Aimee NezhukumatathilWorld of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

Abstract

Books in Review Aimee Nezhukumatathil World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments Minneapolis, Minnesota. Milkweed Editions. 2020. 184 pages. AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL’s World of Wonders takes a poetic-encyclopedic approach to memoir. The book is as much about color and race in our modern world as it is about gratitude for the smallest and strangest miracles it still manages to hold. Each essay is structured around a particular wonder: the delicate comb jelly, the sugar-laden cara cara orange, and the corpse flower (which needs no additional adjectives), all make appearances. Each is wrapped in language that engages so deeply with its own curiosity, and with such a taste for the way certain words move in the mouth, that all we can do is share in the wonder—even taste it, if we dare follow our gasping breath into a repetition of the words that called it forth: “The bibliography of the firefly is a tender and electric dress.” Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have had very few moments completely to myself. As I sit this afternoon, reveling in the quiet brought forth by a kite-flying adventure my partner has created for our five-year-old son, I find myself repeating out loud the same words over and over again: “The bibliography of the firefly is a tender and electric dress.” I don’t need to understand exactly what they mean to feel their ability to heal—to fill a much-needed silence with curiosity. And that’s the largest takeaway I’ve come to from this book. It is healing. It is a persistent fascination with the world that cannot be snubbed out, even in the face of unharried and well-fed racism. It is falling in love with a backdrop of blooming corpse flower, about which we learn “when the two rings of citrus-colored flowers fully bloom and the giant meat-skirt of the inflorescence unfolds, the spadix’s temperature approaches that of a healthy human body, one of the only times this happens in the plant world.” As the daughter of a Filipina mother and Malayali Indian father, Nezhukumatathil’s experience as a brown girl growing up in America is slowly and then abruptly revealed, over and over, AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL outsiders—outsiders who don’t belong and whom no one wants to notice. On the outskirts of the city of Cardenas, where society is always crumbling, it aims to give students a fighting chance in a difficult world. The threats of isolation are constant, however, and corruption seeps in from the outside. Each of the novel’s protagonists has a unique perspective on the college and the world. Celia is an orphan with no trust left to give, who hates the school as much as she hates Cardenas. Ignacio is a scholarship student with an early understanding of pain and hierarchy, who wants nothing more than to be left alone. And “Isidro Bedragare” is an imposter who is simply desperate to survive. He thinks Wybrany is the best place to accomplish that. Together, their narratives weave a complex critique of love, lust, power, and human society. Mesa uses every tool at her disposal. The language is short and precise, as if from a dream, yet each character has a distinctive point of view, sometimes cold and distant, sometimes uncomfortably intimate. The setting is timeless, as close or distant as we want, but the use of diary entries and third-person present tense builds the illusion of voyeurism. And at every moment, the silence speaks as loudly as words, both in the reticence of Wybrany’s students and teachers and in Mesa’s own writing. All these things add to the disturbing atmosphere of Wybrany College. Unfortunately for English-language readers, some elements are lost in this novel. 108 WLT AUTUMN 2020 Mesa’s prose is unusual and deceptively complex . Katie Whittemore had done impressive work, but it is clear that some sacrifices were made between Mesa’s haunting narration and certain linguistic nuances. Certain customs may be lost on non-Spanish readers as well. However, some readers may barely notice. The features of Mesa’s writing and timelessness...