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Reviews
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© 2020 West Trade Review
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"You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is an expansive and engaging collection that centers the challenging questions revealed when Hurston lifts the veil, as well as her smart and often-defiant responses. In every essay, Hurston’s unique voice swells with “race pride.” This collection chronicles an influential writer’s thoughts and reactions over the span of multiple decades, and Hurston scholars and casual readers alike will find it an illuminating compilation."
by Elisabeth Aiken
January 4, 2022
"Mystery, all that we can never know and all that we strive to know, hovers like a ghost in this collection. Larew sets this tone both in the book’s title, which, visually, seems possible only within a Surrealist’s canvas, and in “Magic,” the first poem in the collection. In the opening poem, the speaker reminds us that the human body shares most of the same elements as a star: “The stars in your chest— / the sounds of their glow / their flash blink wings / their touch top skies.” Using only monosyllables, Larew recreates the universe."
by Mary Sutton
November 18, 2021
"Bisi Adjapon’s analytic artistry is poised to set the U.S. literary world ablaze. Her debut novel The Teller of Secrets reads like a fire in the night: dangerous, unforgiving, at times frenetic. Witty and sharp, Adjapon’s voice expertly entwines humor and history from the perspective of the novel’s young protagonist, Esi Agyekum, a Nigerian-Ghanaian girl coming of age during political unrest in 1960-70s postcolonial Ghana."
by Tara Freidman
November 16, 2021
NONFICTION REVIEW
POETRY REVIEW
FICTION REVIEW
"Sheila Heti is a prime example of the type of following a writer can engender, having built an excellent career on mining the quotidian difficulties that make up the thematic foundation of many great writers, but with her own tools and own approach. Her latest effort, Pure Colour, fits neatly into this lineage; an off-white, somewhat wild, utterly original novel about human connection and the meaning of life as we know it."
by Samantha Fitch
November 2, 2021
FICTION REVIEW
"Pietrzyk is a master of craft and this collection is a fitting showcase for her talents: from voice and character development to plot, pacing, and theme. Typically, point of view is well executed, though the decision in “We Always Start with the Seduction” and “People Love a View” to offer a glimpse at the female characters’ viewpoint via male characters’ perspectives is arguably less effective than if perspective and point of view were united."
by Rachel León
November 1, 2021
FICTION REVIEW
"Following the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Sentence, explores what it means to be haunted. Our characters are haunted by the past, both personal and historical, as well as looming fears in the midst of a global pandemic."
by Corrine Watson
October 28, 2021
FICTION REVIEW
"From Melissa’s DIY-resurrection ritual, to a dead celebrity prom and karaoke in hell, Lozada-Oliva has created a feminist, post-modern, pop cultural Divine Comedy. Dreaming Of You dramatizes the ways identity is often influenced by imitation and a longing to be something more than yourself."
by Corrine Watson
October 26, 2021
FICTION REVIEW
"Some might compare The House of Rust to books like those in The Chronicles of Narnia because the stories cover adventures by children with talking animals, missing parents, and references to religion, but this comparison is reductive. Debut author Khadija Abdalla Bajaber has created something more complex than a simple 'overcoming the monster' story."
by Kelly Harrison
October 19, 2021
FICTION REVIEW
"Reading this collection feels like finding connections where one would least expect them. Lima challenges our linguistic and cultural boundaries, our empirical knowledge, and the self-defeating American habit of reading history selectively."
by Mary Sutton
October 15, 2021
POETRY REVIEW
"Watkins hails from the beautiful, dangerous expanse of Mojave lying between Vegas and the sea, and anyone who's been through the yawning desert that rises from the vast nothing east of L.A. will feel the potent force in I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness."
by D.W. White
October 8, 2021
FICTION REVIEW
"In the artistic world, the question of how we tell our stories, and how we make sense of our lives, has long been the domain, chiefly, of the first-person novel, especially vis-a-vis that cagey appellation ‘autofiction’ with its slippery boundaries and murky origins. In her ephemeral, layered, and rich debut collection, You Never Get It Back, however, Cara Blue Adams formulates a fresh strategy, foregoing a traditional novel with its traditional plot and instead linking stories across space and time around a single protagonist, and an ensemble cast of emotions and memories, as she crafts a compelling and relatable narrative."
by D.W. White
December 15, 2021
FICTION REVIEW
