Revolution Sunday by Wendy Guerra

Abstract

A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry Ed. Naomi Foyle Smokestack Books Published in mirrored English and Arabic, this new collection brings together voices as diverse as the experiences of the Palestinians who created them. Whether the poetry comes from the pen of those who are currently imprisoned for their artistic resistance or those who have found themselves far from their roots through the Palestinian diaspora, the starting point of identity serves to launch each individual author in a unique direction in terms of both form and content. Inger Christensen The Condition of Secrecy Trans. Susanna Nied New Directions From Danish author and poet (as well as winner of the Nordic Author’s Prize) Inger Christensen comes this collection of essays spanning topics from the autobiographical to the universal. Fans of Christensen’s formalist style will be intrigued by her explanations of her creative process and inspirations, but even those who have never heard of her will find much to glean from her stories of schooling under Nazism and coming of age with the Cold War. seems to belong to the author. Ranging from three lines to two pages in length, these chapters loosely connect without ever forming a coherent plot. “And Then My Dog Will Come Back to Me” is the collection’s longest, second earliest, and clearly most impressive piece of prose. It recounts a man in rural Norway who murders (or not) his neighbor for having killed (or not) his dog. As his stream of consciousness progresses, we begin to notice inconsistences in the narrator's thoughts, and with the clarity of his mind slipping, the reality of recounted events becomes increasingly blurry. The buildup of tension and its slow dissolution in the fog of the narrator’s mind is carried out masterfully. Regrettably, on the opposite end of the spectrum, one must list the 2013 story “Dreamt in Stone.” Thankfully much shorter than the collection’s better pieces of fiction , it might be best to let it speak for itself: “And then you say. And then there was someone who said something to me and I tried to get up but I couldn’t, and then there was someone who helped me get up. And then I stood there. And then I opened a door. And then I went in the door and shut it behind me. And then, you say. And I say that I don’t remember anything and then I remember that I woke up and I was lying inside on the floor. I got up. I was standing. I walked.” Simplicity of language carries much of Fosse’s stories in this collection, but he has tragically taken simplicity of style too far in some of his writing. Despite their varying quality, we do find glimpses of skill and innovation in all of Scenes from a Childhood’s stories. Still, from this collection alone, it remains difficult to comprehend why people are pushing Fosse as a contender for the Nobel Prize. Felix Haas Zurich, Switzerland Wendy Guerra Revolution Sunday Trans. Achy Obejas. Brooklyn. Melville House. 2018. 208 pages. Betrayal, at all levels, is the essence of Revolution Sunday by Wendy Guerra. Cloe, a novelist and poet, is betrayed at all levels, from all directions. Betrayed by the people she loves: her mother, her housekeeper, Márgara, and her lovers. Betrayed by her neighbors who spy on her and report her movements and activities to the authorities. Finally, in an ironic twist, she is betrayed by Cuba, her home, her raison d’être, her heart: “without Cuba I don’t exist. I am my island.” Cleo, the narrator of Revolution Sunday , lives in her family home in a disintegrating Havana, the capital of an equally disintegrating Cuba. She is a passive victim of constant surveillance, control, and dictator-approved abuse. She is surrounded by people who protect themselves from the authorities by spying on her (and everyone else) and reporting their discoveries to the police, who visit her home on a regular basis, taking with them, when they leave, her work, her photographs, her computers, and anything else that they might use to prove that she is a dissident. Yet she stays in the...