Hi there, I hope you are well.
How is it only 24 hours since I last posted? It seems as though I did three days worth of work just today, but now to writing. And a challenge isn’t a challenge unless it is challenging, so this is good!
Day four, book three. Today I welcome you to the book I intended to write about yesterday, but you know what happened with that. The book I am reviewing today is due back at the library so let’s get on with this.
I sort of stumbled into reading this book—like some of the best things in life, it wasn’t planned.
Our youngest teen volunteers as a puppeteer at the Confederation Centre Public Library, and one day late this winter when I was picking her up we decided to see if we could find some new books for her and her brother to read. I found this YA book and thought it looked interesting based on the vibrant cover image, and title.
I know, I know, admonish me if you must, but I did judge the book by its cover.
Yet, despite it looking so good, it kicked around the house for a few days or a week, and I couldn’t seem to get any takers on it. Everyone was into their own thing at the time so I decided to pick it up, and add it to my bedside table roster of books I was working through.
Little did I know then, but the book is a National Book Award winning book by celebrated slam poet, Dominican-American, Elizabeth Acevedo. And this news is not surprising to me at all; the writing in this book is incredibly powerful storytelling all written as a series of poems.
Yes, you heard correctly—it is a novel comprised of poems.
Every page or so has a different poem, each one titled, and this is how we meet characters, visualize a sense of place, and feel the urgency of teen angst as the protagonist shares her life, and her emerging voice with readers.
The book is called The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo and the story is a coming of age force to be reckoned with, much like the narrator, Xiomara (See-oh-MAH-ra) Batista herself.
When researching a bit about the author this evening I ended up on Acevedo’s website, and saw a video of her performing a spoken word poem called “Afro-Latina” and wow! I not only see the likeness of Xiomara and Elizabeth’s voices, but also the cover image which caught my eye of a stunning, thoughtful, engaged, young Dominican-American woman with a canopy of dark, curly hair across which the book title is printed in white with sunset coloured words dancing across her face and hair—Xiomara and Elizabeth look so much alike.
As a writer myself, the notion of how close fiction writing is to the real life of the author intrigues me. Reading the bio of Acevedo, and having read The Poet X, these are clearly not the same persons, but parallels do exist. Acevedo and Batista both are daughters of Dominican relatives, and both are from New York. Write what you know is an oft cited piece of advice for writers, and it would seem that this is exactly what Acevedo has done.
Yet this is fiction and poetry, both, and still the push and pull of the story emerges as vividly, perhaps even more so, than many, many fiction novels which I have read. Perhaps it is so strong in its sense of purpose, place, and imagery due to the choosiness of the poet author. Poetry is like that. It demands a very careful use of language to effect scenario, plot, and a sense of character or place. And the innate storytelling ability required for good fiction writing is ever present here as well, drawing the reader into a plot which thickens, undulates, questions, and seethes with life as only a walk inside a young teen’s brain could allow.
So much confusion, so many firsts, so much push back against a world which doesn’t know how to accept a young woman who knows things, wants things, and feels so much, and so deeply that her only choice, her only navigational tool through, is first to fight, and then to write, and then share that writing.
Xiomara’s name means “one who is ready for war”, and growing into her vivacious body of curves in a Harlem neighbourhood where men catcalling women is par for the course isn’t easy. Set all this against a backdrop of a stern, devoutly Dominican Catholic mother, and you will come to understand how before she found her voice, X’s fists were her compass, and her sass her shield.
Until grade ten.
Grade ten means a new English teacher named Ms. Galiano who sees potential where other people might only have seen attitude or defiance. Through this relationship we watch as Xiomara finds a friend in poems, a safe haven, and somewhere to discover, and explore what it means to be herself.
But none of this comes easily to X.
From the poem Lectures:
And although the night has cooled down
The fading summer heat,
sweat breaks out on my forehead,
My tongue feels swollen,
dry and heavy with all I can’t say.
How’s that for a closing stanza in a poem roughly a third of the way into of the book? Can you feel the Harlem swelter, post lecture? The oppressiveness of it all is suffocating. How can you say what you really feel when it goes against everything your family stands for? But who are you if you don’t? Were your parents ever actually young and in love?
As a mom of three teens, two of them daughters, and a writer myself, this boundary pushing book was a gift to read. I identified with and/or was inspired by so many characters in it I do not know where to begin. Wait, I do know. Most certainly, with Xiomara; her fierceness, her tenderness, her loyalty to herself, her twin brother, and her best friend, as well as her need to find a place in the world which she finds through her writing voice. This is phenomenally true writing for a piece of poetic fiction. Acevedo slammed this one for sure.
For more about Acevedo’s latest book which coincidentally was just released and is all over the internet today:
Thanks for reading.
Until tomorrow,
Jill