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Patricia Hruby Powell

Author, Storyteller, Dancer

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Book Reviews

“High Spirits” by Camille Gomera-Tavarez

June 25, 2023 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

 

“High Spirits” (Levine Querido 2022) by extraordinary debut author, Camille Gomera-Tavarez, is a collection of eleven interconnecting stories about the m Dominican diaspora. Four generations of the Beléns family are represented, some living in the tiny village of Hidalpa, some in San Juan and some in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in New York City.

 

Gabriel’s story opens the book and is perhaps my favorite of the collection, or maybe this new voice was at its most eye-opening to me. Gabriel has “carefully constructed” a persona to present to his family. “He’d pieced it together with the caring, gentle hands of the piñata sculptor…Each slice of wet newspaper a little bit of the truth, hardening into a fragile shell over time.” His parents had sent him from the island to “the land of burgers and pizza at age twenty” to go to college. The sight of cooked beans transports us from Washington Heights to his Dominican Republic childhood.

 

The hand drawn family tree shows that Cristobal is the patriarch and it’s his “colmado” or grocery store in the Dominican. His American granddaughter, Cristabel, spends summers in the village seeing it through American eyes. She realizes that the sodas in the DR are so much better because they are made with “real cane sugar from the fields.”

 

In “Skipping Stones,” contemporary American teen Ana summers every year in DR with her cousin Zahaira. They model the contrast of two cultures. Only in DR can the girls pick fresh limoncillos from a tree and eat them. But Zahaira cannot obtain a visa to leave the island. Ana sports tattoos and can travel the globe with her U.S. passport. On the beach when approached by a drunken macho creep Ana curses him, but Zahaira, knowing her culture, assuages him by giving him money to go buy a beer. American Ana declares her love for Dominican Zahaira who rebukes her cousin’s advances.

 

The final story, “High Spirits,” brings all the stories together when the matriarch sits around the holiday table and tells the story of her courtship with the patriarch. “What a fairy tale, that’s what her nieces at the Nochebuena table would say, marveling at the glazed, giddy look in her aged husband’s eyes they would mistake for romance.” The subtleties of the prose uncover deep mysteries of the human condition, as well as secrets of evolving cultures. The story and the book ends, with Gabriel’s wry statement showing his wisdom and sophistication and throws a wrench in the tale.

 

I’ve loved everything published by this new imprint Levine Querido. And these mostly realistic family stories with just a hint of magical realism by a remarkable writer should not be missed.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

 

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: dominican republic

“Iveliz Explains it All” by Andrea Beatriz Arango

April 30, 2023 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

 

Iveliz recently moved from Puerto Rico to Baltimore in the debut novel-in-verse, “Iveliz Explains It All” (Random House 2022) by Andrea Beatriz Arango, which won a Newbery Honor this year. Considering that seventh grader Iveliz is troubled and can’t even explain to her psychiatrist how she’s feeling, the title is ironic.

 

Iveliz speaks freely about her mental health issues and the medications she must take, which upsets her grandmother, Mimi, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Iveliz’s father has died in an accident and Iveliz feels responsible. Iveliz’s single mother, Mami, is overwhelmed by caring for her preteen daughter and ageing mother.

 

The relationship between Iveliz and her bestie, Amir, is realistically erratic. As people of color, both are targets of racist bullies. But Iveliz is trying to make a new start in seventh grade, but she’s confused, so she tries to work things out by writing a journal—this book.

 

Arango depicts the antagonistic classmate, Jessica, perfectly when she overhears that Iveliz’s grandmother, Mimi, will be moving from Puerto Rico to join them in Baltimore. “…Jessica was all: Omg whaaaaaat?/ That’s so sad./ Is she coming here illegally/ or are you, like, getting her a visa?/ ’Cause, you know,/ we’re all about immigration, but,/ do it right.” So Iveliz loses control and slugs Jessica. Iveliz is punished but Jessica is not. We feel the deep injustice of this. And we know it happens all the time in real life.

 

Iveliz is frequently in trouble because she flies off the handle. Her meds are helping, but not totally. Life is difficult for this kid and young readers will feel deeply for her. There are Spanish phrases thrown in, which I love, being a life-long studier of Spanish. Those that I couldn’t translate must be Puerto Rican slang, but we know by context the general meaning.

 

Inspite of Mimi’s objection to the meds that Iveliz takes to ward of an even deeper depression, Mimi is a support to her granddaughter and Iveliz loves her. A small bonus is a view of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. “Blue tarps stretching farther than the eye can see—/ literally whole mountains speckled with blue roofs/ and roads broken in half like they were twigs.”

 

In searching for her voice, Iveliz discovers that she can’t do it alone and must learn to trust other people. She goes from dubbing her psychiatrist Dr. Turnip to respecting and trusting her. It turns out that Iveliz is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, but we don’t realize that till pretty far along in the story.

 

This is an important book about dealing with mental health issues, specifically seeing a young person learn to fight for herself in healthy ways when she lets others in. It’s a book that spans both middle grade and young adult readers, as well as adult readers.

 

 

 

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: mental health

“Family of Liars” by E. Lockhart

March 19, 2023 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

“Family of Liars” by E. Lockhart is the prequel to and almost as good as “We Were Liars.” Boy, can Lockhart plot. If you’ve read the original, the reader might guess that the narrator is unreliable, which is a handy device for leading us astray. But I bought right into the story.

 

This prequel takes place a generation earlier than “We Were Liars,” in 1985, and centers around 17 year-old Carrie and her slightly younger sisters, Penny, Bess, and ten year old Rosemary. Their wealthy and entitled family spend summers on their private island an hour off of Martha’s Vineyard. This summer, her uncle brings three teenaged boys to the island to accommodate his teenaged daughter Yardley. George is Yardley’s boyfriend. Major and Pfeff are his friends.

 

The island is big enough that there are several beaches, several docks, and four houses, one for the caretaker and servant. The provided map is helpful. It’s pretty intoxicating for the reader, especially the young reader, to read about these ultra-rich people and how they live, boating hours to the mainland to shop, having everything you never knew needed, at their fingertips. Carrie’s mother Tipper is the uber-hostess and serves “nibbles” of lobster rolls for Happy Hour and Dad serves underaged teens alcoholic drinks. Tipper throws parties where she and her maid serve four flavors of handmade ice cream, sponsors lemon hunts with $100 prizes, and the food served makes you wonder if everyone on the island is the size of a house. But you know their lithe and gorgeous. Lockhart says. And they’re all blonde.

 

The patriarch, Harris, is a rich businessman (that serves cocktails to the kids) who loves his family and passes along various mottos such as “be a credit to the family” and “the only way out is through.” The girls work hard, whatever it takes, to look like a credit to their family, and therein lies their problems. Harris looks upstanding alongside his brother Dean, father of Yardley, and the tension between the two brothers comes to a head midway through the story.

 

Carrie isn’t as beautiful as the others and her father has masterminded cosmetic surgery to change that, and the pain killers involved become an addiction. The next oldest, Penny, is gorgeous and careless of people’s feelings. The three entitled boys and five entitled girls on the island (Penny has invited her friend Erin for the summer) don’t pair up neatly. It’s far more complicated than that. The story begins with the youngest, Rosemary, having drowned the summer before at the age of 10.

 

Pfeff flirts with Carrie. Carrie gets her first kiss, but that’s the end of the simple story line. The upper crust Sinclair family pulls us along with their society ways as the plot gets more and more complicated. A fun and surprising read.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

Filed Under: Book Reviews

“Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix” by Anna-Marie McLemore

December 18, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

“Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix” (2022 Feiwel and Friends) by Anna-Marie McLemore is part of a series of classic remixes. Reading a “remix” helps you remember the original and compare it to the original.

 

Both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel and McLemore’s are set in the roaring twenties in East Egg and West Egg, fictional Long Island towns. Both books deal with the upper class and disparities of social class and there is a counterpart for each major character of the original. But Nicolás Caraveo is the narrator stand in for Nick Carraway and Daisy stands in for Daisy Buchanan, and she is Tom Buchanan’s girlfriend, not wife. This Daisy is actually Daisy Caraveo, Nic’s cousin, but she is passing from a Latina girl to a white girl and chooses to be called Daisy Fay. She is seemingly as vapid as the original.

 

No one is quite as they seem. Both Nic and Jay Gatsby are transgender boys (as is the author) who wear “side-lacers” to flatten their breasts. This is not much of a spoiler—at least we discover this early on or if we read the cover material. This Jordan Baker is a wealthy socialite but also a golf star. The relationships among the characters are similar to the original but the outcome of relationships is quite different. And the story is not the tragedy of Fitzgerald’s book. That’s usually true of YA books and to me that’s a perk in these days of stress and uncertainty.

 

It would seem fitting that the roaring twenties be written in dazzling prose and at times that’s how I felt about McLemore’s writing. Such as, “I would have sworn to a priest that Gatsby’s smile pulled light in through the windows.” But the constant florid images verge on purple prose, for this reader, especially since she describes Nic, the narrator, as an empirical man. But it’s Daisy who says, “’Don’t you love me anymore, Tom?’ she asked in a voice as airy as her green chiffon.” Lines like that and too many others like them are too much for this reader.

 

Still it was fun to follow the newly minted plot that revolves around “lavender marriage,” which was a new concept to me. Each of two lesbians marry each of two gay men. In the twenties it was imperative to look upstanding. Afterall, homosexuality was, unfortunately, illegal. So you could have two upstanding-looking couples and then go home to your true lover. It makes you realize how horrifying it was not to be able to be oneself in the world. I’m grateful we’ve made some progress. Knowing how much work it is to maintain a marriage of two, think about the ramifications and complications of a foursome like this. Anyway, it’s the crux of the happily-ever-after outcome of “Self-Made Boys.” Wonderful title, considering the theme of the original revolves around self-made men.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

 

Filed Under: Book Reviews

“I Could Not Do Otherwise: The Remarkable Life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker” by Sara Latta

December 11, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Outspoken Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, an American woman born in 1832, was a Civil War surgeon and Union spy, an advocate of women’s dress reform, and a suffragist. Although she was a contemporary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Mary saw things differently than they did. “I Could Not Do Otherwise: The Remarkable Life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker” (Zest Books 2022) by former Champaign resident, Sara Latta, is a deeply researched and a highly readable nonfiction book.

 

Whereas Stanton and Anthony wore the new bloomers of the day and believed in dress reform for a time, they ceased to wear bifurcated skirts, feeling that dress reform was overshadowing their true mission—women’s suffrage. Mary Walker felt that wearing trousers and a tunic or jacket to below the knee could free women to be more active and therefore healthier. As a doctor, she knew that corsets (being the undergarments of fashion), which were laced so tight that the organs were rearranged inside the body, were ridiculously unhealthy, resulting first in a woman’s propensity to faint, and a general malaise.

 

Stanton and Anthony worked lifelong for a constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote. Walker felt that a woman’s right to vote was built into the original constitution when it said “all people are created equal” and that fighting for an amendment was unnecessary and in fact worked against woman’s full rights because they were already proclaimed in the Constitution. She felt that the Constitution simply needed to be interpreted correctly, and worked accordingly.

 

Mary worked tirelessly alongside grateful male surgeons during the War Between the States but was unpaid by the military. To support herself, she’d have to take breaks and do lecture tours, talking about the plight of women, encouraging women to become activists, as well as lectures about the war and about surgery—topics that interested both men and women. When she toured in Europe, she was an immensely popular speaker. Back home, she was frequently considered too outspoken and perhaps too blustery to be taken seriously. Which is why, I supposed, she’s not a household name today. In her day, she was.

 

Dr. Mary Walker was briefly married to another physician, who turned out to be unfaithful. As all the cards were stacked against women, it took her many years to procure a divorce. But Mary wasn’t one to give up. She eventually got her divorce.

 

Photos, their captions, and sidebars offer loads of fascinating information about issues of the day in addition to the primary story of Mary’s life. The information is well-cited for the reader who wants to delve deeper into the topic. This book shows the plight of women in the workplace, the home, and her access to rights. If I had to write a school report, I’d surely write about Dr. Walker by starting with this book.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

Filed Under: Book Reviews

“The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen” by Isaac Blum

November 13, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

“The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen” (Philomel 2022) by Isaac Blum is a witty and searing story, longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Hoodie (short for Yehuda) is the only boy in a family of girls all belonging to an Orthodox Jewish community that has moved to the mostly non-Jewish town of Tregaron.

 

The young men in his yeshiva—his school—argue the moral and ethical teachings of Jewish philosophy. And in the Hoodie’s hands it’s hilarious, but still respectful and illuminating. “The Original Oral Torah plus all these commentaries make up the Talmud. It’s a giant maze of Jewish laws rules, thoughts, considerations, ruminations. Studying it…[is] basically medieval torture, but the cool, Jewish kind. It hurts so good.” Discussing Talmud is “a battle of wits, knowledge, and, in this case, wills.”

 

There’s this girl he sees out the window wearing, not a long white gown but a white t-shirt. And shorts, showing a lot of skin. He’s allowed to go on walks to think about Talmud, but he’s not allowed to talk to girls, especially those outside his Orthodox community.

 

Unable to stop himself, he asks her name. “Anna-Marie,” she says. “‘Crap,’” says Hoodie. “I’d been holding out hope she’d be a Chaya or an Esther. But no. She was an Anna-Marie. Just Anna would have provided a sliver of hope. I knew from the shorts that she wasn’t super observant, definitely not frum, like me. But unhyphenated Anna could have been a Jew at least, if a secular one . . . But Anna-Marie? There literally wasn’t a more goyishe name.” And her last name turns out to be Diaz-O’Leary.

 

Her mother is the mayor who wants the Orthodox Jewish community gone, and who, along with the locals, tries to keep the Jewish community from building a high rise. Hoodie says, “They talked about us like we were an invading army, like we were going to ride in on horseback with torches and pitchforks, to set their buildings on fire and slaughter them kosher-style. . . like we’re going to go home to home rounding up their bacon, confiscating their shellfish . . .”

 

You get it. Exclusion of the Other. And here is Hoodie falling in love with down-to-earth, hip Anna-Marie who tries to scour off the swastikas that show up on Jewish tombstones in the cemetery. His talking to Anna-Marie means Hoodie is ostracized from the community. Even his family turn away. And we love his family of sisters. His oldest, Zippy who knows the Torah better than Hoodie, but she’s just a girl who sleeps at the kitchen table after studying Talmud all day. Young Chana stations herself on the roof of the house, throwing small vegetable missiles down upon Hoodie. And there are two more younger sisters.

 

Tension mounts until the unthinkable occurs which shocked me but is authentic in both worldly and literary ways. What a great book! Not only did I laugh reading most every page but I learned a load about the day to day life of an Orthodox Jewish community.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

 

Filed Under: Book Reviews

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