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A review by gigireadswithkiki
Plantains and Our Becoming: Poems by Melania Luisa Marte
Did not finish book. Stopped at 32%.
I don't usually DNF poetry books because more often than not I find myself simply disliking one poem in a collection of many, but this one just didn't work for me. The poems felt like generic immigrant mixed POC girl poems, there was too much celebrity idolization (I only reached the Cardi B poem but then I saw that later on there's also a Meghan Thee Stallion poem? Kill the parasocial relationship in your brain honey bun), and most egregious was the fact that the societal critiques did not feel intersectional at all.
For one thing, the white feminism critiques felt so surface level, but what stood out to me most was how fatphobic some of the poems were. Specifically to the point where the author specifically mentions not loving themselves until they had lost weight/was anemic. Paired with not even further development or analysis of their internalized fatphobia, I simply could not stomach the content to keep reading.
For one thing, the white feminism critiques felt so surface level, but what stood out to me most was how fatphobic some of the poems were. Specifically to the point where the author specifically mentions not loving themselves until they had lost weight/was anemic. Paired with not even further development or analysis of their internalized fatphobia, I simply could not stomach the content to keep reading.