Girls Like Us

Girls Like Us

by Elizabeth Hazen
Publisher: Alan Squire Press
Release Date:  March 2020

 

Girls Like Us is packed with fierce, eloquent, and deeply intelligent poetry focused on female identity and the contradictory personas women are expected to embody. The women in these poems sometimes fear and sometimes knowingly provoke the male gaze. At times, they try to reconcile themselves to the violence that such attentions may bring; at others, they actively defy it. Hazen’s insights into the conflict between desire and wholeness, between self and self-destruction, are harrowing and wise. The predicaments confronted in Girls Like Us are age-old and universal—but in our current era, Hazen’s work has a particular weight, power, and value.

I love reading poetry, and mostly I instantly feel them connected to me. But with Girls Like Us, it started slow I was confused at the beginning. But as I kept reading, & the poem’s came across as a rebel, and what WE (girls) go through most of our life. Called by names, Eyes those see us, Feeling we go through, Fears our mind has and Thoughts that keep us awake at nights.

I liked how different were each poem’s crafted, with different ideas portraying issues Girls/Women have. The book cover is exactly what the book talks about.

I like poems those rhyme, and this one has only one such poem. But still I quiet liked this whole book, and I would recommend whoever reads it, please read it like a “Spoken Poetry” because that way you will connect more to the poems and words. I realized this a bit later in 3-4th poem and after that, each poem spoke to me.

I would recommend these to everyone, who likes reading meaningful poetry that don’t naturally rhyme.

Moving Day

My mind’s
an emptied drawer, its clutter filed away.

Photograph

He left no trace
but an edge of shadow, the picture’s only flaw.

Driving Home at Dawn

Even now,
my fingertips tingle,
your name like a host
on my tongue.

Electricity

I lie until his
breath deepens and the ticking
clock becomes a heartbeat.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐  .5

Elizabeth Hazen is a poet, essayist, and teacher. A Maryland native, she came of age in a suburb of Washington, D.C. in the pre-internet, grunge-tinted 1990s, when women were riding the third wave of feminism and fighting the accompanying backlash. She began writing poems when she was in middle school, after a kind-hearted librarian handed her Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind. She has been reading and writing poems ever since.

Hazen’s work explores issues of addiction, mental health, and sexual trauma, as well as the restorative power of love and forgiveness. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, American Literary Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, The Normal School, and other journals. Alan Squire Publishing released her first book, Chaos Theories, in 2016. Girls Like Us is her second collection. She lives in Baltimore with her family.

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*I received an advance readers eBook copy of Girls Like Us, as part of Poetic Blog Tour in return of an honest review. 
The views are my own. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in 
final publication.*

A Cage of Desires

Book : Cage of Desire
Author : Shuchi Singh Kalra
Pages : 216
Price : 150/-
Publication : Penguin India

Women centric, but erotica.

Story

The story is about Renu, a house maker, who takes care of her children and father-in-law while her husband works outside city for a good income. Renu being a “good” daughter-in-law keeps in the limit set by her husband and in-laws. But are these the only desires, she has? To be a good wife? To be a good daughter-in-law?

Maya on the other hand, is a lady who has wooed men with her bold writings. She has authored the books, that people read at nights when the lights are closed. She is the one, desired by many men. And one of them is Renu’s husband.
Will these three ever get at a joint juncture? What will happen to their life then?

Arjun a good guy enters the story, and rents in the room at Renu’s house. Is he actually a good guy? While he is a successful person, he also is flawed with being a playboy. Will his nature turn around when he finds someone who will fulfill his desires?

Writing

The book puts forward a very strong message that, not all women are to be caged inside the boundary community has set. It also talks about the flaws, out society has of Men can desire any Women, but Women can’t even desire to be a Woman!The message is strong, but what I couldn’t get through were the erotic and bold contents of the book. I am not very fond of erotica, and that’s where the novel lost me. I paused 3 times to finish it up, due to the bold contents that took all the sense of the reader instead of story.

The language used is simple, but sometimes events are too descriptive. In starting the story had a mystery involved, but it too was short-lived. The cover of book and the title is such apt and I loved the cover that surely raised a curiosity about what we are going to read.

Let’s talk about Characters now,

Renu, our protagonist a housewife who desires to be something more. Completely lost me, once she entered a boundary where her desires can be very ill for her children. Yes, we live in a society where our children’s learn from us. So instead of being selfish, maybe she should have done something else to fill her desire.

Dev, his character is being etched very less and I craved to see more of him. He was ALWAYS away as a husband and is shown with the typical mindset of, Men can love anyone, but Women need permission to be herself.

Arjun, a character that I had eyed since the beginning. I thought, maybe he will be different, different from those shown in our “Bollywood” movies. But alas, my palace of dreams was shattered, when he became so intolerant that his character couldn’t justify why he did certain things. His actions changed so frequently, and made me confuse about was he to be pitied or angered on sometimes.

Mihir, one character that wasn’t required.

Akriti, has turned major events and yet her character wasn’t given that much light. She came in to support main characters and was lost again until they needed her again.

Children, well I would have loved to know, about what happened to children when Renu felt she wanted liberation, she wanted to be free from her being only a “housewife” tag. Renu’s closeness with her daughter is shown from the start, but I couldn’t see what she felt when she came to know WHY her parents did . In such situations children are the first one to get the most hit out of such situation. But till the end we don’t see them. Because we already read about them in Prologue that they are FINE!!

Didn’t find the use of Arjun coming back, and “those scene”.

If the author wanted to show that Women is not made to bind inside the walls of society and can do, feel whatever she desires. Then Mihir’s character was written just to oppose it. May be it would have made more sense, if she was shown happy on her own. Rather than binding her happiness, on another man. Which is again very contradicting to what the book stands for.

Things that worked out for me :

> The message book wanted to deliver, that everyone has a right to fly out and not cage inside societies boundaries.
> Language is simple and easy to understand.

Things that didn’t worked for me :

> Characters, I would have loved to see some characters more, and some not at all.
> Erotic content made is very difficult for me to read book in one sitting.

Final Note :

A women centric book, if you like erotic content and can read them then go for it.

Cover: 3/5
Title: 2.5/5
Blurb: 2.5/5
Theme: 2.5/5
Story: 2/5
Characters: 2/5
Overall: 2.4/5

*Thanks to Author for providing a review copy in return of an honest review.*
Sorry for the delay in posting review.