The Singularity – Balsam Karam
Karam has written a surprising work of horror, embedded in two motherhood plots that briefly connect in an unnamed harbor town half-recovered from a violent conflict.
Capitalist modernity renders mothers and daughters as autonomy-desiring “units”; SALT reveals the ache of this separation.
Lonespeech is a dialogue edited down to a poem, its minimalism acknowledging the blank space around its “cut-out” phrases.
A hypnotic novel, itself seemingly hypnotized by bodily fluids.
A Small Apocalypse – Laura Chow Reeve
Reeve’s imagined worlds are not habitable alternatives but critical comments on this one. Her idea of a refuge is not the infinite expanse of the interior self, but the tight-knit, embattled queer family in a hostile world.
Like a Sky Inside – Jakuta Alikavazovic
Alikavazovic’s writing is contemplative and digressive, roving like the insatiable gaze of a consummate museum goer.
In each of your holes I find an invitation—an invitation to the party of the limitless, in spite of it all. Tell me more.
The Museum of Human History – Rebekah Bergman
Bergman emphasize[s] that our obligations are to those living, no matter how important the dead are. We must choose to be present with those around us.
The relinquishing of niceness is a difficult task, especially if you have been socialized into it forever. Learning how to be small took all of my girlhood, learning the opposite will take all of my adulthood.
Conglomeration only seems to be accelerating . . . we need to understand how it impacts what we read and how we read it.