What the hell, summer spell.

My name is Arianna Stern. This is a page with some of my freelance work. You can email me at arianna[dot]s at gmail[dot]com.

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Posts tagged Achy Obejas

Aug 16

“When I woke up later that night, I didn’t want to open my eyes. For an instant, I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or breathing in the dark. I was afraid if I lifted my lids, I’d look out to the old, familiar view of my apartment, with its toppling bookcases and artless walls. And then, when I realized I recognized the steady heartbeat behind me, the tender flesh that spooned the length of my body, I shut them even harder, wanting the moment to last forever, afraid that I’d break down and cry.” – Memory Mambo page 91

My copy of Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo is filled with dog-eared pages indicating the location of moving, thought-provoking passages. When you read it (will you please?), you can tell me if your pages are dog-eared too.

This also holds the distinction of being the only book I’ve ever read with baby rape in it.

Jun 2

“

“Look at nature: It’s always the males who are glorious, massive, and colorful,” he says, closing his eyes. His nostrils are crusty. “Boy lions have their manes. Boy chickens have combs and wattles and fluff. And what about that outrageous cock of the rock with his wild orange pompadour, huh?”

And I’m thinking, yeah, but it’s the girl lions who kill, and it’s the girl birds who lay the eggs. So why do I feel so useless?

”

—Achy Obejas, We came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this?

If you haven’t read it, We came all the way from Cuba… is a book of short stories about people struggling to comprehend things that seem beyond human comprehension. The characters are varied; many are gay or latin@ like Obejas herself.

My favorite incomprehensible things are love and family. In my life, I have never read anyone who writes about love with as much mournfulness, lucidity, and hope as Achy Obejas does.

Generally, when I read sex descriptions in literature or see sex scenes in films, they tend to be either very bashful or totally mechanical and devoid of emotion. Thankfully the sex descriptions in We came all the way from Cuba… were neither. You could both visualize the situation and empathize with the characters in it.

AIDs comes up in this book several times. We came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this? was published in the 90s, when AIDs killed faster. It was ironic to read those passages and remember that my friends are more worried about being socially debilitated by HIV than physically debilitated.

Everybody has some limitations in their capacity to understand, and is inept in some way. People fall in love and make lives for themselves in spite of that, and We came all the way from Cuba… shows the beauty in that. The opposite of reading this book is skimming the newspaper headlines about natural disasters and famine and coups, then deciding you don’t care.

********************ALSO THIS HAPPENED:

Me: I’m reading We came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this?. I think Achy Obejas lives in Uptown.
My thesis advisor: She’s from Indiana, originally, but she lives in Chicago. She lives on the South Side. I’m friends with her.
Me: (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)