Nancy MorejónBefore a Mirror, the City by David Frye

Abstract

baby daughter, and a daughter to her own mother, whose loving care for her bereft daughter typifies the matrilineal strengths of the Sérère culture on the Senegalese coast, where a shipwreck triggered not only personal, but national, grief. Rosemary Haskell Elon University Nancy Morejón Before a Mirror, the City Trans. David Frye. Buffalo, New York. White Pine Press. 2020. 111 pages. NANCY MOREJÓN HAS LONG been synonymous with Cuban poetry (see WLT, Summer 2002, Autumn 2019). In this succinct collection of poems, introduced by Juanamaría CordonesCook and beautifully translated by David Frye, Morejón is synonymous with Havana, embodying that dignified and downtrodden, anachronous place blessed with spirit and light; it feeds her soul, inspires her poetry, and breaks our hearts with its struggles and its rubble. Morejón was the first Black Cuban woman poet to publish widely and be accepted as a professional writer, critic, and translator. The twenty-four poems here range over five decades, from some of her earliest collections, Amor, ciudad atribuida (1964) and Richard trajo su flauta y otros argumentos (1967), and poems from more recent collections, Paisaje Celebre (1993), La Quinta de los Molinos (2000), and Pierrot y la luna (2005). The selection herein reflects the city’s sounds, smells, and textures , in verses devoted to Parque Central in Old Havana, the Quinta de los Molinos, the port, and the emblematic Malecón. Presumably, when she stands before her reflection, we see the city and the city sees her (this city . . . will begin to stalk you / haunting your footsteps). Morejón’s ode to Central Park (“Parque Central, alguna gente”) ends with a battle cry to her fellow countrymen. She describes a park passerby and beseeches him, and us, to “walk slowly and breathe deeply . . . / and give his whole life / with all his fervor / comrades.” In one of her earliest poems, “Love, City Attributed,” from her eponymous second book, the dedication reads: “al lector, compa ñero” (to the reader, comrade), invoking a sense of selflessness and unity demanded and spurred on by the revolutionary times. In the poem she asks repeatedly, “who am i” and then: “does anyone hear the dream from my cursed mouth / who am i talking to.” To this reader’s mind, there’s no doubt about who Morejón is, or to whom she is speaking—she embodies all the elements of the city and the collective experiences of its inhabitants, and Havana and its residents are listening, now in English through these poems in her exquisitely translated voice. Comrades, indeed. Erin Goodman Arlington, Massachusetts C. T. Rwizi Scarlet Odyssey Seattle, Washington. 47North. 2020. 546 pages. AFROFANTASY. It’s a largely unsung literary tradition in the making, one that grapples with the whiteness and westernness of mass-market genre fantasy and is exemplified by recent work by N. K. Jemisin , Marlon James, Rivers Solomon, and the present novel, C. T. Rwizi’s Scarlet Odyssey. In the best tradition of epic fantasy, Scarlet Odyssey is the first in a trilogy, a sprawling tale populated by dozens of characters exploring a complex world while taking on a dramatic, empire-sprawling quest, using magic, wielding swords and spears, and encountering legendary creatures. Historically, fantasy fiction has looked like some version of medieval or early modern Europe. The last three decades, however , have seen an increasing number of fantasy novels set in worlds based on the histories and mythologies of non-Western cultures, so that it’s virtually impossible to name any world culture and not find a fantasy novel based on it, from the Aztecs to, now, the Xhosa and Zulu. Rwizi’s novel is very much in this tradition, taking Swazi cultures, languages, and folktales as the basis for a wonderfully realized secondaryworld fantasy. Not only is Scarlet Odyssey a novel treat in terms of its imagining a world that looks and feels very much like southern Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans, but Rwizi also goes beyond the norm to create an incredibly complex magical system that intermingles computer programming, environmental stimuli, a totem system, animal spirits, mecha, and so much more. Rarely does a first-time novel, let alone a firsttime epic fantasy...