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savvylit's review against another edition
4.0
Here are some of my favorite passages, which hopefully illustrate my short review:
"Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. Let me call it, a garden."
"Maps are ghosts: white and layered with people and places I see through."
"But in an American room of one hundred people,
I am Native American—less than one, less than
whole—I am less than myself. Only a fraction
of a body, let’s say, I am only a hand-
and when I slip it beneath the shirt of my lover I disappear completely."
"All this time,
I thought my mother said, Wait,
as in, Give them a little more time
to know your worth,
when really, she said, Weight,
meaning heft, preparing me
for the yoke of myself
the beast of my country's burdens,
which is less worse than
my country's plow."
Graphic: Addiction, Violence, and Colonisation
robinks's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Racism, Violence, Blood, and Colonisation
Moderate: Addiction, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, and Sexual content
Minor: Police brutality
katharina90's review against another edition
5.0
Favorites include:
-American Arithmetic
-If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert
-Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball
-exhibits from The American Water Museum
"I have a name, yet no one who will say it not roughly.
I am your Native,
and this is my American labyrinth.
Here I am, at your thighs—lilac-lit pools of ablution.
Take my body and make of it—
a Nation, a confession.
Through you even I can be clean."
From: I, Minotaur
"2.
Because a long time ago, Creator gave us a choice: You can write like an Indian god, or you can have a jump shot sweeter than a 44oz. can of government grape juice—one or the other. Everyone but Sherman Alexie chose the jump shot."
From: Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball
"Only water can change water, can heal itself. Not even God
made water. Not on any of the seven days. It was already here.
Or maybe God is water, because I am water, and you are water."
From: exhibits from The American Water Museum
"Art of Fact:
Let me tell you a story about water:
Once upon a time there was us.
America’s thirst tried to drink us away.
And here we still are."
From: exhibits from The American Water Museum
"Police kill Native Americans more
than any other race. Race is a funny word.
Race implies someone will win,
implies, I have as good a chance of winning as—
Who wins the race that isn’t a race?
Native Americans make up 1.9 percent of all police killings, higher per capita than any race—
sometimes race means run."
From: American Arithmetic
"At the National Museum of the American Indian,
68 percent of the collection is from the United States.
I am doing my best to not become a museum
of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.
I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible."
From: American Arithmetic
Moderate: Racism, Violence, Police brutality, and Colonisation
Minor: Addiction and Sexual content
dacha's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Racism and Colonisation
Moderate: Addiction, Gun violence, and Police brutality
readingbrb's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Addiction and Drug use
mandkips's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Racism, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Addiction, Gun violence, and Sexual content
Minor: Death, Genocide, and Colonisation
lowbrowhighart's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Misogyny, Racism, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Addiction, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Colonisation, and War
gingerhoneycitrus's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Blood
Minor: Addiction
mxae's review against another edition
5.0
This is such an essential volume for everyone to read. It is the perfect volume for 2022, queer, indigenous, eloquent, raw, political and poetical.
Moderate: Addiction
thecolourblue's review against another edition
4.5
Diaz explores the concept of the human body as a body of water - merging biological science with Native American mythology to form her own personal and political narrative - as well as the environmental dangers posed to the bodies of water on American land. It's a heady and commanding combination of metaphorical and literal rivers, and, of course, droughts. One of the more overtly political poems on this theme is the excellent 'Exhibits from the American Water Museum', told as a series of informational signs on the walls of a future exhibit about water, drought, Native culture, and colonialism.
Let me tell you a story about water:
Once upon a time there was us.
America’s thirst tried to drink us away.
And here we still are.
True to Diaz' previous work, there are flashes of startling humor, both in the Water Museum poems and in some of the included poems about love and sex. There are a number of sweet and erotic poems exploring the writer's queer identity and seemingly, paying homage to past or present lovers.
Also continuing a thread from Diaz' first collection, When My Brother Was An Aztec (which I loved), are tales of her family, and particularly her brother and his struggles with addiction. These poems are vignetted memories, some frightening, some achingly joyful.
I think I do prefer Diaz' first collection to this one, but this is still a masterful work from a poet fully embodied in her own power and vision.
Moderate: Addiction and Sexual content