amyamatya's reviews
24 reviews

personally would read other b.h. books first/ i honestly tuned out during film analyses

would've hit harder if i hadn't immediately preceded this with braiding sweetgrass

didnt rlly go deep on things i expected/wanted, but can still recommend

i unexpectedly finished this in one sitting: i like her writing a lot and unfortunately am obsessed with numbering paragraphs now, but sometimes it annoyed me how deeply she emotes about things that felt so..... utterly useless .. ik that this is her lived experience etc but also i read 'on heteropessimism' by Asa Seresin just before which made me a little uninterested in her worldview

pineda writes in zapotec and spanish and worked with a white translator for the english versions; not saying the translation is good or bad but just something to keep in mind; the poems use more general/metaphoric language than i usually prefer but theyre all super sad
------------------
I know where I come from
I know someone awaits me
it's the cord binding me to my nahual 
it's the lamp lighting the path home
But I will not return whole in these distant lands 
half my heart remains
I was one person before uprooting myself 
another I learned to be here
Now with a divided heart
How can I keep it from breaking?
If I stay
I will miss my people and my soul
If I go back
it will hurt to hold in my hands all that I discovered here

structure and content felt true what it's like to walk-and-think. I liked this balance of observational vs. abstract/historical writing

sometimes i craved more depth and the collection gradually loses coherence/starts feeling redundant, but i still absorbed a lot/would highly recomnd