From the Shoreline by Steffi Tad-y

         Hailing from Manila and residing in Vancouver, located in the territories of the Musquea, Squamis, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, Steffi Tad-y’s debut collection of poetry, From the Shoreline, draws on a number of reference points related to place, race, and experience. It was really refreshing to see poems dealing with “Instapoet” topics in an actually poetic way. Tad-y elevates the types of observations found elsewhere by providing them with that necessary specificity to create a meaningful experience, which is especially impressive since the collection is only about fifty pages long.

I was drawn in early in the collection. The second poem in the collection, “Gising,” begins as follows: “I can’t remember / if it was barbed wire // or bits of beerglass / the bougainvillea towered over, // or an orange boomerang / then a scar under my eye” (4). I appreciate the violence of the image and all the possibilities for scarring. Even bougainvillea, which appears beautiful, is a thorny plant. The end result is the same: a scar under the eye. The fact that the origin of that scar is not really specified or clear reinforces the everydayness of these types of traumas. The lines that follow seem to offer a challenge to the glorification of these moments: “One day, I want to retire / from seeing only spectacle” (4). There’s a hopefulness that follows and sets an optimistic tone for the collection. The narrator wants to “Live long enough / to grow with [her] hands. // Press one’s fingers into the dirt. / Gather beans. Make of it a warm bowl. // Feed my child. / Muscle a cramped road” (4). In the middle of the poem, there is a short phrase that shifts the tone to an appreciatory, almost incantatory style. Tad-y writes, “This is my signal” (4). The rest of the poem celebrates her grandfather with specific details: “in a bucket hat, bobbing to ‘Purple Rain’” (4). There’s then a blazon of particularities: “Sunflowers from Sxόtsaqel / spring out of his car window. // A Basset Hound says hello. / Earlier, my nephew had a thread // around his two milk teeth. / His mother by the door” (4). Then, she continues to appreciate other seemingly mundane moments: “In our language, to wake up / rhymes with blessing. // The sun is / beginning to line my irises. // My niece, how she sings / “Baby Shark.” // What else can I tell you? / Let us go. // There is side-street parking. / The ticket machine // looks like a pair of binoculars / across an orchid mural. // Keys & raincoat are on the table. / I have been late all this time” (5). 

I’d like to comment on two echoes that I see in the work above. First, it’s hard not to hear an echo of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” when you read “Let us go” in a poem. Rather than being crabs scuttling on the ocean floor, though, there are binoculars looking outward. There’s also something about the poem that reminds me of the work of Derek Walcott—indeed, much of the collection makes me think of his work. In this case, the image of binoculars appears in his poem “Prelude,” which is also a poem about missing time. The fact that this poem ends on “I have been late all this time” offers a counterpoint to Walcott’s “Prelude” where he seems to speeding through life and looking backward. In both cases, the force of the poem seems to live in its observational quality.

A number of poems have powerful closing lines that have a nearly aphoristic quality. In “Merienda,” Tad-y offers a precise and rich scene, and I’ll replicate the final three stanzas here:

We know what to do
when refined sugar starts
to scratch our throats.

Inside her house
we boil a kettle. Pour
mugs of oregano.

Silver door swings open.
We kill mosquitoes
that remind us we are meat. (36)

I appreciate the intimacy of the scene and the moment of boiling a kettle. Then, the final lines are a great reversal: “We kill mosquitoes / that remind us we are meat” (36). I like the phrasing of it and the ambiguity of it. Are they killing mosquitos because they remind them they are meat? Or is it the mere everydayness of it that matters? It’s also a nice juxtaposition of the human characters eating sugar and boiling a kettle and then they, too, are being consumed.

Tad-y’s poems often address broader issues. For now, I’m going to set aside the diasporic piece to focus on mental health. In the poem “For Us,” the speaker notes that “For us who think in constellation / instead of consequence. // Open – a word we fear / for what swerves. // What fills. // Once, in a psych ward, / I traced small dents on the wall // as if each showed the earth / from a single cell to a dying beloved. // We root as much as we can and yet” (25). Of course, there’s the explicit reference to a psych ward, but it also emulates the way that people may think divergently—those who think “in constellation.” That phrase is a delight, given the way that tenuous points are connected to form a broader picture. Similarly, tracing small dents on the wall gives another visual to supplement the constellation. Then, it goes into the cell metaphor (and the doubleness of biological cells and prison cells is probably worth noting here). I appreciate the final lines as being another form of constellation, a set of roots. The difficulty is that the poem ends on an incomplete thought: “We root as much as we can and yet.” It’s an uncomfortable incompleteness. 

As I briefly alluded to, there’s a fair amount of diasporic discourse throughout the poems. In that respect, the poems often deal with language. In “Islands Along Mount Pleasant,” there’s a line that “you misheard flawed / as flowered and filled / what was missing / in the air with Yes / everywhere people flower” (46). I can literally hear that voice that says “flawed” for “flowered” and that notion that everyone is “flawed” being replaced with everyone flowering is a delight. Slightly later in the poem, the narrator writes that “We left an archipelago / whose elders weather / heart attack & heat stroke / as if illness / were a cluster of islands / we cross / so it crosses back” (46). The scene is beautiful and continues on to discuss how “Today is the fourth / day of spring / & we live / in a city that unroofs / as often as it rains” (46). The idea of a city unroofing is just gorgeous. Again, the poem ends on a great trio of lines: “Under a glass awning, / we trace patterns / on our palms” (46).

One poem, “English Lessons in a Former Colony,” offers a list of all the things that were not the ways English was taught:

Not cathedrals
or knuckles
outside its steel gates.

Not palms rushed
by need or else
pressed upwards

covering their children
with prayers
before the tricycles

& roosters.
Not classroom
letters as the law

& license plates
to shiny futures.
Not the Mayor

in a pineapple fiber
silver bulletproof
cruising,

“Do you know
who I am?”
or the robber

he ordered
to eat the stacks
of bills he stole.

not tetanus
straight into
the stomach.

Not the hand shy
& forgoing
what it thinks

in fear of how
it sounds.
Not nuns,

centipedes
or gym teachers
who move you.

Not is or are
drilled on blue red blue
until the chalk breaks

into a screech,
& elders tug
our ankles cold.

Not the whiz
of metal trays.
Furious spoons

& forks at lunch.
Not a hint
of cockroach on rice.

Not wrists
on desks like onions
on a chopping board.

Listens,
believing
it’s all in the mind. (31-32)

I think this poem is replete with an excellent set of images. I like the repetitive structures that guide the poem, as well. The pattern of “not / or” is fantastic, and the first image of knuckles wrapped around outside the cathedral gates is such a grim opening, especially given our colonial pasts. I also like the inversion of our normal ways of learning: “Not classroom / letters as the law // & license plates to shiny futures” (31). Learning from these common moments of language is explicitly denied as the way of learning in a colony. The layers of political corruption that go on in these contexts also gets a reference: “Not the Mayor // in a pineapple fiber /  silver bulletproof / cruising, // “Do you know / who I am?” / or the robber / he ordered / to eat the stacks / of bills he stole” (31). These political parables do not serve any purpose to learn English—it’s great to see all of the ways in which nothing is learned. Instead, it’s “tetanus / straight into / the stomach.” All the figures of institutional institutions—nuns and gym teachers do nothing; the pests (centipedes, cockroaches) also do nothing. The different chalks breaking over verb conjugation point to the meaninglessness of the lesson on the speaker. The image of “wrists / on desks like onions / on a chopping board” (32) points to the violence inherent in education as well, and it strikes me as such a haunting resonance to stories of abuse in residential schools and beyond.

Collectively, the poems do a great job of exploring issues in a resonant way without relying on the basic tropes that have been deployed ad nauseam in other forms of poetry. It’s a good debut that offers compelling images and some moments of specific intimacy that really help the collection work. It’ll be great to see where Tad-y’s work goes next; there’s enough linguistic exploration here that I’m sure there are many poems left in Tad-y’s well.

Happy reading!

Telling Your Story, Speaking Your Truth: a path to empowerment by Lisa Browning

  It feels a little unfair counting this book towards my reading goal and unfair offering a review, since Lisa Browning’s Telling Your Story, Speaking Your Truth: a path to empowerment is essentially a promotional book for the editorial services and publishing house One Thousand Trees.

The slim volume (just under 60 pages or so) is a collection of short essays, generally clocking in at about two or three short pages, from local authors published by One Thousand Trees. The thirteen authors tell their personal stories of finding their voices, meeting Lisa Browning, and coming to be published in book or online form. To the end that the book is promotional material for Lisa Browning, it does its job. The authors cite e-mail exchanges, personal discussions, and so on, all singing the praises of the editor in offering encouragement and opportunities.

From the standpoint of an essay collection, it reads a little thin. The essays are often vague and general. Brevity is the soul of wit and the bane of writers. To try to condense your wisdom, advice, and personal reflections into just a few impactful pages is extraordinarily challenging. As a result, it feels like each of the entries is less about inspiring others than it is about self-promotion, sometimes explicitly so with references to published works.

Given the repetition, it’s clear that the authors were asked to write these reflections independently of one another. The titles of the essays are things like “It Is Never Too Late” (Brenda Cassidy), “Never Ever Give Up” (Marilyn Helmer), “Be Brave, Be Limitless” (Amber McAuley), and “Write Your Story” (Danielle Hughes). I am pleased that so many people have found their strength through writing and have been able to find such success in working with Ms. Browning, and some of their other projects sound great, offering lots of support to others in need.

The true value of the book is not so much in the essays themselves as it is as a vehicle towards other works. If you’re looking for writing advice and how to refine your craft, I don’t think the book will have much to offer. If you want some general optimism and you’re reasonably local, it might be worth a read. The true proof of One Thousand Trees, though, will only be seen if you opt to read the full length projects only alluded to here.

Happy reading. Happy writing! Good luck!

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is essential reading. It’s the only mandatory minimum sentence I’ll provide here.

If you’re looking to understand the history of incarceration in the United States, this book gives a thorough account of how we got here. Alexander gives an excellent overview of how slavery took shape in the United States, how policing emerged from that context, how poor Whites were turned against poor Blacks and leveraged a modicum of advantage that created the context for ongoing racism, how Jim Crow laws morphed slavery into a new form, and how the carceral prison system is a direct extension of the racist policies and climate that exist in the United States. It’s profoundly informative.

I think we can (almost) all agree that the prison system is highly problematic and needs reform / abolition. The New Jim Crow challenges many assumptions society holds about the prison system in the United States, even reforms that we (White people) believe to be progressive. Alexander offers counter-readings that expose the impact of prison reform practices on Black lives. For instance, even in the preface, Alexander discusses the idea of house arrest. Many people hail it is as being a more humane approach to punishment—surely superior to a prison cell. Yet, when we rely on technology to police, even the slightest problem can have severe consequences for Black prisoners. The “well-intentioned advocates” of technological solutions that advocate for monitors and algorithmic judgements neglect that the algorithms are already biased and that constant surveillance does not mean freedom. Consider also that ankle monitors have a series of problems: 1) the zone in which you’re able to travel may preclude you from having a job, seeing your family, raising your children, and so on. 2) The private GPS tracking company that provides the ankle monitor may charge you up to three hundred dollars a month for the “service” and 3) they are prone to malfunction, which may alert police to come to you immediately and bring you back to jail or deport you for breaking your conditions. We also know how much encounters between Black citizens and the police can escalate, which creates a new risk every time the GPS signal cuts out. Considering these challenges really illuminated for me the extent to which our alternatives to prison are often ill-advised or ill-considered from a specifically White lens.

We also cannot talk about modern prisons without discussing the War on Drugs. The anti-drug legislation that exists has a racial bias that targeted users of crack cocaine (as opposed to powder cocaine), which had different historical and racial contexts where Black citizens were more likely to use crack, while powder cocaine was for White people. [As an aside, she notes how it’s only when White people start using particular drugs that the conversation changes towards decriminalization or legalization—or even towards discussing the drug as a public health concern, rather than a concern with crime]. Alexander notes how only one senator commented on how the focus on crack was a scapegoat for other kinds of societal ills, arguing, “if we blame crime on crack, our politicians are off the hook. Forgotten are the failed schools, the maligned welfare programs, the desolate neighbourhoods, the wasted years. Only crack is to blame. One is tempted to think that if crack did not exist, someone somewhere would have received a federal grant to develop it.” It’s a poignant criticism and points to the trend we see consistently in discussing social ills. People talk about the fentanyl epidemic now and the increase in drug use—but how often do we talk about the root causes of those issues?

I’d like to focus a bit more on the notion of policy, since it becomes increasingly clear that there is a disconnect between policy and the context of peoples’ lived realities. That understanding is thoroughly explored in Alexander’s book and one case in particular struck me as significant. In 1988, the year I was born, there was a new Anti-Drug Abuse Act that was passed and created more punitive consequences for drug crime. For instance, it
“authorized public housing authorities to evict any tenant who allows any form of drug-related criminal activity on or near public housing premises.” When we think about where drug crime comes from, we can imagine the economic context of aspiring dealers and frequent users. To think that people who are already struggling could be evicted is a harsh sentence, but think also of some of the language used here: what does it mean for a tenant to “allow” any form of “drug-related” criminal activity “on or near” public housing premises? The vagueness of the language permits evictions that may not be justified. Consider, for instance, a tenant whose fifteen year old son, unbeknownst to her, agrees to lend car keys to a drug dealer so that he can drive ten blocks to sell. Did she allow this to happen? Is loaning car keys drug-related? Is ten blocks near the premises? These ambiguities permit selective evictions—and who will bear the brunt of them, I wonder?

Worse, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act “eliminated many federal benefits, including student loans, for anyone convicted of a drug offense.” Drug crimes are the result of desperation. Taking away opportunities further perpetuates the problems and renders it more likely that Black men will end up in prison. The act expanded the use of the death penalty for drug crimes and increased the mandatory minimum for drug offences, even for people with no previous criminal convictions (5 years for possession of cocaine with no evidence of intent to sell). Previously, the mandatory minimum for possessing any type of drug was one year.

The “tough on crime” discourse that emerged at the time failed to target the societal conditions that created crime and instead punished people unnecessarily. It’s kind of like how if we took all the money that went into policing homelessness, we could literally just give people homes. Alexander offers a number of anecdotes about “tough on crime” mentalities that are as horrific as they are depressing. For instance, if you’re okay with the death penalty, consider whether it was just for Ricky Ray Rector, a Black man convicted of murder who was put to death but was so “mentally impaired” that he “had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him until the morning.” I find that absolutely devastating and Alexander follows it up with a quote from Bill Clinton gloating that he could not be considered “soft on crime.” Why is that something we aspire to? Alexander’s juxtaposition of the two moments is laced with tragedy and a grim poetics.

Any time you hear people discussing crime, it would behove you to act like a three year old and keep asking why and not stop.

“I’m tough on crime.”

“Why?”

“Because these criminals are putting people in danger.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re selling drugs to little kids.”

“Why?”

“Because they can make a profit and don’t care.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

I’d keep that conversation going, but I don’t know how act tough on crime enough. Essentially, what it will come down to is that policies, laws, and their enforcement preclude people from living full lives. Surely it’s clear that crime is a response to inadequate housing, inadequate social services, inadequate mental health services, inadequate employment opportunities, and so forth. There’s a history for crime, and Alexander persuasive argues that that history is bound up with racism.

Some objectors will suggest that crime is “race-neutral”, but The New Jim Crow exposes these race-neutral necessities as false. For instance, people might argue that Black people are more prone to use and sell drugs when, in fact, that is not true, but rather reflects a cycle of racist policies and perceptions. Alexander notes that people have “differential access to private space” and that “influences the likelihood that criminal behaviour will be detected.” She gives the example of how wealthy people selling drugs are likely doing so in a private location, like inside a home, while poor people tend to have to share space and will go outside in order to conduct their exchanges. So, police catch crime in concentrated areas of the poor where drug enforcement is more easily achieved. Then, the statistics show more crime in that area so they continue going there, meaning they catch more people, and the cycle repeats.

Similarly, potential jurists cannot be excluded based on race, but supposedly race-neutral language can be used to exclude Black jurors. For instance, fashion choices stereotypical to Black males might be excluded as untrustworthy or undesirable. Someone may not like the look of someone’s hair. They don’t say Black, but that’s the underlying message. So even when cases go to trial, there is such little chance that one’s peers will truly be there to assess the case.

One thing we often forget is that incarcerated people do not exist in a vacuum. They have families, children. They have friends and communities that suffer when they are isolated from one another. When people are forcibly removed from their families, everyone suffers. Try that “why?” question out the next time some racist says that Black dads are never there for their kids. Why aren’t they there? Where are they? Why are they in prison? Why did they allegedly commit the crime? The New Jim Crow also blew my mind in its discussion of parole. One very common condition of parole is that you cannot associate with anybody that has a felony conviction. This means that when you go back to your high-poverty neighbourhood, if there are other people who have been convicted, you cannot even go out for groceries without getting a parole violation. One drug offence can mean that you are prohibited from all kinds of interaction—and that happenstance may have you violating the rules of parole and being sent back to jail. White people do not have the same challenges when finding a community after parole. Mass incarceration reproduces segregation. Alexander notes that people who might have escaped or transformed their communities instead find themselves “in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality, circulating between ghetto and prison.”

Politically, it’s worth noting that convicted people cannot vote. The convicted cannot voice their convictions, as it were. This note that felons are unable to vote disproportionately affects Black citizens, and indeed was initially designed to ensure an all-White electorate. Supposedly race-neutral barriers to voting have sprung up in all kinds of forms: a poll tax, a literacy test, a requirement not to have ever been convicted—all measures that are contextually targeted towards Black folk. This mass incarceration also seems to contribute to the trend of re-electing people who are “tough on crime”—-if the people who are mass-incarcerated could vote, we might actually see some reform or abolition of the prison system in lieu of more proactive social policies.

Alexander breaks down at every level how the prison system is designed with an anti-Black bias. From the focus of the legislation, to the enactment of it and the policing which follows, to the selection of jury members, to the extent of punishments, to our public discourse around crime: all of these are contributing factors to a profoundly racist system. In part of the book, she even discusses how “criminal” is a re-coding of “Black.” As people recognized that they could not be overtly racist, they had to change the language to a dog whistle other White people would understand.

The book is incisive, persuasive, informative, and all good things nonfiction should be. It opened my eyes to angles I previously hadn’t considered and provides the historical context essential for weighing in on any issues related to crime and punishment.

Read it. Spread the word. Make change.