Archive for April 7, 2011
SAY HER NAME by Francisco Goldman
rief is, by and large, a private and intimate thing. We utter a few platitudes and then turn away in discomfort from who are laid bare by their grief. And emotionally, we begin to withdraw.
Francisco Goldman shatters those boundaries in his devastating book Say Her Name, forcing the reader to pay witness to the exquisite and blinding pain of a nearly unbearable loss. He positions the reader as a voyeur in a most intimate sadness, revealing the most basic nuances and details and the most complex ramifications of the loss of someone dear. And in the process, he captures our attention, rather like Samuel Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, until the reader is literally as fascinated and transfixed with Aura Estrada – Francisco Goldman’s young and doomed wife – as he himself is. It is a masterful achievement, hard to read, hard to pull oneself away from.
April 7, 2011
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Judi Clark · 
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Tags: Grief, Memoir, Nonfiction · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Mexico, Non-fiction
WIDOW: STORIES by Michelle Latiolais
There is a legend of the thorn bird; as it impales itself and dies, it rises above its own agony to outsing the nightingale and the whole world stills to listen. As humans face death – our own or our most beloved – the best writers have the ability to rise up and eloquently sing. I speak, of course, of Joan Didion in THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, of Francisco Goldman in SAY HER NAME, of David Vann in LEGEND OF A SUICIDE. And now, Michelle Latiolais takes her place in that very top tier of talented writers.
Ms. Latiolais masterly interweaves stories of life after her husband Paul’s death with other tales: the complex eroticism experienced by a woman visiting a male strip club with her lover, the trials of traveling to Africa with an anthropologist husband who is researching the unusual eating habits of aboriginals, young children who entice an ancient aunt to craft shapes out of moistened bread crumbs. In a few sparse words, she is able to capture a deep and complex emotion.
April 7, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Grief, Short Stories · Posted in: Losses, Short Stories
