s mentor at a Chicago law firm, Sidley Austin LLP; at first she was less than impressed by him, but over time began to fall in love, changing the course of her career and the life she had originally planned. Though she studied her hardest, at one point, she even failed the Illinois bar on her first try. And, in her mid 30s, she even had to go through the heartbreak of a miscarriage.

Though these events are hard to read about, especially at a time like we are currently experiencing, and as a planner myself, it does offer a sense of comfort. There is a vast amount of ideas currently evolving around us, in our country and culture, that have to be taken in stride. But we can plan only day by day and take the unexpected on the chin. We aren’t perfect, we are just ourselves. These stories she presents, and Becoming itself, explore the fact that we need to get rid of the failing stigma in order to truly succeed. We can try to plan, but sometimes the universe has its own plan. People function better when honest, when we express our downfalls, rather than when we put up a front and go through trauma alone.

In owning your true self, you need to allow your mind to wander at night, be it thinking about a lost relative or income inequalities. You must own your story. No one else can for you. Approach the world as it should be, rather than complain about the world as it is. That’s how change is created. We learn from each other, and in learning we transform. “Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim,” Obama writes. “I see it instead as a forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” In other words, never stop changing in order to continue being (becoming) true to your genuine self. Never stop reforming.

A PDF of (Re)Formation is available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore or you can find the issue as a paperback or ebook through most online distributors. Becoming was published by Crown Publishing (2018; 448 pages). For more information, visit Becomingmichelleobama.com.

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Bailey Drumm is a fiction writer whose written work has been featured in Grub Street and Welter, and digital art displayed as the cover art for the 2017 edition of Welter. She is an MFA graduate from the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program at the University of Baltimore. Her collection of short stories, The Art of Settling, was published in the spring of 2019 and can be found at bailey-drumm.square.site.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Review of Jenn Koiter’s So Much of Everything by Naomi Thiers

Although Jenn Koiter’s exciting collection So Much of Everything isn’t formally broken into sections, it feels as if it is because the poems have many different moods and styles. This book won the 2021 DC Poet Project prize administered by D.C. arts group Day Eight (dayeight.org/dc-poet-project) and it has riches to offer. The book seems to move from the voice of someone who feels “different” and rather separate from others to the voice of someone fully experiencing grief for someone she lost.

Many of the first 13 poems center on a speaker who is a bit of a mess, a bit of an oddball, or at least has rotten timing. Several poems feature a character called The Messy Girl, who doesn’t have it together at all—and not just in terms of her appearance:

Lines of birds shift in the air like words that cannot stay still

on the page, latecomers looking for a place

in an already crowded field. What else is wrong?

She might be coming down with a cold. (There was a man with a cold.)

She might be pregnant. (There was a broken condom.)

Or consider (from “The Messy Girl Discovers She’s a Gay Camp Icon”)

She puts on

addiction like a rhinestone bustier, suffering

like a sheer black backless bodysuit.

And her love affairs are an earring, an earring,

and high, high heels.

“The Messy Girl Carries a Torch for the Boy Who Could Not Stop Washing” tells how this character is obsessed with other misfits and people with odd medical conditions. It may sound like it’s all just too quirky, but these poems are more human and relatable than that. I think readers—especially women—will feel Koiter echoes their own messy emotional and physical experiences. “The Messy Girl’s Hair Is a Mess” is packed with sensory details about hair and skin. In “Through Snow,” the speaker drives home through such blinding snow that she begins to doubt the evidence of her senses and isn’t sure she’s entering the right house when she pulls up to home. And in “Easter Night,” a woman realizes she slept through Easter day (“through hugs and handshakes of smiling strangers, earnest, quavery hymns”) and says:

I wish I were a woman who could

worship the sun rising.

I would stand with them and cheer.

Though someone must greet the dark

each day, and how much more

today, when all is new?

In the book’s middle are the “Candy Jones” poems, Candy Jones being a 1940s cover girl and beauty expert who published guides on beauty in the ‘50s and ‘60s. These are collage poems created using only sentences plucked from Jones’s beauty guides. They weren’t my favorites in the book, but the creative arrangements of semi-scolding, often contradictory, statements on how to be “beautiful” is impressive—and shows how weird and tiring it is to try to be what society expects of a woman.

Make a critical rundown of your imperfect features.

Hold your stomach absolutely flat

   and tuck your buttocks in neatly.

Pay attention to your shoulders. Pay attention

   to the condition of your shoes.

Observe swimsuit ads

   and learn to stand gracefully

with your knees together.

   Practice sitting and standing in front of a full-length mirror

until you’re certain

   you place your legs in the most becoming positions.

And later, in “Ghazal, With Accessories”:

Make your first appearance upon your arrival wearing a hat.

Even if hats are not your favorite accessory, wear a hat.

[soon followed by]

Your goal is pureness of line and complete simplicity.

Choose your jewelry accents sparingly. Don’t wear a hat.

The collection then moves into free verse poems centered on various subjects: Travel to other countries (including “The Messy Girl Feels at Home in Delhi”), reflections on a religious upbringing and spirituality, and even a poem about a set of tools on the family farm the speaker was forbidden to touch as a child. Again, there’s a bit of emphasis on the speaker being “different.” But I love “Early Dinner Ending with a Line from Thomas Merton,” in which a woman sitting at a restaurant bar cringes at the behavior of some tacky tourists, but soon realizes she is the only one bothered; all others at the bar are accepting and enjoying each other. Even the speaker who feels herself so apart is one of the community.

The last four poems, starting with the long, sectioned poem “The Survivor,” are more spare in style. They take us into the shock and darkness of grieving for a loved one who has died suddenly. I found these the most moving poems in the book. They’re a gut punch, but because the speaker’s emotional expression is so direct, raw, and authentic, we feel a warm connection to her and compassion for her. Here are two excerpts from “The Survivor”:

I push my foot into my boot, and you die.

I put my toothbrush on its stand, and you die.

I put on my headset, and you die.

I fixed myself tea, I order Thai food, I smudge

the surface of my tablet, and you die. . . .

and

All I remember about your body

in its casket are the thick, black sutures

across the top of your bald head, and

the color of your skin: darkened,

mottled, like you were one big bruise.

Perhaps I should’ve taken,

another look, a longer look,

but how long can anyone stand

before miracle, and your body

stitched and purple and emptied, was

a miracle: wine back into water,

water back into the rock.

There are so many different moods, styles, voices, and language feats in these poems that I think any reader will find something here that feeds them.

You can find Jenn Koiter’s book So Much of Everything (2021) at Day Eight Books: day-eight-books.myshopify.com/products/so-much-of-everything-by-jenn-koiter.

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Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Beast at Every Threshold: An Exploration of the Balance Between Hope and Despair

By Beck Snyder, written October 2022

It has, admittedly, been a while since I decided to sit down and read a collection of poetry for reasons other than needing a good grade on a class assignment. Poetry is one of the realms of writing that often eludes my grasp—not because I don’t want to seek it out, but because fiction and nonfiction pieces usually end up getting there first. When it comes to Natalie Wee’s collection Beast at Every Threshold (2022), however, I immediately knew upon beginning that this was a book that would stick with me as clearly as any beloved fiction adventure from my childhood.

Beast at Every Threshold is best described as a careful balancing act between hope and despair as Natalie wades through both her past and present while considering her potential future. Within her poems, she openly acknowledges and explores the tragedies of life and loss, such as her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s and abuse she herself has suffered. She does not attempt to fool her audience into believing that every problem in life can be solved through having hope, but as she looks into the more depressing aspects of life, she still brings hope into the equation along with a strong sense of reclaiming power, as she does in the poem “Wei Yang Tells Me About Resurrection.” In the poem, she describes the pain that is necessary for resurrection but turns it on its head into using that pain to transform your own life and bring it under control: “Choose a hell / of your own making over the hell that unmakes you.” Her sense of hope also comes to a head in her poem “In My Next Life as a Fruit Tree,” where she muses on her potential next life and what she will become, and while she could choose anything, all she wishes to do is to provide love and care for those who come after her, and to simply exist peacefully: “but I’ll flower one crop each day for as long / as the palm reaching upwards needs something to adore / it.”

It’s a beautiful message that takes the idea of existence and works it into something that we do not have to prove we deserve, but something that we can simply enjoy. Within this collection, Natalie is no stranger to depression and pain, but is not interested in painting a grim, hopeless vision of the world around her. Natalie sees both hope and despair that exists within the world, and because of that, I was left feeling as though I was seeing real, unbridled truth on the pages before me.

Just as Natalie is a master of finding hope within despair, she also works within her poetry to find beauty within the unconventional. This is a theme that comes in right away in the first poem of the collection, “In Defense of My Roommate’s Dog,” which turns the somewhat embarrassing act of a dog humping a stuffed animal in front of guests into a breathtaking exploration of sexual longing and asks the reader why they find shame in masturbation when it is rooted in a longing for love and the need to survive: “Maybe the trade-off for resurrection is / shame vast enough to kill / us.” Natalie has turned this small, everyday act, which most of us would feel awkward about witnessing, into a radical questioning of our values, and why it is that we are so ashamed of basic human nature.

Natalie also continues this theme of unconventional beauty throughout the entire collection, most notably to me in the piece “Inside Joke,” where she uses texting lingo and internet memes, two things which are typically not considered to be poetic, into an exploration of togetherness and adoration.

“tbh, we are so damn lucky to be loved like this

w/ endless ways 2 bless one another

our voices crowned w/ something new         

& tender

& no one else’s”

I wasn’t expecting to find a piece within this collection that hit quite so close to home, but as someone on the edge of Gen Z, this piece connected strongly with me as a kind of validation for the way the younger generations share our love and laughter with one another.

Natalie is also heavily interested in exploring immigrant culture and the experience of living separate from yet still connected to one’s home country. Nearly every poem in the collection connects to this overarching theme, whether that connection be overt or subtle. Natalie’s culture and mother tongue bleeds into every word she writes, in a way that proves that she could not separate herself from this aspect of her life. Throughout the collection, she explores the nature of being an immigrant through poems such as “An Abridged History,” “Frequent Flyer Program,” and “Immigrant Aubade,” all of which look into different aspects of her unique-yet-shared experience. Within these pieces there is clear trauma, as she discusses hate crimes and disconnect, but there is also love threaded in between as she connects with other women both within her family line and out of it, who have lived through her pain and understand it, and are all moving toward a more hopeful future of reconnecting and learning to carry the pain without allowing it to become overwhelming.

Another aspect that connects much of Natalie’s work, so much so that she describes herself first and foremost as a queer author, is an exploration of her queerness. Her love poems are unlike any I’ve read before, in a way that allows for tenderness to sit alongside doubt. Natalie writes of love as the very thing that allows her to become real, and the honesty and delicate nature she brings to that admission connected strongly with me as a reader while also taking my breath away. She writes of love as something to hold onto and call her own when everything else falls away, as a final reason to hang on to hope when the world is far too dark to see anything else. All too often, I see queer love described in ways that are meant to prove we are no different than anyone else, but Natalie writes about it as if that difference is the very core element that makes it beautiful and worthy of celebration. She does not shy away from anything risqué—instead, she brings it to light and asks us to celebrate alongside her: she is in love, she is real, she is worthy.

Overall, Natalie’s collection is a stunning look into the different parts of her life, where they connect, where they collide, and how she weaves them all together. It is a breathtaking balance between hope and despair, and a poetry collection that left me reaching out for more only to turn the page and find the acknowledgements waiting. In an age that is all too eager to push queer, immigrant stories into the background, Beast at Every Threshold is an honest, unashamed look at the life that exists around Natalie and one that demands to be listened to.

You can find Natalie Wee’s Beast of Every Threshold: Poems (2022) at Arsenal Pulp Press: arsenalpulp.com/Books/B/Beast-at-Every-Threshold.

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Beck Snyder is a senior at Towson University studying both creative writing and film. They are from the tiny town of Clear Spring, Maryland, and while they enjoy small-town life, they cannot wait to get out of town and see what the world has to offer. They hope to graduate by the summer of 2023 and begin exploring immediately afterward. You can find more from Beck at their Instagram, @real_possiblyawesome.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Let’s Talk About Fat: A Review of What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

By Veronica Salib, written August 2022

Today, calling someone fat is an insult rather than just a description of their body. Fat is a word we shy away from, a word we hate being described as, a word we whisper. Not for Aubrey Gordon. Aubrey Gordon yells about fat. She doesn’t avert her eyes and ears at the mention of fatness and doesn’t sugarcoat the experiences that come with being fat. In her book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey talks about exactly that. The hidden parts of being fat. The parts that thin people or ‘not fat’ people have trouble comprehending.

In our current society, thin is the desired aesthetic. Everywhere you turn there are ads tailored for weight loss, a slimmer waist, and a smaller body. Influencers market products to make you lose weight fast. Weight loss is applauded. A thinner body regardless of whether or not it’s a healthy body is deemed desirable.

Aubrey is a self-proclaimed and unashamed fat person who started her literary career with her essay series called Your Fat Friend. According to her website, “she published exclusively under the pseudonym [Your Fat Friend] for four years, writing anonymously about the social and cultural realities of moving through the world as a very fat person.”

In What We Don’t Talk About, Aubrey weaves anecdotes about being a fat person into discussions about how institutions discriminate against fat people. The anecdotes, both her own and others, display the truly grotesque ways in which fat people are treated. Each chapter of the book covers a new aspect of fatness. The first starts with a description and anecdote of life as a fat person trying to travel. Aubrey shares stories on the plights of traveling as a fat person and goes on to explain the systemic discrimination against fat people.

Openly mocked, judged, bullied, and disregarded, fat people are often met with a lack of empathy that Aubrey highlights in her book. In addition to describing the discrimination, later chapters of the book explore further themes such as public health rhetoric around fatness, diet culture, the common commentary on what fat people eat or look like, concerns of fat people on desirability, and medical bias against fat people.

Aubrey’s book highlights the difficulties of being a fat person. She describes inequities and discrimination in all aspects of life from traveling to healthcare. Despite all the negativity Aubrey concludes her book on a hopeful note. At the start of her last chapter, she says, “There is a world beyond this one. In that world, diversity in size and shape are understood to be part of the natural variance of human bodies, from very fat people to very thin ones. So, too are fluctuations in weight.” She goes on to outline ways in which our society can move away from its fatphobic ways. Her recommendations include plans to criminalize discrimination based on weight, improved access to healthcare and public spaces, awareness of and cessation of fat violence against kids and adults, and the banning of dangerous weight loss drugs.

As I am on my own journey of loving and accepting the body I live in, Aubrey’s words deeply resonated with me. While my body is not very fat and I will never fully understand the struggles that very fat people deal with, I do not have a thin body.

Aubrey’s words have empowered me to accept my body the way it is. Her words and stories have validated the feelings I have living in a size 14 body while society says anything above a size 4 is unattractive. It taught me that I don’t have to live in one of two extremes. I don’t have to starve myself until I am a size 4. On the flipside, I don’t have to fake complete happiness. My body can just be a body, not a measure of my worth.

While this book may have filled me with unbridled rage at the never-ending negative experiences based on size, it also provided me with a light at the end of the tunnel. Despite society’s lack of love for bodies like mine, there are people working tirelessly to make space for them, and make sure it is well cared for and accepted. With activists like Aubrey, there will come a day in which fat is just a word. There will come a day where I no longer resent the body I was given, where I am unwavering in my love for the body that I live in. there will come a day where my body is just a vessel for my being rather than a visual representation of my worth.

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Veronica Salib was the summer 2022 publications intern at Yellow Arrow Publishing. She works as an assistant editor for a healthcare media company. Veronica graduated from the University of Maryland in 2021 and hopes to return to school and obtain a master’s in publishing.

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Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured its Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Review of The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs by Robert J. Mrazek

Read Charity R. Bartley Howard review of The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs by Robert J. Mrazek, published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 3 (Re)Formation issue (fall 2020). Information about where to find The Indomitable Florence Finch and (Re)Formation is below.

By Charity R. Bartley Howard

Florence Ebersole Finch (1915–2016) lived a fascinating and important life. The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs by Robert J. Mrazek is the true telling of the life of a hero many may not have heard of before. Florence Finch saved many American lives (prisoners of war or POWs) in the Philippines during World War II. The Americans were in the country starting in early 1942 to mid to late 1945. Their goal was to help the Filipino campaign against Japanese forces, to stop Japan from occupying the area. Now, with this engaging book, her story is finally being told. Florence was humble during and after the war, and her efforts were not for the sake of glory, but rather what she felt was necessary and right.

This is an exceptionally written biography about an exceptional person. Mrazek worked from personal journals, taped interviews, and other original sources. The information was compiled from the past experiences of an elderly woman who finally explained everything to her family only a few years before she died in 2016 at age 101. Born to a Filipina woman and an American serviceman in 1915, Florence was raised in the Philippines and married an American sailor, Charles Smith. She had worked for the U.S. Army in Manila in 1941 prior to the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; it is there she met her husband. Unfortunately, he would be killed in action in the Philippines in 1942, and she soon found herself a widow within the Japanese-occupied Philippines.

At the start of occupation, Florence had taken a job at the Philippine Liquid Fuel Distribution Union (controlled by the Japanese). For two years, this led her to slyly helping the Philippine resistance against the Japanese in many ways: diverting fuel shipments, falsifying documents, and obtaining supplies for POWs. In 1944, her actions were discovered; Florence was arrested, tortured, tried, and sentenced to three years of imprisonment. She remained in captivity until American troops liberated the Philippines in 1945.

Mrazek’s book does her justice. While at the beginning it might take readers some time to get into the story and stay with it, learning the background is important to knowing the full scope of Florence’s remarkable life and achievements. Readers are given vivid details as well as facts from her time during and before the war, creating a delightful read for those who appreciate history and learning about an unsung hero. Ultimately, this is a story of a remarkable woman all readers can admire. Florence was awarded the American Medal of Freedom in 1947 and was the first woman given the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Ribbon. In 1995, the Coast Guard (who she worked for after the war) named a building on Sand Island in Hawai'i in her honor. Without her efforts, many family members would have lost their loved ones, making her sacrifices important.

Not all war heroes are on the frontlines or are known to us today. In The Indomitable Florence Finch, readers hear the account of one of these unknown heroes. Mrazek’s account is real without being overly violent, but accurately explains what happened. Readers journey in triumph and sadness, both through her war efforts and through her personal tragedies. It helps us understand what happened before us and the sacrifices people made that allow us to live the way we do today. Knowing about her and how she was selfless sets a good example of how we should care about as well as help others. Pertinent information given our current worldwide situation.

Florence lived an interesting and heart-breaking life, full of incredible bravery. Mrazek does a superb job of interweaving the historical narrative of World War II with Florence Finch’s personal life, into an engaging as well as emotional book. The Indomitable Florence Finch also relates an element of World War II many may not have much knowledge of, but will have a better understanding of, following this dramatic telling of Florence’s experiences. There are many other stories yet to tell of brave women, and men, throughout history. If you are interested in learning more about an unsung woman hero in history, this is a well-told story of Florence Finch’s brave efforts and strengths. It is an emotional story that was needed and done in a wonderful way. This is a must read for everyone.

A PDF of (Re)Formation is available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore or as a paperback or ebook through most online distributors. The Indomitable Florence Finch was published by Hachette Books (2020; 368 pages).

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Charity R. Bartley Howard lives in central Indiana with her sons and husband. She enjoys time with them outside, camping and hiking. Her degrees are in English and journalism. There is always a book open in her house as she enjoys reading, and family reading time is important as well. Spare time also means editing as well as writing articles, stories, and poems.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. We recently revamped and restructured its Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Review of Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots by Sherry Burton Ways

Reread Kara Panowitz’s review of Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots: 21 Rituals to Transform Your Life and Interior Space by Sherry Burton Ways, published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 2 HOME issue (summer 2020). Information about where to find Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots and HOME is below.

By Kara Panowitz

When my friend, Holly, read the opening to Yellow Arrow Publishing’s first Reading Club book selection, Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots: 21 Rituals to Transform Your Life and Interior Space, she started crying. “This is me,” she said. “I could have written this.” The book opens with author Sherry Burton Ways sharing her personal experience with a relationship ending in divorce. This sets the stage for the book itself: how to transform your physical space, and yourself, after major life transitions. Burton Ways’ honesty and openness create a space of trust and relatability. Her recognition that it can feel daunting or too expensive to make transformations during significant life changes brings comfort, and her story demonstrates that no space is too small to create a refuge or a home. In her own words, Burton Ways’ goal for writing this book is to show readers “how their interior design can assist them with additional support.”

Burton Ways’ explanation that “interior design is not decorating” is a theme that carries throughout the rituals she presents. The biggest lesson I took away was that home is not just a physical space and group of objects, but the rituals and aspects of your life you bring to it and how they all connect together. The 21 rituals presented include some that might be expected, like rearranging furniture, selecting interior colors, and creating vision boards. Others I found less expected, such as the ritual of bathing and loving yourself through environment and crystal energy. Finally, there were rituals completely new to me, like Wabi-sabi.

One of the most useful and most accessible things about the book is that it presents actions you can take immediately or in the near future, which you can continue daily or just once in a while. You make it work for you. Burton Ways’ 21 rituals also come with tips and ideas, taking the abstract to the specific. There is something for everyone in this book and it may make you look at something you hadn’t really considered, or perhaps thought wasn’t for you, in a new way.

The rituals explored in Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots also give new ideas for, and new meaning to, rituals you may already perform. The ritual of music and dance spoke to me the most. Why don’t I listen to music and dance more? I love both, and I can influence the mood and energy in my home through what I choose to listen to, and how I groove to it. Burton Ways’ descriptions made me think of music and dance affecting and permeating my space, spreading through the air and seeping into the walls (I danced that night!). She addresses the physical space by suggesting that readers create open space for dance and carry music into that physical space by displaying artwork that depicts music or even instruments.

Additionally, I enjoy the ritual of cooking but don’t always want to do it or give much thought to the process. When I read about it in the book, it brought new mindfulness and value to meal preparation and my place in it. Burton Ways writes,

“Cooking is an interior abundance ritual that can relieve stress and give your life a sense of purpose during major life transitions. Meal preparation allows you to have control over your life and express yourself . . . [and] is an anti-stress exercise because the process of cooking activates the senses that have been numbed.”

I thought about cooking in a new way, in terms of how it influences and spreads throughout my space, similar to music.

Burton Ways includes personal experiences by other women, intended for readers “to see [themselves] in this process.” These candid and insightful stories illuminate how rituals can be used in transitions, including divorce, death, a new career, and even constant change due to housing insecurity. It reaffirms that you can choose and adjust your rituals for any situation, and that something as small as a handheld rock can bring comfort and consistency during transitions. Burton Ways also shares examples from clients she has worked with that demonstrate the implementation of her rituals in an array of spaces. The stories are inspirational and a highlight of the book.

As I read Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots, I felt like Burton Ways was a friend, mentor, and coach, and that we were blessed to have a visit from her for Yellow Arrow’s Reading Club. This author has many talents and a diverse array of expertise: she is an award-winning author, trainer, and speaker, and holds several certifications such as Certified Design Psychology Coach, Certified Graceful Lifestyles Consultant, and Certified Interior Environment Coach. Her passion for her work is evident in the guidance she shares on her pages.

This was a perfect book for Yellow Arrow's first Reading Club session because Yellow Arrow House in Baltimore, Maryland had just opened, and one of the primary missions of Yellow Arrow is to create a safe, welcoming refuge that feels like home, within the House and within workshops and events. The timing was also serendipitous for me because I was living alone in a new apartment and was ready to embrace transition. I immediately made changes to my space and life after reading the book and continue to revisit her words for reminders and ideas on how to implement her 21 rituals.

Finally, as I wrote this review, the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone to spend a lot more time at home, and I began to use the rituals to ease anxiety and keep creativity flowing. That’s one of the greatest gifts of Sherry Burton Ways’ book. You can always revisit it to change your space and your life in small or big ways. Like life, changes are not always permanent. No matter what your reason for transforming your space and life, Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots will speak to you and encourage you to find rituals to comfort and support yourself during times of transition.

PDF copies of HOME are available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore, and paperback and electronic versions are available through most online distributors. Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots was published by FriesenPress (2017; 112 pages).

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Kara Panowitz thrives on creating through writing, theatre, photography, and filmmaking, among other arts. She received both her BA in Theatre and her MA in Social Work from the University of Maryland. Kara works for an anti-hunger nonprofit and is the acting Executive Director of Megaphone Project. Previously, she has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar, a Special Ed and ESL teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, and a bartender in Australia.

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Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured its Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Body, Self, Separation: A review of Dena Igusti’s Cut Woman

By Darah Schillinger

In her debut collection, Cut Woman (2020), Dena Igusti explores the realities of being an Indonesian Muslim in a post-colonial world, and the separation of self they experienced as a survivor of female genital mutilation. Igusti’s writing is unique in that the language is authoritative even though the content itself is open and sincere, allowing us a naked view into the celebration and grief embedded into their experience as an Indonesian Muslim and as a survivor.

The anticipation of death is carried throughout the collection as the weight of loss hangs over the speaker’s everyday life. Death is a vessel of grief, an image Igusti can use to show in pictures exactly how all of this loss has made them feel, and how it has transformed their relationships with the self, their people, and loved ones.

“the grenade’s lung exhaled into our chests

and muslims have been spilled ever since”

            -bounty

“IF THEY CAN'T FIND MY CORPSE THEY’LL AT LEAST
FIND A BODY (I CRAFT)”

            -self portrait as asa akira’s face on google images when searching ‘asian women’

“i’m like my father

i leave half-carcasses // of me // everywhere i go”

“i think a lot // about death // for someone //

so afraid of dying”

-sacrifice (reprise), or trajectory

“I WANT TO

REMOVE // CELLS // DEAD, GENETIC // THAT HANG //

OFF MY BODY // HOLD TRACES OF WHAT // WAS DONE

TO ME WITHOUT BEING // SWALLOWED BY AN OCEAN”

            -screen

The loss of self, the prospective loss of loved ones, the past loss of their people—all of this loss influences Igusti’s relationship with death. Death is preemptively mourned in Igusti’s work, something that weighs down the speaker and strings together the past and the present. Loss cannot be shed just as death cannot be avoided, and so Igusti embraces the inevitability of death to cope with the loss that already pervades their experiences.

Water and suffocation are used as one of the many forms of death found in the collection and are especially impactful in “my father never answers to papa” as saltwater acts as a metaphor for their father’s baggage and past mistakes, drowning them both. The speaker tries to drink the water, trying to save their father from his own grief and troubles, but the saltwater burns their throat, and their father takes even this time as they both drown because of his own problems, to blame his child. This poem is such a beautifully illustrated example of the weight of pain and past, showing how undealt with grief can drown not only yourself but your loved ones. Igusti has written true brilliance in describing the very real consequences of the unresolved, and how the mistakes of the father translate and choke the people they should love most.

Female genital mutilation is discussed throughout Igusti’s collection, exploring the separation the speaker feels between the self and their body in the aftermath of that experience and attempting to reconcile their complicated self-relationship through poetry.

“curse the // blade //

reduces // her // small // calls it //

transformation”

            -hex for an heirloom

“she reduced me to small and called it transformation. She let me die

and called herself the martyr. She cut out part of me, made it my relative. A

blood bound thing.”

            -sunat: a recollection (in the wake)

In “after the incision,” the speaker feels a disconnect between themself and their body because of what happened to them as a child and tries to reconcile this disconnect through conversation with the part they see as missing, personifying their clitoris and begging this missing part to return to them, saying they are hurt because the clitoris is not theirs anymore. The other-self then points out that the speaker’s feeling of loss doesn’t stem solely from the missing piece of their body in asking: “is that the only reason you feel loss?” Loss remains an overarching theme of the speaker’s experience, and they have projected this loss directly onto their body disconnect instead of confronting the other sources. This poem, and the broader discussion of bodily disconnect, acts as a powerful and jarring exploration of the places we store blame when grieving, and the reconciliation that may occur once we confront that blame.

White America appears in Igusti’s collection as its own self-imposed character, interjecting into the speaker’s life in an attempt to tell them who they are and make them question what they know. In “bounty,” the character of white America makes an uninvited appearance in the last stanza as a man who steals the identity of generations effortlessly:

“a man inhales an eighth of all our grandmothers

into his lungs, exhales

what his body didn’t take this time onto my chest

shouts

            why the fuck are these muslims everywhere?”

The speaker sees this man as a broader representation of white people in America, breathing in the identities of Muslim women and spitting back hateful, ignore words, which remains an unfortunately accurate portrayal. In “altar,” the speaker describes how CNN’s description of what happened to them as a child as female genital mutilation disrupted their understanding of self, becoming victimized by a country they were “never supposed to set foot in.” The speaker writes:

“i feel obligation //

invite America in // white reporters and “saviors”

pour in by the dozens // break in everything in sight //

i ask // why have you ruined

everything?                                            they say America”

This relationship is clearly intrusive, victimizing the speaker without their permission in a way that paints white Americans as saviors when the speaker believes they have no space to comment on their experiences in the first place. The speaker then powerfully refuses their statements of pity, saying:

“do not write me off an obituary // no one died // i am still // here //

celebrating”

These lines rewrite the victimization white Americans have imposed upon people like the speaker, while also inverting the language of death the speaker has become accustomed to using in terms of themself. It seems through these experiences with white America they have overcome the death narrative found throughout the rest of the collection, resisting the labels placed upon them by people outside of their culture and declaring themself alive.

Igusti’s writing style requires their reader to take their time reading and rereading each line, forcing us to keep discovering new meanings and truths with each consumption of their work. Igusti’s honesty and mastery of writing come together in a beautiful illustration of grief, joy, loss, and celebration, leaving their reader with a necessary, and sometimes jarring insight into the complicated and unique experiences of a Muslim, female, Indonesian, queer identity.

Igusti, Dena. Cut Woman. Game Over Books, 2020. https://www.gameoverbooks.com/product-page/cut-woman.

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Darah Schillinger is a rising senior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying English Literature with a double minor in Creative Writing and Philosophy. She previously interned for the literary magazine EcoTheo Review in summer 2020 and has had poetry published in both her school literary journal, AVATAR, and in the Spillwords Press Haunted Holidays series for 2020. Darah currently lives in Perry Hall, Maryland with her parents and in her free time she likes to write poetry and paint.

Happy National Poetry Month!

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Tenderness and Terrific Language: A Review of Escape Velocity by Kristin Kowalski Ferragut by Naomi Thiers

By Naomi Thiers

Tenderness. Muscular, crisp language that uses scientific terms. Elegiac poems with earthy tones. Poems in nonce forms (a form made up by the writer for that particular poem). A sense of inclusiveness—of a speaker who welcomes to her embrace both odd metaphors that somehow work and people from her past who have hurt or exasperated her—and also embraces odd words (misanthrope, plushy, shifty-sharp). All these are things I find in Kristin Kowalski Ferragut’s new book, Escape Velocity.

I kept coming back to the idea of tenderness reading these poems. In the speaker/writer’s approach to life, I feel a suspension of judgment; here’s someone who displays great, gentle fondness for the world, who finds joy in a tiger lily, “our beer-soaked weekends,” or in the small ways someone tries their best, even in the crappiest year of their life. How often is tenderness the main feeling suffusing a collection these days? Especially a collection drawing heavily on imagery from physics, meteorology, transportation, and machinery. Take one of my favorites, “Change Takes Energy.” It mixes scientific facts with the raw feelings of divorce and lonely parenting, then ends in momentum:

Thunderstorms rotate into hurricanes, rockets hit

escape velocity over 25 thousand miles per hour, birthday cake

bakes at 350 degrees to tender perfection. No reason to expect

any leftovers. Babies can’t loan you thirty bucks

and butterflies won’t take out the trash upon emerging

from the chrysalis. And she isn’t the one with whom,

You tied the knot, fumbling hands recalling torn-through

mittens on the rope tow because the hill was just too

steep and you never did learn to ski. Gloriously

happy with the band on your finger, all that hide and seek

behind you. He wouldn’t keep you safe or bring you

soup, but still a kind of resting place. Buried beneath

pills and knives, scars and scarves, you’ll never find

him now. You fueled the escape and don’t quite begrudge

it, except in what is misunderstood as finite. All these

Worries of loss overlook what science shows us—renewable

energy in wind, tides, sun, your heart and the smile

you give your kids after taking out the trash.

Each section of the book is named for a term or principle in physics. The section, “Force” deals with two realities: the ache of great changes happening—being driven from home by a fire, hurricanes blowing everything we own away, divorce—and with leaning into change by finding deep friendships and love in late middle age (I don’t know, of course, if the speaker is the poet in these poems—that’s nunmy business—but to me, the speaker of most poems sounds like a middle-aged woman). Hey, Kowalski Ferragut seems to say, there are fresh ways to write about falling in (or losing) love. Two poems in a nonce form (a 3-line stanza with a pattern imposed on the indentation) reflect this. Again, tenderness shows up. Here’s the first stanzas of “Whispers Enough” about new love:

She wanted to love like

a whisper;

Him leaning

in, breath on

cheek; listening.

Her lips curved

upward reaching for

sky; his hands holding

hips to anchor

them both, a kind of home.

Nests, cabins, caves –

homes as well. She considers

tapestry or making do.

And here’s three stanzas from “Transgendered Ex at Son’s Birthday Party,” about an awkward situation involving a past partner:

I think to change into a T-shirt,

something in which I can chase kids with water guns,

something that disregards cleavage and shoulder.

You arrive in a pretty little dress.

It’s edgy, a sweetheart neckline

white with black trim and little crickets and bees

       perched about.

. . .

I give you a hug and you feel dewy, like a woman glistening.

     Never before good at forgetting, I cannot now remember

what it was like to be yours.

In the section “At Rest,” the poet gets face to face with loss—the death of parents and friends, the burying of a long marriage. But a very subtly funny poem (there are several such poems in the collection) starts off the section. One thing I know about Kowalski Ferragut is she’s a special ed teacher—and she surely has a twisted mind to come up with “If Eulogies Read Like IEPs”:

She demonstrated relative strength

in solving simple equations but required

support to solve multi-step word problems.

. . .

She took on too much. Did too little.

Lacked perspective to know this millennium

is not a Renaissance. She required reminders

that dinnertime came very fucking night.

Although observers note she acted weird,

she maintained efforts to seem normal

This poet observes, with openness and curiosity, people and stories around her: a tantrum-y child (“Repress Nothing”), a quiet man visiting his pet’s grave (“Sugarloaf Pet Gardens”), an imagined 20-something girl who buys a used “Vintage 69” shirt the speaker once owned (“Midlife Legacy”) and falls passionately for her date when she wears it. These poems tell common stories that follow common laws of attraction, repulsion, gravity, and they make me think of a quote I read recently, I think said by Mary Karr, poet, essayist, and memoirist: “Most of what happens to people in life is banal—unless it’s happening to you.” I think of that quote because the stories, people, and emotions weaving through these poems don’t feel banal; Kowalski Ferragut makes them remarkable through language.

Kowalski Ferragut, Kristin. 2021. Escape Velocity. kelsaybooks.com.

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Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Reality vs. Memory: A Book Review of How to Sit by Tyrese Coleman

By Rachel Vinyard

“Time doesn't heal all wounds. It may dull the pain of some of them; help make the stabbing, the healing process, more tolerable. It may make you forget that you were even injured, for a moment, but time doesn't heal everything. Time—waiting, anticipating, wondering, hoping—can make things worse, and when those unhealed wounds inevitably reopen, you feel all the pain again.”

Tyrese Coleman’s How to Sit is a collection of essays and stories that make up the memoir of a young black woman who aims to share her trauma. Coleman shares her experiences of sexual abuse and familial discourse, growing up poor, and sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of her mother and grandmother. Coleman’s writing is an exploration of self and an expression of trauma healing. A common idea throughout the collection is this line between fiction and reality. How much of our memories are actually accurate? And why does some of the trauma that we remember feel like a story rather than an event that actually happened? Coleman explores the idea that our memories are not factual. They are based largely on emotion and how past events affected us. There are always multiple sides to a story. Coleman writes in an author’s note that “this collection of nonfiction and not-quite-nonfiction is intended to make you wonder what is and what isn’t true, and whether or not that matters.”

Reading through the collection, I found myself wondering how I can relate to the text and what Coleman describes she went through. Coleman talks about growing up poor, her relationship with a careless mother and a judgmental grandmother. She explains her struggles with poverty, race, and sexual trauma. Her stories are personal but unfortunately not unique. Whether it's the point that women are seen as sexual objects to some men, that this patriarchal ideology is ingrained in the minds of mother figures, or that you are forced to make sacrifices when you are growing up as a poor young black woman, Coleman gets her point across. It’ll either open your eyes to very real and personal struggles some women go through or put your own life into a new perspective. At its core, the memoir relays the idea of looking into the past, whether it be the past of yourself or your family, and uncovers unresolved trauma. In the end, Coleman explains how she was able to move on and finally begin to heal from the trauma she endured.

This memoir aims to share the reality of how distressing events can affect you years in the future. Without explicitly saying it, Coleman talks about symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), explaining how looking back at traumatic events can be a blurry experience. A common symptom of PTSD is dissociation, a process in which the mind will distance itself from a traumatic situation. This sort of paralytic freeze response may also cause the person to form a wall of amnesia between them and the traumatic memory, as to better cope with the traumatic experience. This dissociative amnesia makes it difficult for a person to be able to distinguish fact from fiction within their own traumatic memories (see here). PTSD can blur the lines between what feels like a real memory and a dream. It’s impossible to remember details of everything that has ever happened to you, but when a person struggles with PTSD or has dealt with trauma, the realities of traumatic memories might be blurred with details the person implemented to fill in the blanks. The brain is attempting to salvage sanity in the moment of trauma, resulting in the later questioning of What is real and what is false.

As a collection of nonfiction, some passages written like fiction, How to Sit is very engaging and story-like. A lot of the memoir includes digging into memories and going along with Coleman on her timeline-bouncing journey, uncovering trauma and beginning to process it. Many parts of the collection read like an internal monologue. The idea of fact versus fiction in terms of memories connects readers to the writing, allowing the audience to question along with Coleman in her healing journey. She finds truth in her memories by writing, “If this were fiction, we would’ve gotten to this part by now.”.

Coleman’s writing in How to Sit is moving and relatable. Reading this memoir, I unearthed feelings within myself that I may not have realized were so strong. Some of Coleman’s descriptions of sexual assault and the shame she felt from the mother figures in her life regarding who she was pained me to read. I didn’t understand why I felt so personally affected. The things I read in this memoir surely didn’t happen to me. We came from two completely different backgrounds. But the more I read and the more I heard Tyrese’s voice echoing her broken past, I realized that even though I didn’t relate to the exact circumstances, I related to the feelings. Reading this memoir is revolutionary to those who feel as though there is a fog around their own childhood memories. It allows you to reach inward and discover your own fact versus fiction if you so choose.

After reading this collection, I felt more willing to dig into my own past and start on my own healing journey. Coleman bravely shares her truth and poses the idea that the past we remember is just as important as what really happened. She explores the idea of fiction versus nonfiction in her own life and memories and eloquently expresses how this blurred line has affected her healing process. She shares the reality of how she felt, the validity she has over her emotions despite some of her memories feeling false or story-like. Traumatic experiences don’t have to look a certain way. What matters is that it affected you. What matters is how you go forward into healing.

Coleman, Tyrese L. How to Sit. Mason Jar Press, 2018.

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Rachel Vinyard is an emerging author from Maryland and the fall 2021 publications intern at Yellow Arrow Publishing. She is working toward a BA in English at Towson University and has been published in its literary magazine Grub Street. She was previously the fiction editor of Grub Street and hopes to continue editing in the future. Rachel is also a mental health advocate and aims to spread awareness of mental health issues through literature. You can find her on Twitter @RikkiTikkiSavvi and on Instagram @merridian.official.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

How Our Roots Define Us: A Review of Dannie Ruth’s Inside the Orb of an Oracle

By Darah Schillinger

In her book, Inside the Orb of an Oracle (2020), Dannie Ruth transforms everyday images into art, bringing to life both grief and joy in the moments we may overlook. This collection of poetry illustrates how death and destruction belong alongside love and intimacy, combating the heavy reality of grief with the small, beautiful parts of life that may seem insignificant, like the grass on your toes drifting to the bottom of a pool. The poems manage to critique American values while also praising the cultures that have formed in spite of those values, recognizing that despite America’s deep systematic failures, it is the resilience of its people that we must celebrate.

The chapbook begins and ends with family, first describing the “equilibrium” of her own birth between her parents and sibling and seeing herself as “the end and the beginning of the whole.” The chapbook then ends with short, poetic descriptions of everyone significant in the poet’s own life, bookending the poems themselves with the immortalization of family. Ancestral ties and family are the dominating themes throughout the collection, as Ruth consistently refers back to her own roots and identity as a black woman in America.

We continue to discover more of our story, but most impeccable is this untethered bond that has bred four generations of black.

 -I am a descendant of my great great grandfather’s third wife.

There is importance impressed upon her roots that cannot be ignored, revitalizing the idea of ancestry in a time when we’d rather forget the past than learn from it. Ruth’s emphasis on family and her roots seems to give meaning to the present, finding self within the stories and experiences passed down through generations. In “car ride lullaby,” the speaker describes a family reunion and the sights, sounds, and smells that defined her childhood:

 The smell of grass charcoal, and old bay outback,

out front a street race

sunlight bouncing off dark backs

stretched arms and legs at the finish line

The smell of black and mild’s, beer, weed and wine, cigarettes and raspy conversations

These images are so routine yet illustrated so beautifully it’s as if we have transported there ourselves, watching everything happen in vibrant flashes of color and sound. The moments of joy and daydreams we are given perfectly contrast the grief and violence we see on other pages, giving a well-rounded, complex look into the speaker’s personal experiences.

The theme of ‘the linear’ defines Ruth’s poetry, imagining the white narrative as the default line of truth that excludes every other narrative it has erased. The linear is used to criticize America’s treatment of black voices and engage her readers in a conversation of colonialism, advertising the linear as a polished version of America's truth in need of critique. In “line leader,” the poem begins with:

 His story is linear like the schools teach

And ends with:

 He soothes:

No one else will breathe

our air. Fight against us

if you dare, you of darker

skin & coarser hair.

We are not told explicitly who the dominating “He” is but given the language of othering provided by the ending stanza it seems the “He” is actually a personified image of the white, male narrative of American colonialism. The “He” is a symbol of the oppressor, real but elusive, because of the sheer pervasion of whiteness within our society. As we know, there cannot be one dominating social group without the oppression of another, and with her poetry, Ruth puts into words the frustration, anger, and helplessness one feels when fighting a system that oppresses them.

Like the linear, death is central to Ruth’s storytelling, acting as a grounding force that sobers us and reminds us to savor the moments we may take for granted. In “only time we heard dad curse,” the speaker begins the poem with:

someone from the neighborhood shot a dog

& tossed this death over our fence

Here we are given a glimpse into the speaker’s own relationship with death, turning it into a tangible force that can be thrown away and thrust upon us. If we view death as someone forced, it revisits the old conversation about the unfortunate reality of unpredictable death, which Ruth also touches upon in her poems about gun violence and disease. From “guns”:

They reside at your local McDonald’s, Wal-Mart,

maybe even your grandmother’s purse.

dependable, destructive, damned,

damn near patriotic.

 And from “my world”:

I had seen so many die

suddenly, slowly, miraculously

I began to understand the value

of a life and a life unfulfilled.

Death becomes visible in these poems, reminding us of our own mortality without instilling the same fear we’re accustomed to. Death becomes a handgun, the sterile white inside a hospital, the corpse of an animal. To Ruth, death is no longer something abstract and looming, but rather something sad and very real—something that can be tossed from one yard to another.

Not only is Dannie Ruth’s Inside the Orb of an Oracle a beautiful, free-verse glimpse into what makes a black, female poet in America but it is also a symphony of joy and color, death, and the whispers of slavery still manifesting around us, all compiled into one gorgeous chapbook. After experiencing it for myself, it is clear we must all read and reread until every smell is experienced, every image seen, and every poem is absorbed into the warmth of our chests.

Ruth, Dannie. Inside the Orb of an Oracle. C&R Press, 2020. https://crpress.org/shop/insidetheorbofanoracle

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Darah Schillinger is a rising senior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying English Literature with a double minor in Creative Writing and Philosophy. She previously interned for the literary magazine EcoTheo Review in summer 2020 and has had poetry published in both her school literary journal, AVATAR, and in the Spillwords Press Haunted Holidays series for 2020. Darah currently lives in Perry Hall, Maryland with her parents, and in her free time she likes to write poetry and paint.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Can Old Testament Stories About Women Sing to Us Today? A Review of Manna in the Morning by Jacqueline Jules

By Naomi Thiers

I think it’s fair to say the Old Testament itself is a character in Jacqueline Jules’ recent poetry collection Manna in the Morning. Bible stories and personages, including those lesser known, are the central element in so many poems that the Old Testament becomes a presence as we read—not oppressively, but in a way that probes freshly what’s going on with those old tales and weird, flawed characters.

This includes female characters beyond the usual Eve and Esther: Dinah*, Miriam*, Jochebed* and more (just for fun, throughout this review I’ve marked lesser-known female Biblical characters Jules write about with a * and there’s a key at the end!). Even poems that don’t focus on Old Testament stories or characters swirl around the author’s spirituality as a Jewish woman. They bring into Jules’ thinking about her life in the 21st-century metaphors or life lessons from people and situations in Genesis, Exodus, the prophets, etc.

Jules’s poems are built with straightforward statements and elemental images that lift from the ordinary through pithy lines and repetition. Her best poems use a touch light enough for the energy she’s drawing from old stories to come wrapped in mystery. Consider the entangling of modern marriage with Adam and Eve in “Prenuptials”:

 Vows exchanged. Papers signed.

Will they bind me back to Adam’s rib?

To move from that day on

in synchrony, for fear

of ripping apart the flesh we share.

Eve was a bulge beneath the armpit

whittled when the first wife, Lilith,*

ran away. Must I leave the garden,

become a demon,

to preserve the person

who precedes the wedding?

Wonderful are those poems in which Jules lets in the darkness (which does flood many Old Testament stories) and probes deeper into tales of Biblical women who go almost unnamed even when they’re essential to a story. As “Wondering about Dinah and Leah” says, “Bible stories are skeletal, bones/fleshed out through exegesis--/ words, sentences, translations/ scrutinized, interpreted./ And most dwell on the men, on actions, not emotions.” Jules speculates on aspects of lives that are tiny footnotes in the Old Testament, such as (in the same poem), Dinah, whose rape sets off family vengeance:

 . . . we don’t hear from Dinah

herself, only what was done to her.

And we hear nothing from Leah,

her mother, who should have been waiting,

worrying, ready to comfort.

Did Dinah find solace with Leah?

The woman remembered

as the unloved wife, the one forced on

Jacob instead of the sister he favored.

I wonder as I read the exploits of men.

Perhaps because I’ve chosen a faith (Quakerism) which holds to continuing revelation—that anything we know about God or our connection with God is forever evolving, being newly revealed. I love what Jules does in “Hannah’s Heart.” She shows the significance—in the journey of Jewish spirituality and Jewish people’s sense of how they relate to God—of a personal act, Hannah* crying out to God because she’s barren. A woman who can’t have children weeping—nothing to see there, right? But “Hannah’s Heart” implies that this ordinary woman’s tears were a turning point:

 Before Hannah wept

in the sanctuary at Shiloh,

we didn’t believe it possible

to beseech the One above

without blood.

We burned bulls to please.

Men measured portions.

More for the fertile wife.

less for the barren one.

Unfortunately, some poems don’t let the implications a Biblical story may have for folks today float through the language and images—they stick up a signpost. Phrases point firmly to the “lesson.” “Esau’s Choice” considers why Esau forgave Jacob, who conspired to steal his inheritance, saying simply: “The Bible reveals no details, no reason/ why Esau kissed his brother and wept. // We can only imagine. . .” Before the reader has time to let that language lead them to ponder their own family betrayals, the poem preaches: “Hope that Esau’s choice/ will be the one we choose.”  “Facing the Wilderness” follows a subtle description of two Israelites who were rewarded for having great faith with “An instructive tale for me,” and a poem musing about how much toil went into building a tabernacle, as told in Exodus 25, closes with “Inspiration for me/as I struggle to build/ a space inside my heart/ where holiness can dwell.”

As a person who takes a spiritual life seriously, I appreciate what Jules is doing. Bible stories, chewed on, can give us strength to build a space inside “where holiness can dwell.” Jules dedicates the book to “my Mussar group at Temple Rodef Shalom, Virginia” (Mussar is an ancient Jewish spiritual practice that explores how to live an ethical inner life, not just follow rules). She’s writing out of a deep-rooted tradition dedicated to exploring how contemplation of scripture brings us closer to our heart, to holiness. And many poems—like “Queen Esther”—do invite us to explore, without stressing a “lesson”:

“If I if I perish, I perish

The young woman tells the mirror.

Donning jewels and perfume,

she strides in silk gown toward her fate.

“If I perish, I perish.”

Is it really courage that lifts her chin?

A noble choice to swing from the gallows

rather than hide in silence?

“If I perish, I perish.”

Or does action offer its own rewards

when you’re likely to hang

by the neck either way?

I’ll end with my favorite poem, “Dialogue with the Devine”—a woman finding her way toward joy in the work of keeping the faith:

When I petition,

I’m on my knees, bruised,

by the hardness of the floor.

. . . obsessed by the squish

of mud under my sandals,

ignoring the Red Sea,

miraculously parted.

When I praise,

I’m on my feet, billowing

like clouds in the sapphire sky.

I’m Miriam*

holding a tambourine,

dancing in the desert, grateful

for the smallest excuse

to sing.

 KEY: Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob was (the text implies) raped by a Hivite; her brothers took revenge on all the Hivites. Miriam, Moses’ sister and a prophetess, sang when Pharoah’s army was destroyed. Jochebed, Moses’ mother, placed him in a basket in the river to save him from Pharoah’s command to kill Jewish male babies. Lilith was Adam’s wife before Eve. Hannah gave birth late in life to Samuel, who became a Hebrew judge.

Jules, Jacqueline. 2021. Manna in the Morning. Kelsay Books. kelsaybooks.com.

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Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing. If interested in writing reviews about recent books written by authors that identify as women (largely from other small presses), email editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com.

Poems About the Feelings We Don’t Talk About: A Review of Gigi Bella’s Big Feelings

By Darah Schillinger, written June 2021

 In her first full-length collection, Big Feelings (from Game Over Books, a Boston-based publisher of marginalized voices), Gigi Bella creates a place of understanding—a place for her audience to relate to something bigger than themselves—by coupling raw honesty with down-to-earth humor that together elevates the soul. Though her poems embody unapologetic womanhood, Big Feelings celebrates the vulnerable alongside the feminine, acknowledging that vulnerability comes with the uncertainty and struggle that defines our narratives.

The book’s story begins in the acknowledgments, where she writes:

“the world is always ending but somehow it’s weirdly never all the way over. we only have each other & our stories & our reckless dreams. we are all just a big tangled ball of our big big feelings.”

The language of apocalypse reflects the unprecedented times the world has lived through and the resilience of humanity, immediately emphasizing the importance of storytelling and understanding one another. Her thank-you(s) comfort the soul, presenting as a thick page of genuine, poetic connection that guides us into the stories she tells in a way that politely invites us to listen.

A ghost metaphor defines the early poems of Big Feelings, appearing and disappearing whenever the speaker needs a way to describe the transparent identity of a person who feels as if “something used to be there but [they] can’t find it anymore” (11). Ghost girl is an alter-ego that the poem’s speaker uses when the weight of feelings becomes overwhelming, and it isn’t until the ghost becomes a solid, living person that the speaker replaces ghosts with the idea of living for better reasons. The speaker “evaporate(s) into the ghost that they have made [her] into” (11), but then replaces that image of death with all the reasons she has to live, such as taking care of a street kitten, staying to love someone else who deserves it, or even living just to prove to others that you can.

In the poem, “ode to ducky the bodega kitten,” the speaker sees herself in the kitten’s life in the “big trash city,” which reminds her “that / feeling small / only means that i am / so so alive” (14). Taking care of the kitten seems to be the first significant step from the speaker’s ghost identity, realizing that her own survival of the things that make her feel invisible is what makes living worthwhile. In the poem, “twitter sestina for suicidal ideation,” the speaker shifts from kitten to romantic partner, describing love as “just staying when you could be anywhere” (29). Choosing to leave the comfort of her ghost persona to be present for her partner is synonymous with love—a selfless reason for remaining alive. Bella parallels the speaker’s relationship with that of Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson as a recognizable allusion to what she has experienced with her partner while also drawing attention to the time and care needed when loving someone struggling with mental health. Pete and Ariana make several appearances throughout the book, acting as a familiar connection between the speaker’s partner, and the public relationship of two people that she sees an aspect of her relationship in.

The speaker then shifts to a funnier reason for living rooted in her ethnicity, where she asks, “isn’t that the most mexican thing? staying alive when it feels like no one wants you to?” (41) The speaker finds humor in her Great-Aunt Esperanza’s determination to outlive her sister, identifying her stubbornness with her identity as a Mexican woman. She uses the stereotypes attributed to her identity to make a point about living as defiance, a message that carries with her throughout the book. The speaker’s ethnic identity is a cohesive part of the joy she has found in living, as seen in the poem, “lessons i learned from selena”:

bedazzle until your brown is so loud, you can sew it into a dress

my grandmother is frida kahlo, molded into hospital bed and we are surviving and we are alive

These recognitions of the connection between defiance and ethnicity seem to tie into the speaker’s will to live, proving her point of living in spite of feeling as though others don’t want you to. The ghost image is a visual reminder of the speaker’s discomfort with the complexity of emotions, but the language of living for others and in spite of others overpowers any comfort one may find in fading away.

Big Feelings also discusses abuse and assault in a way that helps readers who are victims feel understood while simultaneously educating those who may not understand the severity or impact of the trauma that victims go through. In the poem, “FROM MY EX,” the speaker capitalizes the entire poem to make the distinction that it is a new, more aggressive speaker, and writes, “I NEVER HIT YOU / ONLY CALLED YOU WASTED” (20). The language used is obviously verbally abusive, yet the new speaker ironically defends himself by stating that he was never physically abusive and therefore a “GOOD MAN” (20). Bella adds this poem to show the ways people can manipulate their partners and abuse them even without physical confrontation, sharing these experiences to show others what non-physical abuse can sound like. In “[good screams//bad screams],” the speaker opens up about her sexual assault and the lasting trauma that comes with it, running sentences and words together to visually represent the confusion and emotional disorientation that victims may feel in the aftermath. The speaker immediately calls

out the subject’s performative feminism, saying (34):

“. . .when you vote or post on facebook about women’s rights or think about your mom & your sister i want you to remember my face”

She brings to our attention the contrast between saying, posting, or writing about feminism, and having actual, genuine respect for women, two things that look the same but are vastly different in practice. Claiming to support women or minorities is not enough to make one a feminist, and Bella’s ability to recognize that performance and call it out so others can learn and grow from it while remaining so vibrantly honest and vulnerable with her audience makes her an incredible advocate for victims and herself.

Bella has taken the time to write from a place of personal struggle and shared it with the world to help others feel seen, having used pop culture and religious imagery to reflect the kind of modern storytelling deserving of a modern audience. Between the blazing social critiques, discussions of violence against women, and the draining reality of mental health struggles, Big Feelings has solidified itself as a space of understanding for those who feel invisible, reminding us to embrace those uncomfortable feelings we’re so reluctant to discuss. Thanks to Bella, we can all feel the same big feelings with the turn of a page.

Bella, Gigi. Big Feelings. Game Over Books, 2020.

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Darah Schillinger is a rising senior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying English Literature with a double minor in Creative Writing and Philosophy. She previously interned for the literary magazine EcoTheo Review in summer 2020 and has had poetry published in her school literary journal, AVATAR, and in the Spillwords Press Haunted Holidays series for 2020. Darah currently lives in Perry Hall, Maryland with her parents and in her free time she likes to write poetry and paint.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Poems of a Loss We’ve No Ritual For—Miscarriage: A Review of Chloe Yelena Miller’s Viable

By Naomi Thiers

Chloe Yelena Miller’s book Viable (you can find it at www.chloeyelenamiller.com) is that semi-unusual thing, a collection of poems we need right now—because it touches on a human experience that cuts to the bone but isn’t often spoken directly about. I don’t think there is enough non-gauzy poetry published about childbirth itself and about caring for a very young infant—the true complexity and marvel of it. And there’s definitely not much poetry about losing a child through a miscarriage. I can hardly think of any collections of poetry centered on that kind of loss, only a few individual poems, such as “The Premonition” by Sharon Olds from The Gold Cell.

So, I’m truly glad to read Miller’s strong book Viable with its first section—“Carried”—entirely about the ache of losing a child two months into a pregnancy. The remaining two sections of the book express moving through a second pregnancy that does go full term, and the longest section, “Carry,” describes the birth of this son and the first years of life with him (though even this successful pregnancy carries a shadow of fear because of the recent miscarriage). These are situations, emotion-tangles, our culture has no rituals or pat phrases for, but that need to be talked about. Miller’s honest poetry invites us in.

Exploring aspects of language itself, including Italian grammar, helps Miller express the confused feelings and questions around losing a child you’ve never truly known, as in these stanzas from “Short Duet/Dualities”:

Words rhythm originates in blood flow, the opening and closing of chambers. Internal iambic pentameter. Here I am, left with one song. The doctor probes, searches for where you were.

The noun miscarriage conducts images like electricity. My mother pushed her baby in a tall-red carriage. Here sunshine, there are a new bonnet.

Shocks, seen and unseen, beneath the tires.

More often, Miller’s style is minimalistic with often one vivid image from nature flaring out. This works well for writing about shadowy grief our culture doesn’t have a label for. Here’s “Wasn’t”:

Before anyone else knew

I was pregnant,

I wasn’t.

I think of her as female

(to keep the narrative clear.)

Stemless cherry blossoms landed whole

on the sidewalk,

bright sun flattened the landscape

Cherry blossoms—hinting at the contrast between the bright, hot loveliness of spring in the Washington D.C. area (where Miller and I both live) and the bleakness of loss—return in my favorite poem in this section:

Objects

To mourn a woman,

carry her picture, wear her lapel pin.

There is nothing to wear

or carry after a miscarriage.

In Japan, mothers mourn

lost water children.

Gardens of small statues

in red knitted hats, bibs.

Hands in my pockets,

I stand at the edge of the Tidal Basin,

wilted cherry blossoms above and below.

Some of the subtlest, most crafted poems in terms of sound are those few which paint the speaker’s second pregnancy when awe mixes with some fear: “An infinity/ in your smallness, rapid growth./ So many parts we need to craft/for you to walk, eat or dance on a stage.”

Though it was years ago, I can remember pregnancy. The feeling of the baby alive and shifting inside during those months is an exceptionally hard sensation to funnel into words. Miller gets at it, as well as this time’s fizzy hope, in this poem which draws on the Italian concept of Iniziare (meaning to initiate or begin):

Italian vocabulary: Iniziare

A small liquid universe shifts

as I walk outdoors;

baby carried below my heart’s

iambic pentameter.

Fluids and doors opening.

You hear voices of to-be-loved parents.

So much yet-to-be

outside this expanding world.

Things really take off in the book’s final and often joyful section, which starts with a poem describing the physical sensations accompanying a Cesarean section—something I never thought to read in a poem. But why shouldn’t this way of giving birth, with its own odd feelings and atypical way of greeting the newborn, be brought alive through poetry? Many women experience a Cesarean—why shouldn’t we get this kind of news from poetry? Here’s most of “Three Weeks Early”:

Most of me, all of you, hidden:

blue curtain along my bare clavicle.

My head turns to one side to vomit,

jaw rattled with cold, I gasp.

Your father holds my hand, my face.

I think of my mother,

cold enough to ask for socks in labor.

I can’t feel my feet to know if they are cold.

You hear my cries before I hear yours.

You first see my wet face

from the distance of your father’s arms.

The sense of touch, more than any other, suffuses these poems about caring for an infant. Without being too graphic, they tell it like it is: the highs and the exhaustions, the non-gauzy reality of breastfeeding (“there’s a bruise on my breast/from your knocking for milk”), the rabbit hole of fascination with the baby you fall down. Many of the poems have short stanzas and short enjambed lines; they are full of repeating physical images (the baby’s mouth, fingers, skin pressing skin, sleep in all its stages, or lack of) and sometimes shift quickly from one odd image to an entirely new one. This mirrors the intense, enclosed, fuzzy quality of the first months with a new baby, that strangeness of suddenly being with a minuscule person you barely know and trying to fathom its habits. I’ll quote from two poems, first one that straps you into the intensity of a howling baby:

Empty, I’m a renamed woman – Mom –

holding a baby. He screams;

tonsils red, tongue vibrates,

like a revving engine.

He screams and screams and screams.

Oh, the screams!

(From “Birth Announcement”)

and one that taps into the intimacy of nursing:

My fingers support your infant skull,

above and below your ears.

Such fierce hunger at my breast:

your jaw shakes side to side,

toe-starting shiver to wail.

Finally, you settle,

and I understand hunger,

the loneliness of it all.

(From “Fierce Hunger”)

There’s one last section of five poems, each an apology, including an apology to the baby lost through miscarriage. These poems are short, cryptic, and express a gentle ache that lingers even as the speaker is, by the end, centered in a happy family (as depicted in the book’s lovely final poem, “Your Creation Story,” addressed to her son at age 6).

Miller’s book itself may get some people talking about miscarriage, but in addition, the book offers three pages of resources, poetry collections and memoirs that touch on pregnancy, miscarriage, and motherhood, and books dealing with grief. It’s quite a lot packed into one book. As one of Viable’s blurbs reads “it’s all there: the hope, the loneliness, the wreckage and the love.”

Miller, Chloe Yelena. Viable. Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021. Available at https://lilypoetryreview.blog/lily-poetry-review-press.

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Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Burning Words of Women to Be Heard: A Review of The Fire Inside by Zora’s Den

By Bailey Drumm

The Fire Inside: Collected Stories & Poems from Zora’s Den is a collection of prose and poetry written by members of Zora’s Den, a writing group centered in Baltimore, Maryland, about the empowerment of a group of writers expressing womanhood and the power women hold in their autonomy. Zora’s Den is a place where these women can express themselves unapologetically, with support, encouragement, and sisterhood.

The Den began as a Facebook writing community of Black women that was started in 2017 by Victoria Adams-Kennedy and named after Zora Neale Hurston. The foreword, written by Zora’s niece, Lucy Anne Hurston, and the preface explain the inspiration for the collection and how Zora led these women to write with “fire in the belly.”

In the midst of the cultural awakening that the U.S. is currently undergoing, this collection is a moving example of the way women, especially BIPOC women, think, feel, and have interacted within a blinded world. And in The Fire Inside, there are moments of subtlety and an admiration of their bodies, juxtaposed next to pain and suffering under the hold of a man’s aggression.

As I looked over my notes for this review, there was a word that I wrote next to my comments time and time again: POWER. The power of the Den itself is moving. The collection as a whole is powerful. Then, to look at every piece individually and really explore the embers of each fire burning inside the collection, it’s mystic, overwhelming, and beautiful. The piece “Legacy” by Chenise Lytrelle exemplifies just that, rounding out the collection by recalling the pain and torment experienced by women who came before her, who were able to walk on with pride and awakening. That same bold feeling of pride punches the reader from the first piece, “Finding Zora,” by Jacqueline Johnson, as she writes, “We wore our braids like crowns.” The collection also explores the relationships between mother and daughter, alongside the character’s relationships and struggles with folklore, tradition, ancestry, religion, and culture.  

Throughout the pages, there is love, unity, and confidence in the tone of each piece, even if a piece itself is addressing cruel, degrading actions. There are no curtains to hide behind for these women when it comes to discussing freedom, oppression, and growth. They tackle the individual struggles that young women suffer, and how it is possible to grow stronger, year by year. Though every person experiences different pressures, pains, and expectations, as women of color, Zora’s Den experiences it together.

The Fire Inside allows the reader to glimpse the outcome of the Den’s figurative kitchen table, where the women can speak freely and honestly about their grief, pleasure, dignity, and other experiences as Black women and the outcome surely is a flame.

Kennedy, V., ed. The Fire Inside: Collected Stories & Poems from Zora’s Den. Baltimore: ZD Press, November 17, 2020. Available as a paperback or eBook from Amazon. Visit the group’s website to learn more about a recent call for submissions, for The Fire Inside (Volume II).

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Bailey Drumm is a fiction writer whose work has been featured in Grub Street, and whose digital art was displayed as the cover art for the 2017 edition of Welter. She is an M.F.A. graduate from the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program at the University of Baltimore. Her collection of short stories, The Art of Settling, was published in the spring of 2019. Find out more at Bailey-Drumm.square.site.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

An Expedition into the Nature of Our Hearts

Read Siobhan McKenna’s book review of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 3 (Re)Formation issue (fall 2020). Information about where to find World of Wonders and (Re)Formation is below.

Catalpa trees or catalpa speciosa can grow to be almost 60 ft tall, have “foot-long leaves,” and “can give two brown girls in western Kansas a green umbrella from the sun.” So begins Aimee Nezhukumatathil in the first essay of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. This book of 28 lyrical essays weaves together fascinating tidbits about species in our natural world with Nezhukumatathil’s own journey of finding self-acceptance and the meaning of living in a country where being ‘other’ must be navigated on a daily basis. Through the essays, characteristics found within nature reflect Nezhukumatathil’s own qualities as she moves through everyday life.

In her included essays—most titled after a natural wonder and its scientific name—Nezhukumatathil acts as the narrator of a National Geographic documentary. As our guide, she begins in the landscape of her youth where she realized that growing up with a Filipina mother and Indian father set her apart from other children and would color nearly every aspect of her life in the years to come. From there, she whisks the reader from the sweet fields of love as she knew her husband was the one when he “didn’t blanch” at her adoration for the corpse flower (whose scent is reminiscent of “a used diaper pail left out in the late August sun” (70)) to the depths of motherhood where in swimming with a whale shark, she realized that she was “unprepared to submit [herself] so completely to nature” (89) with the implications of the worst occurring: a motherless son.

Nezhukumatathil, an author of four other collections of poetry, spellbinds the reader with her sensory imagery. She compares the petals of a touch-me-not to something that “look[s] as if someone crossed a My Little Pony doll with a tiny firework” (25) and envelops the reader in the smell of a monsoon: like the “wind off the wings of an ecstatic teeny bat” mixed with “banana leaves drooping low,” and “clouds whirring so fast across the sky” (58–59). In fact, every essay is saturated in lush prose that transports the reader alongside Nezhukumatathil as she is slowly sipping a dragon fruit cocktail in “Mississippi when the air outside is like a napping dragon’s exhalations” (115).

But the beauty found in her lyricism does not detract from the gravitas of the messages that underlie her essays. As a daughter of immigrant parents, Nezhukumatathil calls us to be better to one another when faced with diversity and to not succumb to tropes where racism can be chalked up as a sign of older times or the ignorance of children.

In her essay “Monodon monoceros,” she speaks of channeling the narwhal’s preference for swimming through “chunky ice rather than open seas” (35–36) when a boy on her school bus “flipped his eyelids inside out” (38) after she explained to him that her mom was in fact Filipino and not Chinese. And in “Ambystoma mexicanum,” she presents that remembering the smile of an axolotl (thin and tough) “can help you smile as an adult even if someone on your tenure committee puts his palms together as if in prayer every time he sees you off-campus, and does a quick, short bow, and calls out, Namaste!” (45) despite telling him repeatedly that she’s Methodist. Nezhukumatathil demands that we alter what we teach our children about those different from ourselves and how we internalize these differences as adults. By illustrating these cringeworthy and far too common microaggressions, she cries for us to be curious, not assumptive about the questions to which we do not know the answers.

Yet, instead of seeking pity, Nezhukumatathil burns with a firm resolve to find home wherever her feet seep into the soil by calling on the natural world around her. Similar to a red-spotted newt, which takes time “wandering the forest floor before it decides which pond to call home” (139), Nezhukumatathil moved from places such as Arizona, Iowa, and Western New York, before settling in Mississippi with her husband. And although her move from Western New York was precipitated after she became weary “of acquaintances at the post office asking about ‘my people,’” she wonders what would have happened if she saw a red-spotted newt in the midst of a bleak New York winter “skittering under the surface of the ice” (142) as they often do. Like the perseverant newt, Nezhukumatathil thinks she might have stayed, calling to mind that “all this time, my immigrant parents had been preparing me to find solace in multiple terrains and hoping to create a feeling of home wherever I needed to be in this country” (143).

Nezhukumatathil’s disposition toward finding goodness in the face of adversity and using the natural world as a guiding light is what ultimately defines her work and seems especially timely in light of our country’s current social and ecological climate. To me, Nezhukumatathil’s essays serve as a call to action as unmatched wildfires continue to ravage the west coast and racial discrimination is brought to the front of a long-overdue national conversation. Her skillful synthesis of these intense topics into short digestible anecdotes—while still channeling hope—is the precise writing we need right now for us to feel stirred to work toward the daunting tasks of preserving our earth and dismantling racial injustice in our country.

As the compilation winds down, Nezhukumatathil introduces the reader to a Casuarius casuarius or southern cassowary. These flightless birds are native to New Guinea and Australia and are relied upon to preserve biodiversity as a keystone species. Most interestingly, Nezhukumatathil teaches us, in her colorful, rhythmic prose, cassowaries have a call that can’t be heard by humans, but only felt—a “rumble” (148) deep in our bones. She ponders on this feeling: “suppose that boom shaking in our body can be a physical reminder that we are all connected” (149). This musing echoes again and again as the reader encounters each creature and sees a reflection of themselves staring back. Because, Nezhukumatathil warns, in order to reform how we commune with human beings—nature—we must remember that all that is precious in our world will be lost if we do not slow down and feel the vibrations of the earth; feel the beat of each other’s hearts.

Paperback and pdf copies of (Re)Formation are available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore or through most online bookstores. Book of Wonders was published by Milkweed Editions (2020; 184 pages). For more information, visit milkweed.org/book/world-of-wonders.

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Siobhan McKenna is a middle child and a lover of bike-packing and practicing yoga. She enjoys writing essays, poetry, and long-winded letters to friends. For the past nine years Siobhan has lived in the charming city of Baltimore, but beginning in the spring she will start work as an ICU travel nurse—moving to a different city every three months to work, write, and explore all that this crazy, broken, and beautiful country holds. You can follow her on Instagram @sio_han.

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Guest Post - The Outcast Woman

Hi Everyone,

Brad here – I’m a new volunteer here at Yellow Arrow. (Learn more about the rest of our staff here.) One of the things that has drawn me to YAP is the part of its mission that involves giving a voice to the voiceless. This attraction is, in part, because YAP’s mission dovetails with my own academic interests, which have most recently been focused on a modernist technique that I usually refer to as “textual exclusion.” Textual exclusion is the manner in which authors silence marginalized – often female – voices in their texts, rather than simply describing characters’ alienation and exclusion and letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions. For the last couple of years, I have worked pretty exclusively on exploring this technique in a single, almost forgotten Italian novel called L’esclusa.

L’esclusa translates in English most happily as “the outcast woman” – my own translation of the novel is called simply The Outcast. This is the earliest novel written by Luigi Pirandello, who completed a first draft in 1893. The novel was eventually serialized in 1901, then published as a stand-alone volume in 1908, and finally published in its definitive edition in 1927. You struggling authors out there know very well that it can take many years for projects to see the light of day, but The Outcast’s road to publication was particularly long, dark, and twisty. The funny thing is, Pirandello wrote many highly regarded novels and short story collections early in his career, and later, when he shifted his main literary output from literary fiction to drama, his work gained international recognition, inspired Absurdism and any number of other modernist movements, and he eventually won a Nobel Prize for works like Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV. So why did this novel have such a hard time finding its way to publication?

The Outcast tells the story of Marta Ajala who, as our story begins, is a young wife who has been kicked out of her marital home by her husband, Rocco, after he has discovered her standing in their kitchen, reading a letter from a man he suspects is a potential suitor, Gregorio Alvignani. The strictures of 19th-century Sicilian village life being what they are, Rocco is compelled to “send her back” to her father’s house, despite her not having committed adultery, and indeed despite her being several months pregnant with their (Marta and Rocco’s) first child. This act puts into motion a series of events, including the death of her baby in childbirth, the loss of the family business and their home, and the death of her father, who agrees with Rocco’s decision and has retired from public life out of shame. She and her mother and sister are plunged into poverty. The people of the village, led by Rocco’s corrupt father, turn on her, and despite acing the national examination to become a teacher, she is not allowed to work for “moral” reasons. She flees to Palermo and starts a new life, but despite her ingenuity and drive, she encounters many of the same problems there. With nowhere left to turn, she is – irony of ironies – driven into the arms of Alvignani, who by that time has become a senator and is in a position to help her. In the end – spoilers ahead – Rocco has a change of heart as he and Marta sit vigil before his dying mother, who was kicked out of her home by Rocco’s father for reasons similar to those that compelled Rocco to send Marta packing. Rocco’s mother has, we come to learn, almost certainly committed suicide. In a final climactic scene, Rocco sees the error of his ways, and even though she is now pregnant with Alvignani’s child, he offers Marta his forgiveness, and the novel leaves us there, with what seems like something of a happy ending.

But it’s not a happy ending at all, and the deeper below the surface of the novel one gets, the clearer it is that Pirandello’s intentions are not to point us in that direction. Rocco has attempted a reconciliation more than once over the course of the novel, and whenever he has done so, Marta reminds anyone who will listen that it is not up to him to forgive her; she has not forgiven him (or her father, or the townspeople), and remains vehemently and consistently opposed to returning to her previous life, even if it means poverty and difficulty for her and what remains of her family. Of course, in that final scene, we don’t get to hear Marta’s response to Rocco, which is presumably why many critics have mistakenly reported that Marta and Rocco are reconciled at the end of the novel. In fact, we don’t get to hear Marta say a whole lot in the novel. She doesn’t even get to speak in earnest until Chapter 4 of The Outcast, at which point all of the major characters have discussed her situation at length, and her fate has been decided. Marta is young, capable, intelligent, and resourceful, but her patriarchal society does not recognize those qualities as being valuable in a woman, and as a result, they shut her out. Rather than just describe this exclusion, Pirandello opts to reinforce this point by what amounts to excluding her voice from the novel, at least at key points.

And this, I think, is why the novel had such a difficult road. It’s not because of the subject matter – there are plenty of late-nineteenth-century novels that take adultery as their theme, and plenty with wronged women and strong female protagonists. Pirandello is doing something different here. By excluding Marta’s voice, he makes a leap towards the modern by making us feel her absence. She is silenced. Her voice is lost, and, despite the novel’s faux-happy ending, that voice is not recovered. Indeed, the death of Rocco’s mother reinforces the potential tragedy of this loss of voice. Later, more outwardly experimental writers would use this sort of metatextuality to incredible effect – one can hardly imagine the masterpieces of high modernism and, for that matter, postmodernism, without it – but in the 1890s and 1900s, I’d like to suggest, the world just wasn’t quite ready for it yet.

Most novels try to uncover lost voices – to demonstrate oppression and exclusion – by telling. What I love about this novel and novels like it is that it does just the opposite; it shows us exclusion, and, in doing so, makes us as readers of the novel complicit in Marta’s silencing. That wasn’t easy for readers to understand a hundred years ago. But we’re catching up.

All the best,

Bradford A. Masoni

Book Review: Sonic Memories

It's happy hour on a Saturday. Cija Jefferson and I order fried chicken sandwiches and pile into a booth at a neighborhood bar in Baltimore. My one year old is diving under the table and over the seat in constant motion. Luckily it's only us and the bartender so she avoids getting trampled.We've come here to discuss writing and being a writer and her book, Sonic Memories. She is a generous conversationalist, always turning the talk back to ask about me and my writing. When I tell her I just want to get honest with my words, she nods furiously.That's because Jefferson's collection of essays is exactly that, a raw and honest account of selected stories from her life. As she takes the reader from childhood to present day, her ability to create scenes and dialog that feel real have me forgetting these were not memories from my own life. Each essay is relatable on such a basic, human level. She is able to tap into those emotions that form our collective experience effortlessly.I was particularly haunted by a chapter in her book about leaving her life behind on the East coast for greener pastures in California. This particular story really captured her experience of living in the moment, of enjoying life despite not knowing what lie ahead, and not really caring what lie behind. It brought me back to that glow of youth and less responsibilities. Cija captures this rare, fleeting feeling beautifully in this story.Another theme Cija handles well is the experience of being an outsider. She writes about attending all white schools and reflects on her identity as it crosses worlds and boundaries as she comes of age. It was refreshing to read a unique perspective on life's ordinary episodes.What I like most about Sonic Memories is the overall tone. This writer never says these are things that happened to me and they are really sad, or happy, or embarrassing. No, she just tells her stories. The reader gets the sense that this is just life, and it's no big deal and also the only deal at the same time. It's a heartbreaking, inspiring, and joyful read.Support independent publishing. Pick up a copy of Sonic Memories by Cija Jefferson here.This review was unsolicited by the author. We just liked her book.Yellow Arrow Publishing is happy to review works of creative nonfiction by female identifying authors. If you have a book that fits this description and would like us to review it, please send an inquiry to info@yellowarrowpublishing.com