Review

As We Exist – Kaoutar Harchi

by

A sharp, tunnel visioned interrogation of what happened and happens to Harchi, her family, her neighbors. The “we” she uses in the title and in the text could be a “we” of her family unit, but also of second-generation North African immigrants, all suffering racism in France.

The Night Flowers – Sara Herchenroether

by

Cancer is not just a disease within the body . . . it affects perceived notions of what it means to live and die, and how one chooses to do so.

Daybreak at Chavez Ravine – Erik Sherman

by

If you go searching for a story and come up empty, do you still write the book?

The Telaraña Circuit – Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola

by

When one tunes into the frequencies of this “telaraña circuit,” one polishes one’s antennae, seeking to distill symbols from the living text of the world.

New Life – Ana Božičević

by

Love is deep underground with her speaker’s heart, begging the question: If the soul is hiding, how can there ever be enough love?

House Work – Cindy Juyoung Ok

by

Form doesn’t merely shape content, but creates it. This is a scary fact. Language threatens the freedom of things, making complexity seem fixed and turning loved ones into abstractions.

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu – Augusto Higa Oshiro

by

With his passivity resulting from the weighty history of deprivation and discrimination, what are the conditions for the possibility of Nakamatsu’s enlightenment?

The Narrow Cage – Vasily Eroshenko

by

All of these characters, whether human or otherwise, are connected in their subjection to both nature’s and humanity’s whims.

Dangerous Love – Ben Okri

by

Omovo seems in many ways detached from the day to day . . . That might be the best way to handle yourself in a world where baffling violence is as much a part of life as a breeze or birdsong.

Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World – Eliane Brum

by

Without its forests intact, the Earth faces collapse, just as the mind, body, and heart will crumble if our lungs rot ahead of schedule.