ahc's reviews
220 reviews

"An addiction (a repetitious act) is a ritual to help one through a trying time; its repetition safeguards the passage, it becomes one's talisman, one's touchstone. If it sticks around after having outlived its usefulness, we become "stuck" in it and it takes possession of us. But we need to be arrested. Some past experience or condition has created this need. This stopping is a survival mechanism, but one which must vanish when it's no longer needed if growth is to occur. "

I loved this book. I don't have too much to say about it, as much has already been said about this monumental Chicana feminist text. I really liked Anzaldua's ideas about "rigidity means death" and her use of the borderlands theory as both a physical and psychological realm. The book begins with seven essays on various topics. In the second half, Anzaldua switches to poetry to reinforce the ideas introduced in the essays. There's something for everyone here and I absolutely loved it.

"Prison becomes home;
The cell: a catacomb that cages & the metronome
Tracking the years that eclipse you. History authors
Your death, throw you into that din of lost hours...

There is no name for this thing that you've become:
Convict, prisoner, inmate, lifer, yardbird, all fail.
If you can't be free, be a mystery. An amnesic."

House of Unending

An absolutely stunning collection of poems. In these poems, Betts describes time leading up to prison, time in prison, and time after prison. You're not just reading what it's like--through his words, you can feel the enormity of time without end. It's so hard for me to pick favorite poems, since every single one had something to offer. Some highlights are the redacted poems: In Alabama, In Houston, In California, and In Missouri. Other favorites for me include Whisky for Breakfast, When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving, If Absence was the Source of Silence, and House of Unending.

"I am trying to understand what it means to own a thing, especially a wild and living being. To have exclusive rights to its fate? To dispose of it at will? To deny others its use? Ownership seems a uniquely human behavior, a social contract validating the desire for purposeless possession and control.

To destroy a wild thing for pride seems a potent act of domination. Wildness cannot be collected and still remain wild. Its nature is lost the moment it is separated from its origins. By the very act of owning, the thing becomes an object, no longer itself." -The Owner

Really great essay collection! Not as lyrical as Braiding Sweetgrass, but there is no doubt that Kimmerer is an outstanding writer. I learned to appreciate the little things (moss) all around me. I've spent a fair amount of time in the woods throughout my life and can't say I've ever given moss the consideration it is due. Robin has converted me to the holy reverence for moss. My favorite essays include Straw into Gold, City Mosses, and The Red Sneaker.

"For some reason a tune was running through her head when she and her husband got on the train in New Hampshire for their trip to New York; they had not been to New York for nearly a year, but the tune was from farther back than that. It was from the days when she was fifteen or sixteen and had never seen New York except in movies, when the city was made up, to her, of penthouses filled with Noel Coward people; when the height and speed and luxury and gaiety that made up a city like New York were confused inextricably with the dullness of being fifteen, and beauty unreachable and far in the movies."

Oh this was so good. Shirley Jackson's horror stories are certainly not horror stories like Stephen King's; her stories are not visceral or gory or boldfaced. Her stories are quite bashful--you might not give them a second glance at first. But these stories are so sneakily good. Jackson writes about seemingly mundane situations. Underneath the thin veneer of everyday life, however, there's a sinister undercurrent. I think the absolute genius of each of these stories is that they always leave something unsaid. The stories end at a point with no resolution. Jackson leaves you wondering about what happened or would happen after this story ended. Jackson's reliance on our own imagination makes these stories absolutely chilling.

I also enjoyed how the main characters in each story were women. In horror stories, it seems to me that most often, men are the main characters. I really enjoyed reading horror through the eyes of everyday women.