By Steve Pfarrer
THE WALL
By Ilan Stavans
University of Pittsburg Press
Ilan Stavans has been thinking of borders — the one along the southern boundary of the United States especially — for a long time. A native of Mexico, Stavans, a veteran professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College and a prolific writer, has long examined the immigrant experience and the connections between Latin America and the United States.
In one of his newest works, “The Wall,” a four-part, free-verse poem that recently won the 2019 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry, Stavans examines those subjects from a different angle — literally, in one sense. “The Wall” is structured like a wall itself, with most lines consisting of just word or at most four to six, so that long strips of narrow text run down the length of each page.
Over the last few years, Stavans traveled along many parts of the U.S.-Mexican border to look at places where a wall now separates people who for many years crossed freely to either side. The publisher, University of Pittsburg Press, calls the book “a poetic exploration — across time, space, and language, real as well as metaphorical — of the U.S.-Mexican wall dividing the two civilizations.”
Stavans also references literary works, pop culture, cuisine and other elements while looking at the lives of people caught up in the issue: immigrants, border patrol officers, activists and others. The author considers the history of barriers in other places — Jerusalem, Berlin, the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II — as he reflects on how governments, politicians and idealogues have historically used walls to divide and to demonize selected groups of people.
“Does Nogales dream of Jerusalem? / Does Jerusalem envy Beijing? / Does Beijing emulate Warsaw? / And does Warsaw dream of Jerusalem? ACHTUNG!”
“The wall is us,” Stavans writes toward his book’s conclusion. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be that way. As acclaimed poet Jane Hirshfield says, “The Wall” is a “profoundly informed investigation and an entirely personal, supremely articulate howl of the heart against division and separation.”
PAUL TAKES THE FORM OF A MORTAL GIRL
By Andrea Lawlor
Vintage Books
anderlawlor.com
In an entertainment world filled with all sorts of fantasy — from superhero movies to medieval-themed TV shows like “Game of Thrones” to computer games filled with monsters — is there room for yet another niche?
Andrea Lawlor’s debut novel “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” might be paving the way. In what one reviewer calls a “groundbreaking, shape- and genre-shifting work,” the novel follows Paul Polydoris, a gay American bartender and university student in the 1990s who has quite a secret: He’s a shapeshifter who can change gender and appearance at will.
In a story that pays homage to Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” Lawlor’s novel follows Paul — or Polly, in the female version of the main figure — as both characters search for love and meaning and explore the malleability of gender and desire.
Lawlor, who teaches creative writing at Mount Holyoke College — the author is non-binary and uses the adjectives “they” and “them” — had worked on the novel for some 15 years before it was published in 2017 by Rescue Press. After receiving a number of positive reviews, including from The New Yorker, it has now been reissued by Vintage Books.
The Guardian newspaper of Great Britain calls the novel a story “about love: finding romantic love with other people, learning to love oneself and discovering the love and acceptance of a community. It’s also a novel about sex: lots of it.” Given Paul can easily substitute his penis for breasts and a vagina, that’s probably not surprising, yet the novel also navigates the AIDS crisis of the 1990s and its devastating effect on gay culture in the U.S.
The story is complicated as well by the fact that Paul is sometimes a rather unlikeable character, cruel and selfish and sarcastic. “Paul’s an asshole in many ways, yes,” Lawlor told The Guardian in an interview in May. “I tried not to hold back. Most of his flaws are my flaws. He does many things that are actually kind of terrible from my perspective now.”
Yet Paul also attempts to stay in one form at times and think seriously about what he wants from life in terms of a serious relationship and intimacy. The Guardian calls the novel a “playful and charming debut … the 48-year-old Lawlor is part of a recent crop of older debut novelists; ‘Paul’… was worth the wait.”
Andrea Lawlor will read from “Paul Takes the Form of Mortal Girl” on July 11 at 7 p.m. at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.