Mona Arshi
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The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (2017) — Mitwirkender — 17 Exemplare
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Ruby, growing up in London with parents who immigrated from India, does not speak. The novel’s opening prose-poem both informs the reader of this fact and brings us right into its style: “a blue bird escapes from her mouth. Then another and another, until the room is filled with their iridescent turquoise feathers and clamour of yellow-black beaks. A few settle on her head, others perch on her shoulders, but then after a few minutes and for no discernible reason they quickly flit back inside – a hymn of bodies returning as they enter back through her parted lips. Several fly into and penetrate her torso. When the last bird has gone, she closes her mouth and leaves the room.”
“No discernible reason” may put the cause of Ruby’s silence a bit strongly. There is racism from adults and children both, dehumanizing its target. Probably even more damaging in her youngest years is the fact that her mother suffers from mental illness and depression. Frequently hospitalized, and not a reliable source of comfort when not, her mother’s absences and pained presences greatly affect Ruby.
If the use of language offers no comfort, there is the more primal sense of touch, and Ruby does lean on this. For one episode of time as a child she writes words on her skin, and has her friend David write her words for her: “I would stretch the skin on my torso taut as canvas on a frame and he would feed the tip of the pen and copy the patterns and the curlicued script and when his mouth was very near my navel I would touch the top of his hair lightly with my hand.” As a teenager, she seeks communication with another friend this way as well: “I move carefully towards her and lay myself down on her still body and she strokes my hair and we stay like this for a long time. I couldn’t conceive of anything better in the universe than lying on her lovely body like this her heart fluttering underneath mine our fingers threaded together, our breath as fast as kittens.”
The novel offers no resolution or solution. The episodes, up to last (“They had taken her out of bed, and she was waiting for us patiently, her elbows scrubbed but dry with a bubbly texture. I reached over and touched one with my fingertips”), continue the general state of affairs until simply stopping to be told. If this were a plot-driven novel that might be a problem, but then, it’s not. It’s a poem-driven novel, with a voiceless notable voice.… (mehr)