I had just read an article of a young poet in The Atlantic. It was seeing his delicate frame and reading his equally fragile prose that moved me to reach for him through his debut novel.
The coming of age tale of a Vietnamizes immigrant living in CT- but it is so much more. Raw with pain yet cool and aloof, the beauty in its balance.
Where he weaves two events: his grandmother’s passing, and his first time- connecting the memories through a basic human function, is the most inexpressibly sensual and loving piece of truth I have ever read; rendering us as more than rusting pipes, deserving of both giving and receiving love. That we are gorgeous.
“It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus – that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers, saying, more, more, more. I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. And so what? So what if all I ever made of my life was more of it?”
“Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence – but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
JohannaAirth 