In front of us, a July wind rippled the screen. Its blank canvas shimmered in the headlights of a handful of cars. Among the few already parked in the field were a pickup truck and a Rolls Royce so shiny I could see myself in it. In previous years we would have been inside, wearing sweatshirts brought along to combat the freezing AC, and there would have been an advertisement for concessions, a cartoon popcorn bag singing to a cheeky box of Raisinets. But this summer, we were told to bring our own food, stay in our vehicles, and wear a mask if we needed the porta potty.
Whenever I’m back home, I delight in being slightly askew from the daily rhythms of white-collar productivity — two hours behind New York, one ahead of San Francisco — and how that translates into a feeling of freedom from the liabilities of membership in civil society. Comfort with our hinterland status is also what distinguishes those of us on Mountain time from our neighbors on Central, forever ensnared in an unwinnable game of catch-up with the East Coast. Unlike in Dallas or Chicago, there’s not much wealth to be had on Mountain time, and even less notoriety. What the time zone offers instead is a sense of detachment from the economic and cultural centers of the nation.
Believe me when I tell you, “Little Scratch” is difficult. It will tax you. You will have to learn the syntax of a distracted and distressed mind. But rigor, in this case, is not without reward. Stick with me, and I’ll explain why I stuck with it (besides, of course, professional duty).
What next, we ask at the end, as breathlessly eager for more as Giovanna herself is, plunging towards adulthood. And we have our answer in this astonishing, deeply moving tale of the sorts of wisdom, beauty and knowledge that remain as unruly as the determinedly inharmonious faces of these women.
She has written another breathtaking, groundbreaking book, an intellectually rigorous exploration of the postcolonial toll on land, love and people, as well as a call to fight back. In her soaring poems, she deepens and revises the word “postcolonial”, demonstrating not only that love persists in the aftermath of colonialism, but that it provides a means of transcendence, too.
Nearly 20 years ago, Tiffany McDaniel’s mother, Betty, told her a family secret. To say the rest is history would be an egregious cliche if it weren’t the simple truth. McDaniel’s vivid new novel, “Betty,” fictionalizes that history, drawn in part from her own interviews with her mother, her grandmother Alka and other family members.
Five straight days of rain,
and the enormous hosta we moved out back