Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

När min bror var Aztec by Natalie Díaz

8 reviews

katharina90's review against another edition

dark reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

A strong debut. 

I didn't connect with it as easily as I did with Postcolonial Love Poem but I enjoyed the themes and language used. 

"Why I Hate Raisins" stood out, as did many of the poems about addiction.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction

Moderate: Colonisation

lidia7's review against another edition

emotional medium-paced

from Prayers or Oubliettes

The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark.

favorite poem: My Brother at 3 A.M.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction and Drug abuse

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Racial slurs

gabbygarcia's review against another edition

challenging dark medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, and Mental illness

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual content and War

readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition

dark reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, and Murder

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Violence, and Blood

Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Genocide, Infidelity, Racism, Sexual content, Xenophobia, Excrement, Police brutality, Islamophobia, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and War

diabetes, residential schools, g slur.

jayisreading's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

Having read Postcolonial Love Poem and loving it, I was excited to pick up When My Brother Was an Aztec. Díaz primarily focuses on her brother’s drug addiction, as well as its impact on his loved ones. However, interspersed were poems that explore other themes such as Mojave life and erotic, queer love. I was pleasantly surprised to see poems that focused on the latter, but I can’t deny that they kind of felt out-of-place.

Reading her debut collection, I see that Díaz always had an incredible grasp of language to create stunning imagery and rhythm that makes me appreciate Postcolonial Love Poem even more. It’s just incredible what she’s able to do with words to evoke so many emotions and metaphors.

Some favorites: “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation,” “Why I Hate Raisins,” “Cloud Watching,” “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs,” “I Watch Her Eat the Apple,” and “I Lean Out the Window and She Nods Off in Bed, the Needle Gently Rocking on the Bedside Table”

Read for the Sealey Challenge.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Moderate: Racism, Violence, and Grief

thecolourblue's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Natalie Diaz' first book of poems is enough to convince me that she is a wonderful poet. I love this collection. One of the best poetry debut collections I can remember reading. 

The collection is based around a mythologized account of Diaz' brother (and other family members), growing up, living and hurting together as indigenous people in a colonized America. Diaz' brother, the titular Aztec, suffers from methamphetamine addiction and mental illness. The account of his life and relationship both with his sister and their parents and grandmother is utterly heartbreaking. The blend of love, fear, guilt, anger and other more undefinable emotions that Diaz feels towards her brother feels completely real and will be recognizable to anyone who's even been in a similar situation with a family member.

Rather than telling her poems in a straightforward confessional style, Diaz adopts the legacy of mythologies and storytelling within her culture to transform herself and her family members into figures of legend - the Aztec, the Warrier, the Woman with No Legs. Even Mojave Barbie. This personal mythology, rather than distancing the reader and subject from the stories, fills them with a sense of beauty and tragedy. Applying these ancient structures of myth to a deeply personal family dynamic elevates the poems to the scale of epics, drawing direct lines between the life and struggle of one indigenous family and the historical oppression and degradation of native peoples and narratives by settler colonialism. How Diaz managed to create such striking and radical political critique without losing the beating, bleeding heart of her personal story I'm not sure, but she did it expertly. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Chronic illness, Drug use, and Racism

birdbeakbeast's review against another edition

dark emotional sad

4.5

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Content Warnings

Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Racism, and Colonisation

cantfindmybookmark's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction and Drug abuse