Category: Book Review
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Grief as Plot: A Review of Kelly Murashige’s The Yomigaeri Tunnel
Review by Gabriella Contratto One of the first lessons a creative writer learns is the shape of a good plot, the flat line of exposition, the rising action that culminates in the pointy climax where the plot turns, and the downhill line of the falling action ending in a neat resolution. In Fiction Writing 101,…
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Choosing What To See: A Review of Naomi Cohn’s The Braille Encyclopedia
Review by Ata Zargarof What do you do when a rare disease strikes at the heart of who you are and what you love? It’s a question that haunts Naomi Cohn, author of The Braille Encyclopedia, a collection of micro essays and prose poems documenting her experience of progressively worsening eyesight. The culprit? Pathological myopia,…
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Fluidity That Finds and Binds: A Review of Wet
Review by Alexa Cho Whether in geography textbooks or a Google search, Singapore is often exalted as a country set apart by its technological advancements and high standard of living. However, such a notion is only one perspective of Singapore and not necessarily the most accurate. Author Leanne Dunic draws on experiences from her artist…
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What Separates Murder and Mercy: A Review of Find Me as the Creature I Am
Review by Carson Compos There are beautiful bodies buried within Find Me as the Creature I Am. Poet, translator, editor, and professor of Korean literature Emily Jungmin Yoon’s second collection of poetry uncovers connections between death and love and offers dualities of violence and peace to come to the conclusion that, in many ways, we…
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A Detective Novel Gone South: A Review of Elevator in Sài Gòn
The year is 2004. Vietnam is now one, but reverberations of the preceding wars—and its chasms—remain. It is in this year that Thuận opens Elevator in Sài Gòn, her second book translated into English from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý. I have been looking forward to Thuận’s follow up in English since encountering her Anglophone…
MĀNOA 