Back Talk: Stories

Back Talk: Stories by Danielle Lazarin                                Audiobook: 6 hours, 30 mins                      Paperback Book:  256 pages                       Genre: Adult Fiction-Stories about females coping with their situations

Really well written stories about females of all ages accepting and dealing with the circumstances they find themselves in, some not so happy, some uplifting, some growing experiences some funny (I love the psychic sisters for example).    These stories take the reader through many circumstances with many alternating routes arriving at the destination as they do.   I enjoyed the stories in this book, the reader will get swept away with each one, I know I did.   The characters here go from young children, teens, young adults, adults, midlifers and elderly.    Each one unique and poignant.   I liked each story found in this book for its triumph for the shero (female hero) and there are some truly warrior gals to be found here, so much so, I can almost here that Xena, Warrior Princess yell going in the background.   Not everyone is nice but neither are they truly evil, just doing the best they can with what they have to deal with and in the end that is all any of us can do with life, it doesn’t always come in a pretty packages sometimes it is pretty rough and you still have to carry it and continue on and these stories offer some wonderful insights into their characters.   Good, bad, happy, sad and even indifferent – these are all good stories and worth your time.   I would recommend this read.

Krik? Krak!

Krik? Krak!  By Edwidge Danticat  224 p.  

Reviewed by Rae C.

From the epigraph by Sal Scalora:

We tell the stories so that the young ones

will know what came before them.

They say “Krik?” and we say “Krak!”

Our stories are kept in our hearts.

I had read some of Danticat’s work on the Haitian diaspora and also a YA book on based on the Arawak natives of Hispaniola before reading  The Dew Breakers. It is a novel-in-stories.  It embedded itself on me so deeply, was true, so honest, so primal, so affecting, that I had to take a break of several months before diving in to “Le Monde de Danticat” again.  (Or I suppose rather, according to Google’s Haitian Creole translator, “Danticat non mond lan.”)

Krik? Krak! is almost a novel-in-stories.  The family legacy, stories of lives told great-grandmother to grandmother to mother to daughter, and cousins, and godmothers.  You will almost drown in the Massacre river; you will emerge blood red, the ghost of a capsized migrant drowned at sea attempting to escape to the U.S.

The titular story and Caroline’s Wedding, A Wall of Fire Rising, and 1937 have the strongest links, and the greatest impact.  1937 in particular will leave you reeling, but have the courage to read it.  Because it will also change your life.  

Between The Pool and the Gardenias is unbelievably shattering. A childless mother and a lifeless child, and a disastrous ending.  Night Women could have easily been titled Night Goddesses.   Danticat gives the men in the story a dignity that they almost do not deserve, that a lesser writer would have withheld.

Beautiful, evocative, heartbreaking, inspiring, sad, happy, aching, and joyful...   The whole of human existence can be found in these pages.  And Haiti itself is there always- the sounds, scents, spices, the ocean and the trees, the breadfruit, the sugarcane.

For any woman who writes- Haitian or otherwise- the last story, Epilogue: Women Like Us, on kitchen poets, is a necessary read. 

You thought that if you didn’t tell the stories, the sky would fall on your head.  You often thought that without the trees, the sky would fall on your head.  You learned in school that you have pencils and paper only because the trees gave themselves in unconditional sacrifice. There have been days when the sky was as close as your hair to falling on your head.

This fragile sky has terrified you your whole life.  Silence terrifies you more than the pounding of a million pieces of steel chopping away at your flesh.  Sometimes, you dream of hearing only the beating of your own heart, but this has never been the case.  You have never been able to escape the pounding of a thousand other hearts that have outlived yours by thousands of years. And over the years when you have needed us, you have always cried “Krik?” and we have answered “Krak!” and it has shown us that you have not forgotten us.

Wicked Wonders

Wicked Wonders by Ellen Klage  284 pages.

This collection of stories features singular, smart and sometimes subversive characters. In the introduction to the book by Karen Joy Fowler, Fowler states, "Ellen's young protagonists are both tough and sensitive. Like so many of us, they don't quite fit in. So they're always looking for the chance, unavailable in their home and schools and communities, to be their true selves."  For example, in one of the first stories, the main character is a girl who identifies more with Maleficent instead of Sleeping Beauty. In another one, a girl who starts a game realizes that she'll need more than mere luck to win once she's engaged a faerie.  All of the stories have a bit of adventure to them, sometimes some melancholy and sometimes a bit of humor (especially the last story in the book, "The Scary Ham").

I really enjoyed this book and found the stories to be interesting, thoughtful and memorable.  Definitely adding this one to my Christmas wish list!