Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Love Is Power, or Something Like That

2013; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 87; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2013.0036

1945-8134

Jim Hannan,

Themes in Literature Analysis

November–December 2013 • 59 Alai Tibetan Soul Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping, tr. MerwinAsia Now a full-time writer after a long prelude as a farmer, a construction worker, a tractor driver, and a history teacher, Alai brings his myriad of experiences as a Tibetan to this collection of short stories. He combines elements of traditional folklore with modern life, giving a rich portrait of the varied culture in his homeland. Ai Mi Under the Hawthorn Tree Anna Holmwood, tr. House of Anansi Press Ai Mi’s bittersweet love story perfectly intertwines China’s politically volatile Cultural Revolution of the 1970s with the innocence of youth. Jingqiu wishes only to work hard and make her family proud. Through a series of political events, however, she meets Jianxin. The two fall into forbidden love, only to have it ripped apart by the cruel hands of fate in an unexpectedly heartwrenching ending. Nota Bene The novel consists of a preface and twenty-seven stories, combining to reach a number associated with lunar cycles, the “madness” of love beyond the grave (“I will always love you”), and the lunacy of a world that lacks a redemptive illumination, a darkening earth torn by wars abroad and by the political distortion of religious beliefs in the East and in the West (“my God is better than yours”). Anaya charts a journey of grief with moments of touching humor and critical stabs at our modern age, with its repression of the incantatory power of myth and an inclusive faith. I will not reveal the novel’s conclusion but will assert that it rivals the myth of Quetzalcoatl’s exile in the East, traditionally portrayed in a raft of serpents with the promise to return or leaving to immolate himself in a pyre, with birds of precious feathers rising from his ashes. Beyond the story of love, mourning, and dreams, the novel ignites the reader’s imagination through the symbolism of numbers and the alchemy of apparent opposites who become the eternal couple through death and transfiguration. In The Old Man’s Love Story, Anaya brings the power of magic and memory to a world of ashes and dust. Roberto Cantú California State University, Los Angeles A. Igoni Barrett. Love Is Power, or Something Like That. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf. 2013. isbn 9781555976408 The final words of Nigerian author A. Igoni Barrett’s debut collection of short stories are “love does not mean marriage, a baby, forever. Love means you make me happy until you don’t.” How readers react to such sentiments may determine how they regard this book. The egoism, cruelty, and cynicism expressed here fittingly bring to a close a book that strives to capture an edgy, dangerous, volatile society struggling under corruption and, frequently , disregard for the well-being of other people. Barrett interjects violence throughout his stories—a boy hurls a stone into the head of a “madwoman,” a police officer remembers breaking his wife’s arm in a drunken rage, armed thugs prepare to rape and murder members of a family. Whether such acts are prevalent in Lagos (the setting of most of the stories), Barrett could do more to convey why he wants to write about them. Too frequently his stories lack self-reflection or insight into what makes his characters act the way they do. After the narrator of a story has sex with a woman introduced to him by Babasegun, a recent acquaintance, he remarks that the woman “was everything I wanted—especially with the knowledge that the first time was the last. My only regret was that I couldn’t chat about it afterward with Babasegun over a cold bottle of Trophy .” Barrett’s narrative technique offers no alternative to this callous, exploitative perspective; the reason for representing such a dispiriting point of view remains unclear. The best story in the collection, “Godspeed and Perpetua,” happens to be the longest. This suggests that Barrett is at his best when he allows himself to move from caricature, a problem that plagues other stories, to more fully developed characters. In “Godspeed and Perpetua,” Barrett carefully portrays complicated family dynamics, the clash between faith and skepticism, tensions between wealthy civil servants and poor...