BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Here’s a small peak into what 2020 has in store for us, thanks to these wonderful authors and small/indie presses (and of course, stay tuned for more lists for upcoming books). Check out this list and this list for other books.
Rachel Rabbit White - PORN CARNIVAL (Wonder Books, 2019)
White’s poems are not only poignant, but also wonderfully addresses various topics through poetry and humor such as sexuality, modernity, the current state of spirituality, and capitalism.
White has stated that “I’m not sure anything can escape capitalism. If there’s anything this book is about, it’s about the constant labor required by the working classes, like operating a never-ending carnival ride. It’s a book about despair and then trying to find something with hope inside of it, in the face of capitalist hellscapes, or at least pleasure in the face of it: community, sexuality, orgy, drug-use. I believe in the pleasure of community, I believe in orgies, I believe in queer poets. Decriminalize drugs, decriminalize sex workers.”
Here’s a preview:
Constantine Jones - In Still Rooms (The Operating System, 2020)
Jones’ book is an incredible novella that follows a family’s loss - and how a Greek family finds a way to survive in America despite change and loss and evolving identity. Here’s an excerpt:
“The bells are ringing out across the village.
Sunday morning on the island of Lesbos, 1940, and all the streets are empty. Down in the harbor, the fishing boats creak against the wind, all of them painted white and blue, sloshing against their little wooden docks. The sails are all withdrawn, heavy spirals of frayed rope draped across the decks. A lone dinghy drifting off towards a row of buoys, weighed down with empty jugs, chipped oars and netting—the name EIRHNH streaked in blue across its hull. The gulls too are at rest, wings folded on the cobbles, watching the light come in across the water. The sea coughs up its weeds onto the rocks.”
Elæ - Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular (The Trouble With Bartleby, 2020)
Elæ is an inventive and truly innovative creator who makes and spearheads all kinds of projects (visual art, writing, music, etc). I can’t say how excited I am for the release of their book.
In an interview, Elæ spoke to the title, saying, “Funny, I don’t entirely remember where Sweet and Low came from, though I can say confidently that the work emerged from a time in which I needed to rewrite my relationship to my body, and then to time and space and other bodies, in response. This brought me to some of my lowest points, but also to some of my sweetest, as I began to offer a sort of solace and care to parts of myself desperately in need of kindness.”
They went on to say that the book “in its contents, it refuses to be bowed by formal convention, it explores modalities of scholarship and somatic / embodied possibility, it prays and enumerates and decries and gives witness to.”
Christina Rosso - She Is a Beast (Apep Publications, 2020)
Rosso wrote a book of fairy tales that turns the original stories on their heads (and I don’t even mean that figuratively). You can think of this as horror meets fairy tale. Instead, the female characters in the stories find ways to get revenge on their captors and abusers in some cases - and in others, it’s a character study in how misogyny changes and affects everything around us.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Patience, she reminded herself. Don’t create a scene. She had a plan and she needed to stick to it. A scene now would only condemn her. She caressed the bubbled flesh surrounding her wrists in an attempt to soothe herself, yet instead the searing pain made her anger flare. Like most men, this suitor, who she nicknamed birdman, was easy to read. He was insecure about his body, thinning hair, and beaklike nose, so he paid to be with a woman with the thickest, longest hair he’d ever seen and then tied her up with her own hair to show he was the one in power. He had bent and contorted her into various shapes. Then his eyes lit up when he pressed his skeletal hands to her throat. Yes, he liked to choke her just a little bit, just until her cheeks and forehead started to flush and her throat emitted strangled gasps.”
Erin Khar - Strung Out (Park Row, 2020)
Khar’s memoir is powerful and necessary, exploring what life is like with addiction and recovery - and showcases the honest and hard realities of both. It’s a topic that often gets ignored or stereotyped, to the detriment to those who suffer with addiction, and I’m so glad this book exists.
Here’s an excerpt:
“New York City, August 1997
It was 5:00 a.m., and I was wide awake — the kind of awake with edges so sharp that sleep is carved away. Chills marched on my skin like an army of ants, and I searched in the dark for my green sweater.
I had been wearing that sweater incessantly since I’d returned from Paris. The sweater went on and then was pulled off, repeatedly, each day, in my desperate, yet half-hearted, attempts at kicking. It was pale green, woven of silk and cashmere, bought in one of the shopping sprees I went on to distract myself from the hundreds of dollars a day I was shooting in my arm, and it filled me with comfort and disgust in equal measure.
It wasn’t even a great color on me; it wasn’t really me. Maybe that’s why I bought it. Hiding had become my occupation.
It was August in New York. There may be no worse time and place to kick than August in New York. Heat and humidity and intense smells amplify withdrawal symptoms. Everyone has their AC on full blast; you’re continually flipping between hot and cold. The changes in temperature, outside and in, grated on me, irritating my prickly skin. And so, the green sweater went on and off, on and off.
I’d come back East to visit my dad, and also to try to coax myself into kicking. It was a bad idea. Why did I always think that kicking dope on vacation would work?”
Maurice Sachs - Witches’ Sabbath (Spurl Editions, 2020)
This book, translated by Richard Howard, is Sachs’ autobiography as a gay, Jewish man exploring his own identity, through love affairs, his love of literature, and his background. His life was nothing short of mesmerizing and unusual and full and tragic (he even converted to Catholicism and entered a seminary in 1925). This new edition of the book illustrates just how complicated and strange and ugly life can be.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor: A Photo Series (forthcoming), and A Love Story (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault and the illustrator of Dead Tongue (Yes Poetry, 2020). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.